James McMurtry will perform March 6 at the Maintenance Shop. This show will not include the rest of his band.

McMurtry is a folk rock singer, originating from Fort Worth, Texas. He received a guitar when he was young and took it from there.

“I wanted to be Johnny Cash when I was a kid, there was something about his voice,” McMurtry said. “My mother gave me a guitar at a young age, and that’s just what I wanted to do.”

For his show at the M-Shop, McMurtry will play a variety of songs.

“This is a solo acoustic tour, so I play songs that work with just me and a guitar,” McMurtry said. “We should have a new record coming out in October or November, so you will hear some new songs at this show.”

James has been to the M-Shop before, but it has been eight years. This is the first time he will appear solo at this venue.

James received a Grammy nomination for his long form video of his album “Where’d You Hide the Body.” He also won an American Indie award and a couple of Americana music awards.

“Very few long-form videos have ever been made,” McMurtry said. “I had a manager at the time by the name of Mark Spector, and he came up with this idea of shooting a video for every song on the record.”

The release of the long-form video was met with a few challenges ultimately leading it to selling virtually no copies.

“We put it on VHS, and the idea was that they were supposed to sell that video as a special edition with the record. They were going to put it in the store, then they didn’t, and then they did a phone order thing, but I think only 300 of those things sold because they couldn’t figure out the state taxes. Nobody saw that video except the Grammy committee,” McMurtry said.

McMurtry is most widely known for writing protest songs, but this upcoming album will take a bit of a different turn.

“It’s mostly relationship stuff on this record,” McMurtry said. “I probably have a couple more songs to write on it. We’ve cut 12 tracks which is enough length we could call it a record if we wanted to. I don’t think it’s quite complete yet.”

McMurtry has one main goal left to accomplish that he feels is a necessity.

“I just want to make more money,” McMurtry said. “You can be young and have no money, you can’t be old and have no money.”