* Back in 1990, or maybe it was 1991, a handful of my best friends in the world gathered at Jason Hammond’s place for a taping party. Back then, of course, all of us still had cassette players, but Jason and a few others had some CDs, and the idea was to share what we had with each other, have a few beers and enjoy each other’s company.

By the time I got there, my friends were already enthralled with a CD that my friend Herb had by James McMurtry, the son of Pulitzer Prize winning novelist Larry McMurtry.

It didn’t take more than a few minutes before I was just as enthusiastic as everyone else. Too Long in the Wasteland was one of the best albums, from the best new singer-songwriter that I had heard in years.

“Play it again,” I begged after the CD ended.

“We played it three times before you got here,” Jason said.

“Please, play it again.”

So we did.

Again, and again, and again, and again.

Every song told a story, mostly about working class people caught up in all too common maelstroms of everyday life - meaning lots of disappointments, missed expectations and regret.

* McMurtry’s album was produced by John Mellencamp, and the driving beat by Mellencamp’s drummer is best featured on the album’s first song, Painting by Numbers…

You jump when they say jump
And you don’t ask how high
’cause painting by numbers they know you’ll get by

I don’t think we listened to anything else that night. We just played that CD to death, and my taped copy got a lot of use over the years.

* There aren’t many YouTube songs from that first album, but here’s a cover by somebody I don’t know of “Song for a Deckhand’s Daughter,” which my buddy Scott Simpson used to play on Sunday nights at the old Bruce’s Tavern…

Shut off the tractor with the field half mowed
Set the brake and headed down the road
Came home for Christmas
Never said where he’d been
With no presents for the children
Only stories for the men

* I did manage to find this live solo performance by McMurtry of a song from that album, “Talkin’ at the Texaco,” of which Rolling Stone critic Jimmy Guterman wrote: “an offhand charmer so loose-limbed it sounds like it was recorded accidentally”…

The preacher drove by in his Cadillac
I waved at him but he didn’t wave back
It’s a small town
everybody knows your face
It’s a small town, son
and we all must know our place

* And here’s another cover, this one of the title song, which I think has one of the best stanzas about drinking ever written…

Well, I hadn’t intended
to bend the rules
But whiskey don’t make liars
it just makes fools
So I didn’t mean to say it
but I meant what I said

Too long in the wasteland
Too long in the wasteland
must’ve gone to my head

* “Terry’s off the Track,” about a kid counting the moments until he gets out of reform school, has some of the starkest imagery on the album. Listen to an excerpt by clicking here…

And it all went off in the blink of an eye
There’s no turning back or questioning why
It was the heat of the moment, a flash in the pan
Blood on the gravel and a longneck in his hand

* Almost all of us at Jason’s party had moved to Springfield from somewhere else, so “I’m not from here,” resonated with us…

I’m not from here
I just live here
Grew up somewhere far away
Came here thinking I’d never stay long
I’d be going back soon someday

* “Crazy Wind,” hit me hard that night…

Time sure flies when you’re having fun
Wasn’t it just yesterday you turned twenty-one
Does it still matter what you might have done
had you tried?

That song helped motivate me to get my life together. I spent the better part of my twenties just knocking around, but I took that refrain as a wakeup call. I realized I had been “too long in the wasteland” myself, and it was time to get moving.

* President Bush and the war in Iraq have been the object of McMurtry’s ire in recent years. With songs like We Can’t Make it Here Anymore and Cheney’s Toy, he’s caught on big with the anti-Bush crowd.

* Many of those dear friends who were at that party are long gone. Jason moved to New Mexico. Herb is in Dallas. Others just drifted on. Most of us still get in touch with one another, and I see Herb whenever I go to Texas to visit my brother.

But for as long as I live I will always remember that magical night at Jason’s place, completely focused on this new voice of the forgotten and the doomed, with a beat you could dance to.

It seems like yesterday.

Slow train on the trestle
Goin’ East ‘cross the Neches
like the one I got off of
a long time ago
Outside of a little town
where I never meant to settle down
Not knowing the seeds I would sow