James McMurtry Takes Road Trip in ‘Forgotten Coast’ Video

When James McMurtry dropped his latest full-length, Complicated Game, earlier this year, it brought with it the ragtimey tune, “Forgotten Coast.” Now, that song has received a music video, which can be seen above (via Rolling Stone).

The Thierry Vivier-directed clip finds McMurtry taking a road trip across the Florida Panhandle’s Forgotten Coast. The singer’s travels are certainly scenic, but the song hints at something darker in nature. McMurtry sounds like he’s ready to disappear into the surrounding landscape when he closes out the song with the lines, “Gonna cut my hair and change my name / And when the Percodan won’t touch the pain / Tell the one I miss the most / ‘He’s down on that forgotten coast.’”

Complicated Game arrived seven years after his previous LP, 2008’s Just Us Kids. As opposed to its four predecessors, McMurtry enlisted a producer for Complicated Game.

“The last four records I produced myself,” he told Diffuser. “I felt I’d run out of tricks. Everything I learned from John Mellencamp, Lloyd Maines, Don Dixon -- I used it all up, everything I remembered from it. I started repeating myself. So, I needed to go back to production school. I’ve been hanging out with C.C. Adcock, and he makes good records, so I thought, let’s have him produce it.”

McMurtry will continue his current tour tomorrow (July 16) in Austin. He has dates on the books through Sept. 26, when he’ll play the Red River Folk Festival in New Mexico. Check out a complete list of stops on his website.