James McMurtry, author of the current "Cheney's Toy" and 2004's "We Can't Make It Here," doesn't have much patience for "political songs."

Says he: "They usually turn into sermons."

And James McMurtry, one can sense, doesn't suffer fools or sermons lightly.

Yet McMurtry's songwriting has taken a decidedly political turn in the last half-decade, with "We Can't Make It Here" leading the charge - to the point it became one of the biggest hits of his 20-odd-year career.

Clocking in at a hefty seven minutes-plus, the Bush administration diatribe kicks off in high gear with this ice-breaker:

"Vietnam Vet with a cardboard sign sitting there by the left turn line,

"Flag on the wheelchair flapping in the breeze, one leg missing, both hands free

"No one's paying much mind to him, the V.A. budget's stretched so thin

"And there's more comin' home from the Mideast war.

"We can't make it here anymore."

And that's just for starters.

"I hadn't ever really gotten political before," admits the 46-year-old Texan just several stops ahead of his Friday night stand at Bloomington's New Lafayette Club (presented under the auspices of longtime McMurtry fans and supporters, Farmer City's roots-loving WWHP-FM, "The Whip").

The song was first introduced to the world in 2004 as a free Internet download. Then it turned up, in an even more uncensored cut, as the centerpiece of McMurtry's 2005 album, "Childish Things."

The song was such a grassroots success that it began spawning fan-made music videos to accompany its lambasting of assorted current-administration policies. The videos alone were viewed around 200,000 times on YouTube.

As a result, "Childish Things" wound up McMurtry's biggest commercial success in years, spending six weeks at No. 1 on R&R's Americana Music Radio Chart in 2005-6.

So did the political-song-avoiding McMurtry pump down the volume on his encore, the current "Just Us Kids"?

Heck, no.

As USA Today averred, "emboldened by the reception to 2004's acerbic (and increasingly relevant) 'We Can't Make It Here,' McMurtry ramps up the polemics …"

Blame sheer frustration for James' ramping-up tendencies these days.

"I realized that part of the way we got into the mess was from not enough people becoming politically active," himself included, he says. "I thought the Reagan era was as weird as things were ever gonna get. But, uh, that's turned out different … and I live in a Red State (Texas)."

He continues: "I tend to vote Democratic a lot of the time, but voting doesn't matter. So I had to think to myself, 'What power do I really have?' Well, I have a record deal, and I have a voice."

Presto: "Just Us Kids," which has become just as big a hit as its predecessor within the roots music orbit, spending four weeks at No. 1 on the Americana chart.

Ask him if he feels as if he's hit a career peak and he just observes, "If I am, then I guess I'm gonna have to learn how to fly."

Like its predecessor, "Just Us Kids" has spawned a song - "Cheney's Toy," NOT a valentine to the VP's favorite childhood things - that has inspired a make-your-own-video contest.

Ensuring inspiration for music video enthusiasts are stanzas like:

"They'll take a fork and turn you over while the fat lady sings,

"One more pin on one more shoulder is all the future brings for another unknown soldier,

"Who don't know his own name, and he won't get any older,

"And he can't see for the shrapnel in his brain …"

McMurtry says he tries to avoid the sermonizing pitfalls by writing songs from a character's subjective viewpoint, all the better for listeners to actively identify with the words from the man the Village Voice calls "the poet of the people."

"People hear one of these songs about a character and think, 'that somebody could be me.'"

Character arcs set to music have been among the strongest gifts of the singer-songwriter from Texas.

He's long been embraced for the way he can spin a dark, moody and oft-sardonic song as if it were intended for inclusion in an unusually incisive short-story volume, heavy on the wry character vignettes.

Which aligns him with his famous dad, best-selling author Larry McMurtry, of "The Last Picture Show/"Terms of Endearment"/"Lonesome Dove" fame.

But suggest a like-father-like-son literary bent, and you'll be greeted with a quick, "I never did write prose."

Or observe that he comes from a writing family, and you'll get "writing family is a misnomer. There's only one writer in the family; well, actually my mother writes scholarly books. But there are no writers on either side of their families. So I can't claim to be genetically wired."

Maybe, but his intelligent, spare lyrics are repeatedly cited as among some of the strongest to be heard in the singer-songwriter orbit.

And those lyrics helped catch rocker John Mellencamp's ear around 1987, when he snared McMurtry a five-album deal a Columbia records and noted, "James writes like he's lived a lifetime."

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Opener also a famous son

Completing a "famous sons of famous dads" bill Friday at the New Lafayette Club will be James McMurtry's opening act, Justin Townes Earle, sired by James' fellow Texas traveler, Steve Earle.

"You won't need a molecular biologist to help you spot this young man's musical DNA," noted one critic recently.

"He's a cool guy," chimes in McMurtry, who has shared a bill with the younger Earle only once, "very excellently," prior to this weekend's show.

With McMurtry (son of best-selling novelist Larry McMurtry) a big admirer of Justin's dad, you can bet the two will have plenty to discuss backstage at the Lafayette.

Justin, 25, forged his own musical identity with a bluegrass-ragtime (yes, bluegrass-ragtime) combo called The Swindlers, followed by a stint in the "louder, more rocking" The Distributors.

American roots music ultimately became his calling card, and, for proof, Earle is performing a CD release party at the Lafayette for his debut album, "The Good Life," which sports an all-star lineup of players, including pedal steel master Peter Finney (Dixie Chicks, Patty Loveless), bassist Bryn Davies (Patti Griffin), drummer Bryan Owings (Buddy Miller), keyboardist Skylar Wilson and fiddle player Josh Hedley.

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At a glance

What: James McMurtry with Justin Townes Earle

When: 8 p.m. Friday

Where: New Lafayette Club, 1602 S. Main St., Bloomington

Tickets: Advance, $15; day of, $17

Ticket information: www.ticketweb.com or (309) 828-1212