You heard the “Intro” here last week — now click here to download this thing in full. For. Free.

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James McCurtry might not be a name on par with, say, fellow Texans Lyle Lovett or Steve Earle, but the singer/songwriter and bad-ass guitarist is still a revered act in the Americana world. McCurtry’s latest album, the outstandingly incendiary, darkly humorous, wonderfully emotive and rustically rocking Just Us Kids, has garnered glowing write-ups in glossies such as Blender, Mojo and Entertainment Weekly, the latter of which showered the disc with superlatives like “brilliant,” “hilarious” and “poignant” in giving it an A- grade. Just Us Kids is selling, too. It has reached a very respectable No. 18 on Billboard’s Top Independent Albums chart.

So it’s surprising when I’m given McMurtry’s mobile phone number and instructed to ring him in the afternoon. Any afternoon. Easy as that, the PR person says. But I’m skeptical. Usually when dealing with an artist of McMurtry’s status there’s a set time, date and minute count to which, you, the interviewer, are supposed to stick. Twenty minutes is the norm.

I dial the digits and hear a gruff “hello” that could only be James McMurtry’s. “Give me a moment to pull over,” he says. “I’ve got a manual transmission.” He steers his automobile into a nearby parking lot to grant an interview on a recent Tuesday afternoon. McMurtry has been driving around his hometown of Austin, running the same mundane errands you or I might conduct on an off day. He good-naturedly refers to the interview as just another duty after I apologize for interrupting his daily routine.

The Americana music icon speaks slowly. His voice is deep. His answers are straightforward and marked by an economy of words - and a drawl that reflects both his native Virginia and decades spent in the Lone Star State. You get the sense he’s incapable of feeding you bullshit, and it’s the same way with his music. Whether recounting the machinations of a crystal meth cooker in the fan favorite “Choctaw Bingo,” or telling me how his world-famous father Larry McMurtry’s one shortcoming as a novelist/screenwriter is that “he always gets firearms wrong,” the younger McMurtry’s words smack of integrity.

James McMurtry’s recording career launched in 1989 with the excellent roots-rock offering Too Long in the Wasteland. John Mellencamp, who discovered McMurtry, produced the disc and got his protégé signed to Columbia. Wasteland contains the single “Painting by Numbers,” a catchy heartland pop tune with a deliciously cynical lyric that borders on nihilism. “You might get to thinking you’re ahead of the game,” McMurtry deadpans. “But when you break it all down, it all comes out the same.” The song reached No. 33 on Billboard’s Mainstream Rock Tracks survey. Not bad - but not great, especially by major label standards. McMurtry would release two more full-lengths on Columbia before being handed a pink slip after 1995’s Where’d You Hide the Body.

Like so many singer/songwriters whose music is - to be blunt - too damn smart and literate for widespread consumption, McMurtry re-emerged as a star on the Americana scene when he signed with venerable independent label Sugar Hill for 1997’s It Had to Happen. He’s spent the past decade in the indie ranks, a big fish in a small pond, as they say. When I ask artists in his position if they prefer the smaller labels to the behemoths, I usually receive a stock answer about how he or she enjoys the artistic freedom, personalized attention et al offered by the boutique imprints. Not McMurtry. “You always want to be on the majors,” he says dryly. “But majors aren’t signing people like me. They’re signing American Idols.

“The majors, they got more money, more infrastructure, they’re their own machine. With them, you’re gonna get on Letterman. You might not make out financially initially. But you’ll ultimately make more headway if you work hard. When I was on Columbia, you come into town, people know you’re coming.”

That candor comes through in McMurty’s detailed character sketches. The somber title track to Just Us Kids opens with the lines: “I’ve had enough of this small town bullshit/ I’m not stayin’ in school/ I’m makin’ good dough workin’ with my brother/ Cleanin’ out pools.” The song sympathetically chronicles a couple buddies’ progression from young, wild hell-raisers to middle-aged men relegated to reliving their glory days over cans of beer. “Just us kids hangin’ out today,” McMurtry sings wistfully. “Watchin’ our long hair turnin’ gray.”

The song takes its inspiration from McMurty observing the behavior of his teenage son. “I typically come up with a couple lines and melody and eventually come up with a character that says those lines,” McMurtry explains. “I had some lines and noticed my son and all his friends, none care about automobiles the way my friends did. We saw them as freedom and forms of self-expression. They just see cars as means of getting round.

“With any song, if it’s cool enough to keep me up at night, I finish the song,” McMurtry continues. “Having a preconceived idea about what you want to say is a good way to kill a song. That’s why political songs are tricky; sometimes a song doesn’t want to say what you set out to say.”

Political songs can also be misinterpreted. McMurtry learned that lesson the hard way with “Cheney’s Toy,” one of several politically charged numbers on Just Us Kids. Anyone who listens to the lyrics and has occasionally perused the newspaper during the past eight years should most certainly ascertain that the titular toy is Dubya - not one of our young men or women risking his or her limbs and life in Iraq or Afghanistan. The songwriter has stopped performing the gripping protest number, though, due to listeners being offended by an anti-soldier message that he’s clearly not making. “In that particular case, it was frustrating,” McMurtry says. “In general, it’s very easy for political songs to become sermons. You get known for that and no one listens. You have to be careful.”

James McMurtry: “Choctaw Bingo (live)”

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Top 10: Vacation songs

1. Vacation, The Go-Go’s
2. Holiday Road, Lindsey Buckingham
3. Fish and Whistle, John Prine
4. Too Much of Nothing, Bob Dylan and the Band
5. It’s My Lazy Day, Willie Nelson and Merle Haggard
6. Situation Vacant, The Kinks
7. Lazy Days, The Byrds
8. One Big Holiday, My Morning Jacket
9. Home Sweet Home, Breaux Freres
10. Another Sunny Day, Belle & Sebastian

The Go-Go’s — Vacation

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Monday’s choice tidbits are few and far between, but duty, as they say, calls. And my post-Thanksgiving gift to you: No Star Trek or Watchmen updates.

Black Friday, indeed: Steve Guttenberg says sequels to Police Academy and Three Men and a Baby are in the works. Ha, ha, good one, Steve. Seriously, stop kidding around. No, really. Shut the fuck up.

Joss Whedon ready to bring Buffy the Vampire Slayer back to the big screen.

Hold on to your hormones, ladies: Johnny Depp and Christian Bale are respective adversaries John Dillinger and Melvin Purvis in Michael Mann’s Public Enemies, a Cream Team pairing sure to keep theater ushers everywhere on “moist-seat alert.” Have your canisters of talcum powder ready, boys!

Tom Tykwer’s The International is set to open next year’s 59th Annual Berlin Film Festival. Normally I wouldn’t post this kind of Eurocentric fare, but Tykwer’s Run Lola Run is one of my favorite films, and with Clive Owen and Naomi Watts starring, I can’t wait to get a look at this. (Unless, of course, the buzz is really bad, in which case I’ll slam the film sight unseen.)

And finally, some strong Oscar buzz is swirling around Clint Eastwood’s performance in the upcoming Gran Torino.

See, I told you there’d be no Star Trek or Watchmen. Have a great Monday.

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Pedro Arévalo, 32, could be called the bass player of Sarasota. Odds are, if you’re out and about and you see someone plunking away, it’s Pedro.

How many bands do you play with around town?

My father has a band called The Acoustic Pete Blues Trio, which despite its name, ranges from four to 10 people. He also has a bluegrass group called Swamp Grass. I have a flamenco group I’ve worked with for many years called The Lotus Fire. I’ll have a project with my brother starting December called Los Mosquitoes. I’ll be playing a few Saturday evenings at the Oyster Bar under my own name. I’ve been playing also with Rastus Kain; he’s a prominent blues guitarist that’s been in the area off and on for decades. The main groups I play with are not local though. Dickey Betts (of the Allman Brothers) lives here in town. I’ve been his bassist for the past five years. We did two tours in Europe over the summer. … Aside from that, I’ve been playing slide guitar with Greg Allman’s son, Devin Allman. The band is called Honey Tribe. We also did a tour of Europe this summer as well. I suppose I’m on the road between 200 and 250 days a year.

What’s your favorite type of music?

I like variety. I played in a number of West African groups when I lived in Boston. I got to travel with them to Africa. I played in a salsa group around town called the Vine Street Rumba Band. I love blues, country-blues, and all kind of hillbilly music like bluegrass. I love jazz, just improvisation. I consider myself an improviser. That’s my profession.

Do you have any advice for the Sarasota music scene?

It’s a tough scene. There’s plenty of work, but most of them don’t want to hear a lot about original music. Pandering to the tourist is the nature of the game. It’s nice downtown having the luxury to play foreign music. There’s a nice international interest, even on Lido and St. Armand’s you can get away with it. On Siesta it’s much more difficult, they want to hear Buffett. My advice is not to give in to the bars and do what you need to do to gratify yourself. Otherwise, everyone will be playing Jimmy Buffett at every venue.

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Ed. note: This article, by Kevin Costello, will appear in next week’s Creative Loafing. A previous version of this post incorrectly referred to San Francisco city supervisor Harvey Milk as the mayor of San Francisco. We regret the error.

In 1983, Jill Hoffman-Kowal moved to Sarasota because the San Francisco punk scene was getting in the way of her art. She never left. Her life trajectory, however, is hardly that simple.

Along with Joe Rees — a video documentarian — Hoffman-Kowal photographed some of the seminal moments of the punk rock era, with a grasp on capturing in video and print the pulse of the chaotic late ’70s and early ’80s. Partnering with Rees, she established Target Video, whose mission was to chronicle those early raw days of punk rock. These performance tapes lie in a vault somewhere in California, no doubt bound one day for the Smithsonian.

Since settling in Sarasota, Hoffman-Kowl has pursued everything from photorealist paintings and drawings to found-object collages made from twigs and bird feathers. These latter objects will be on display at State of the Arts Gallery starting next week, as part of Eco Chic.

Hoffman-Kowal’s journey from punk impresario — dancing to the sound of stacked speakers, surrounded by brilliant crazies powered by sacramental drugs and booze — to an intensely personal woman at peace with herself and her art in a bamboo garden sounds drastic. CL wanted to know more.

CL: Tell me about your work photographing Punk in the ’70s.

JH-K: I was in the habit of carrying my Pentax, then my Nikon, everywhere I went. I took slides with Tri-X B/W. I took slides through my first trip to Europe which was a five-month sojourn of cross-country and western Europe. We went to Dokumenta and the Biennial in Bologna, Italy. I first heard conceptual performance artist Laurie Anderson there.  She played a white violin with audiotape on the bow and an audio head attached to the violin. Brilliant. Anyway, we went from Amsterdam to Positano, Italy, in 1974. I photographed conceptual and performance art pieces, Terry Fox and events at LaMamelle or Site which were alternative art spaces in San Francisco. The Sex Pistols were my first punk band to photograph.

CL: What are the circumstances for you taking shots of the Sex Pistols?

JH-K: Joe and I were somehow lucky to get into that historic show, which turned out to be their final performance. We were in the balcony and Joe snuck his 8mm film camera in and I had my Nikon, no flash, but a telephoto lens. I took two rolls that night.

CL: What Kind of person was Johnny Rotten?

JH-K: I was his tour guide in NYC while working for Richard Branson’s Virgin Records. No one else wanted that job, but I sure did. I was so impressed with his work. He was cute, articulate, smart, spoiled. He was easy to please and liked all the lowlife clubs I took him to.

CL: What is the lasting influence of punk music?

JH-K: The lasting influence of punk is mostly fashion. But it cannot be duplicated since it was all do-it-yourself, doing everything from writing the songs, making clothes … recording. The effort and creativity didn’t carry on as strong as the fashion did. In fact, you can now buy punk rock clothes at Kmart.

CL: Tell me about the importance of Target Video in your life?

JH-K: Target Video had foresight. It was such a unique, energized, creative movement that was freeing and fun. It was also a reaction to the times, making it a very relevant movement. We had a weekly cable TV show taped on reel-to-reel b/w tape, way before MTV. I was on the cutting edge of technology and could use my skills, talents, and made a lot of stuff happen, like getting Iggy Pop to sign a contract. 

Punk is not about skinheads; that morphed out of it. That is the negative influence of punk. punk also emerged in SF during an upheaval from the assassination of gay city supervisor Harvey Milk, the Jonestown massacre, and the abduction of newspaper heiress Patty Hearst. Keep in mind that Jim Jones had a temple in SF.

CL: What will Joe Rees be remembered for?

JH-K: Joe will be remembered for his foresight, for his having that huge warehouse loft hosting after-hour parties, shooting bands and making the largest punk rock video library in the world. It was sort of the Warhol Factory of the punk scene in San Francisco.

CL: Tell me about your present work for Eco Chic.

JH-K: Eco-Chic at SotA is about ecological sensitivity. I was working in my yard, and I’m always amazed by my environment. I appreciate all the bamboo growing and the shoots that fall. So, I had a vision and experimented with using nature as my medium but sticking to my conceptual philosophy and grid style.

CL: From punk videos to Eco Chic is quite a transition; what do think when you reflect on that?

JH-K: It all makes sense. It is about individuality, being turned on, unafraid, and keeping with your beliefs. Wanting to stand out, be unique or at least be yourself. Use whatever you can to be creative. … If you can only use the leaves in your yard, go ahead. If you have technological equipment or printing presses, or lots of money, use it to your creative advantage.

To see more of Hoffman-Kowal’s work, visit jillhoffman.net.

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First things first: A review of the 2-disc Blu-ray edition of The Dark Knight.

New on DVD or Blu-ray today: Hancock, A Colbert Christmas: The Greatest Gift of All, Fred Claus

Variety reviews The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, starring Brad Pitt and directed by David Fincher. Spoiler: They like it.

William Shatner gives his two cents on the design of the new USS Enterprise. Spoiler: He likes it.

Sarah Jessica Parker reveals that Sex and the City 2 has a story and may be released in 2010. Oh joy, another reason for girls loopy on Cosmos to tell male movie critics to eat shit.

Tim Blake Nelson talks about becoming villain The Leader in an Incredible Hulk sequel. Which doesn’t even have a script yet.

Twilight of Bond: Tween vampire flick overtakes Quantum of Solace at the box office. Hit movies based on young adult novels about girls infatuated with pretty boys who drink blood must surely be a sign of the apocalypse.

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Chinese Democracy improves with the industrial-informed freak out “Shackler’s Revenge” and again with the muscular guitar kiss-off “Better” - because no one delivers bitter quite like Axl. The same theme is explored on the power ballad “Street of Dreams” (previously leaked as “The Blues”). Keyboards, strings, face-melting guitar solos (courtesy of both Buckethead and Robin Finkck), it’s Axl, the music mad man genius at his post-modern Wall of Sound best. The only bummer is when the singer dips into his lower register. I can’t help but hear Forgetting Sarah Marshall’s “Dracula’s Lament.”

On “If the World” the last Gunner standing strikes out with a regrettable hodgepodge of moody rave beats, Spanish guitar and banal lyrics. But Rose rebounds with Power Ballad No. 2, the six-minute-plus “There Was a Time,” another ode to a woman who did him wrong punctuated by a wonderfully serpentine guitar solo by Finck or Buckethead (both are credited with a solo on the track). And Rose’s lyric for “There Was a Time” is a fabulously decadent tale straight from the ‘Bu. “Social class and registers, cocaine in the hall,” he snarls. “All the way from California, on the way to your next call.”

The equally grandiose and melodic “Catcher in the Rye” is another fortified piano and guitar keeper about the state of Rose’s mental health. “If I thought that I was crazy,” he muses. “Well, I’d guess I’d have more fun.” The song clocks in just under six minutes and then we’re met with “Scraped,” an awfully pedestrian modern rock track that gives way to the only slightly meatier arena rocker “Riad N’ The Bedouins.” By this point the record is dragging and the woe-is-me downer “Sorry” brings the album to its knees. But not down for the count.

Finally, with track 11, “I.R.S.,” we get a rocker that, y’know, rocks with urgency, at least fro the most part. The slow building blowout “Madagascar” also holds up, as does the sentimental piano valentine “This I Love.” And that’s where the disc should end. But it doesn’t. Rose bids farewell with the most piss-poor power ballad of the bunch, “Prostitute.”

On balance, Chinese Democracy is better than the vast majority of hard rock records being peddled these days. Critics would be hailing it as a minor masterpiece if a new band had issued this 71-minute behemoth. But it’s Chinese “fucking” Democracy, a record that took 15 years to make and boasts four pages of credits! Yet, there’s no “Bohemian Rhapsody,” “Stairway to Heaven” or even a song that holds up to “November Rain.” 3.5 stars

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Which makes us very happy.

“So, we are coming home for good in December,” she says via email. ” 24HR Service Station records signed us and we are doing some work with John Wesley at Red Room Recorders working on the next CD. We’ll be releasing it Jan. 16 at State Theater.”

Have Gun, Will Travel, The Beauvilles and Vega Star, of Wisconsin, are also scheduled to be on the Jan. 16 roster.

We wrote about Geri X here in July.

Geri X: “3 a.m. Song”

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Skeletal Lamping finds Barnes in much better spirits and back to mining his psyche for material, the album playing much like you’d imagine his psyche actually works — jumping from one memory to another, lingering on sexual fantasies and depravities, stopping to muse and ruminate on this incident or that person, mood-shifting from confident to downtrodden, from high and happy to contemplative to spazzed-out, thoughts and ideas spurting forth lucid and witty, or as disorienting streams-of-consciousness. Soulful ditties and synth-pop dance numbers mingle amid songs-within-songs that are made up of a few or more wildly divergent electro-symphonic movements, each with its own rhythm and sound and feel that either fits comfortably or crashes inelegantly into the movement before or after it to create an interesting and truly exceptional, if sometimes chaotic and sonically challenging, whole.

Take the first song, “Nonpareil of Favor,” an ode of appreciation to the love of his life that begins as a lighthearted, high-energy dance tune only to slow to a slinky saunter, then explode into a heavily distorted walls of sound that diminishes and uncovers a swell of bouncy rhythms and falsetto harmonies. The next number, “Wicked Wisdom,” sees the return of Georgie Fruit — Barnes’ African-American cross-dressing alter ego who was first introduced in Hissing Fauna — and it goes from saucy dance-pop to skate-rink disco, dissolving into a marching, electro-percussive breakdown that draws to a close with a chorus of dreamy strings and vocals.

Throughout, Barnes unreservedly explores his sexuality, whether he’s writing naughty pop hooks in “For Our Elegant Caste” (“We can do it softcore if you want, but you should know I take it both ways”), or throwing around phallic references in “St. Exquisite’s Confessions” (“I’m so sick of sucking the dick of this cruel, cruel city”), or recounting a sexual rendezvous in “Women’s Studies Victims (“I took her standing in the kitchen, ass against the sink/ She draped me in a stole / What kind? / I think Malaysian mink”), or admitting to caring about a girl enough to enact a not-so-unlikely fantasy in “Plastis Wafer” (“You’re the only one with whom I would role play Oedipus Rex”).

Skeletal Lamping isn’t necessarily an accessible album, though it is still quite a work, a soulful, danceable piece of art that’s easy to misunderstand if you don’t have the time or patience to put into listening to it, but one you’ll eventually feel compelled to revisit over and over again.

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