When you get an artist or band who have been around for a long time out on annual tours year after year, they tend to fall into two camps. The first are those that I think of as the “forever victory tour” where the focus is very much on the past, playing the hits, and giving the audience the big dose of nostalgia. There is absolutely nothing wrong with this, and if you’ve never seen that band or artist, this becomes an accessible way to get that live experience. The downside is that when they come around the next year, it’s largely the same show. In contrast, the second type of musician or band is the ever evolving one. Yes, they will play some set of expected hits, but they are also creating and focusing on new material, either workshopping unreleased material, playing the new album, or refining the live performance. It was definitely a night of the latter category, with songwriter James McMurtry playing a consecutive annual show at Fine Line.

Opening things was fellow Austin, Texas based artist Betty Soo. She regularly tours with McMurtry (she opened the 2025 Fine Line show as well), and the singer & songwriter is part of the trio Nobody’s Girl. Her recent album, 2025’s If You Never Go Away, centers on the somewhat dour and sad Americana. Soo came to stage solo, and after a long word about her love of the Cities (“I’d move here except it’s so cold”), she was off and that voice was clear as the plains and with bright guitar, she instantly connected with the crowd. This was cozy and Soo’s Americana wrapped its arms around you and asked you to listen and contemplate. Birthright was from Nobody’s Girl and dealt with the knowledge of past trauma. Joking about her tendency to write sad songs, Soo mentioned that the new record had a few hopeful ones, “but this isn’t one of them”. That slight southern drawl only added to Soo’s soaring vocals. Gold Stars was the quietest number of the set and after that, Daren Hess and McMurtry joined her on stage for the duet of Gulf Road and the alternating lyrics and co-guitar work was fantastic. Hess bailed after the second number and Soo and McMurtry finished on the Woody Guthrie number Deportee (Plane Wreck at Los Gatos).

Headliner James McMurtry is an Americana folk rock artist, who we saw at this same venue in April 2025. Singer, songwriter, and guitarist, he has been at it since the late 1980’s, and the son of author Larry McMurtry took a lot of those literary themes of the failing American West and really made them his own, and he has over a dozen albums, including 2025’s The Black Dog and the Wandering Boy. The band is a long time quartet, with Tim Holt (guitar/accordion), Cornbread (bass) and Daren Hess (drums) joining McMurtry on stage. With accordion on the first pair of numbers, Copper Canteen elicited cheers and that folk rock was held by McMurtry’s weathered vocals and excellent guitar, while Cornbread’s higher harmonies gave a nice contrast. Soo came back to stage on For All I Know and while Holt switched to guitar, Soo picked up her own accordion, which was a delightful bit of sequencing. The title track of the new album was darn near straight rock, with a bit of heavier guitar work and with Soo and Holt on back up vocals, this was the densest number of the early going.

It was also the front end of some real bangers, with Choctaw Bingo following along and Holt getting a blistering guitar solo. McMurtry and the band were firing on all cylinders and at the end of that marathon number had the crowd erupt. The band left the stage except for McMurtry and Soo who had a stripped down acoustic version of Blackberry Winter with no mics, and the audience singing the repeated “to tell you no” was a special moment. Annie was a perfectly brutal song and its subject earned the well-deserved scorn. McMurtry got good guitar work in on Sailing Away, and Hess’s drum work was integral to that song’s overall effect. Jackie slowed things down, but was perfectly in line for the set’s mood and gave Cornbread a solid bass riff. The band finished up with Too Long in the Wasteland, an early McMurtry song and the jam instrumental sections wrapped things up well. The encore had McMurtry take stage along with acoustic guitar, and These Things I’ve Come to Know was a quieter connection with the crowd and and James McMurtry closed a great set, wishing everyone to be safe on their way home and hoping to see them again. And with the regularity of his touring, those were not empty words.