His Songs? Bleak. His Future? Bright.

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McMurtry is in Madison to headline the Ohio River Valley Folk Festival. He's grousing that he and his rhythm section, known as the Heartless Bastards, will have to perform without a sound check. He's unsure how to winnow the set list. His body language is crooked.

But later, when he begins to perform, it's as if the clouds have been lifted. Partially, anyway.

"I'm a Labrador retriever when it comes to performing: I've got my tongue out, I'm smiling, I want to be petted," says Robert Earl Keen, who has covered some of McMurtry's songs and considers him a friend. "James could give a [expletive]. He's all about standing onstage, doing those songs.

"He's like the Daniel Plainview of musicians. 'I hate most people!' [Laughs.] But people who like James, they love James. They don't care how he is onstage."

McMurtry's set here begins with "Bayou Tortous," the swamp-rock song that opens "Just Us Kids." "Just another night for the missus and me/Sitting on the couch watching Court TV," he speak-sings in that sardonic, bone-dry, low-boil voice of his.

Performing the album's title track, McMurtry, a terrifically understated guitarist, sings cuttingly of graying rebels and midlife crises. In the new "Hurricane Party," the theme is isolation. "Ruby and Carlos" is a sharp, sardonic story about a slowly eroding relationship.

McMurtry swears he's not a dire pessimist: "I try to hold out hope; you can't live without it," he says offstage. But "I don't know that I would call any of my stuff optimistic. I haven't gotten to that yet in a song."

The highlight of the performance is the back-to-back of "Choctaw Bingo" and "We Can't Make It," whose lyric about "stocking shirts in the Wal-Mart store/Just like the ones we made before/Except this one came from Singapore" earns a particularly loud roar of approval.

While McMurtry hasn't actually transformed himself into a full-time protest singer, he has earned more new fans than he's lost by flying his left-leaning flag.

"Our job is to be remembered, not loved," he says. "Your job is to make an impact. And if they hate you, they'll remember you, too."

He takes a swig of beer, then says: "You can like the art without liking the artist. You can."

James McMurtry and the Heartless Bastards perform with Justin Townes Earle at the Birchmere in Alexandria on Friday.