“He’s a pretty good songwriter for a guitar player,” BettySoo said of James McMurtry. Indeed, he is a fine songwriter, having won awards from the Americana Music Association and the respect of his peers, like Jason Isbell. But, as he declares in “These Things I’ve Come to Know,” “I can’t dance a lick, but sometimes I can flat rock and roll.” McMurtry did just that in his recent appearance at The Birchmere.

As the son of one of America’s most respected writers, the late Larry McMurtry, James has a proficiency with words and a gift for storytelling. There’s a certain similarity between the stories told by both father and son, slices of Americana, tales of working-class people and lives of struggle on the margins. Where Larry worked in prose (and in screenplays), James works, as he has said, “in rhyme and meter.”

When James introduced a “medley of my hit,” the raucous epic “Choctaw Bingo,” Larry’s name came up, albeit briefly, at The Birchmere on Sept. 7. “My great-grandfather was a Methodist minister, and he was the vainest person my father ever knew.” (My great-grandfather was a shoemaker from Odessa, Ukraine, who never learned to speak English, communicating only in Yiddish. The only words he ever spoke to my father were “hello” and “goodbye.”) At some point in his life, Larry formally abandoned the Methodist Church, and James said there’s a letter out there to this effect, which would probably appeal to a collector.

Speaking of working in rhyme and meter, “Levelland,” which McMurtry described as “one of the Robert Earl Keen songs I wrote,” was inspired by the life story of Max Crawford, “the best novelist ever to come out of Floydada, Texas,” but “Floydada didn’t fit the meter.” (I do not know of any other novelists from Floydada, Texas.) Max’s first novel wasn’t released for some time because he refused to change the title, The Penis of Jesus, which was a bit much for 1968. Eventually, it was released as The Backslider; James called it “a pretty good novel.”

James opened with “Vaquero,” from his latest album, 2022’s The Horses and the Hounds. He then did a couple of his earlier songs, “Saint Mary of the Woods” and “Red Dress” before playing “Copper Canteen,” from 2015’s Complicated Game.

Watch James McMurtry play “Copper Canteen” live for Paste Studios on YouTube:

“I wrote this down in New Orleans,” McMurtry said of “I Ain’t Got A Place,” saying he was “just the right amount of drunk and pissed off. If you get that combination right, you can write a pretty good song, if someone doesn’t kick your ass.” (I can’t comment, as all the ass-kickings I’ve taken have come when I was sober.) Before “Jackie,” he told the audience, “I’ll do one more bummer, then put the Prozac aside.

After Levelland, he played one of my favorite character studies, “These Things I’ve Come To Know,” followed “You’d A’Thought (Leonard Cohen Must Die).” Introducing “Carlisle’s Haul,” he said, “Something similar to the events depicted in this song I witnessed downriver, nearly 50 years ago.”

Betty Soo joined James on the stage, and he talked about how, in May, he recorded some songs for a new album with legendary producer Don Dixon. He said he’s learned “there’s no such thing as a release date until it happens.” With BettySoo accompanying him, he played one of those news songs, “Sons of the Second Son,” which is about “feudalism and the effects of primogeniture on modern redneck culture, or the lack thereof.” He closed his set with “Canola Fields,” and, for his encore, performed “Blackberry Winter” completely unplugged.

Betty Soo played an opening set to get the night started off. She recently had her appendix removed, and it was good to see her looking healthy and strong. She mentioned she’ll have a new album out next summer, which is very welcome, as she hasn’t made one in a while, so most of the songs in her set can’t really be found anywhere at present.

I always enjoy McMurtry’s sets, and I appreciate him more each time I see him. This time around, I was struck by how dextrous and skilled he is as a guitarist; he really gets a full sound out of just an acoustic guitar, which isn’t easy. As dextrous as his fingers are, his mind is even sharper, and his songs are some of the best being written today.