Michael Martin Murphey is back at the Tower Theatre for the first time since 2019

The cowboy-song veteran returns to the same Uptown room on Friday, Dec. 4, his first Oklahoma City show in more than seven years.

The last time Michael Martin Murphey stood on the Tower Theatre stage, it was early June 2019, and nobody in the room could have guessed it would be more than seven years before he came back. He's coming back to the same room on 23rd Street, and this time it's the first weekend of December.

Michael Martin Murphey plays the Tower Theatre on Friday, December 4, at 8 p.m. The show was announced October 8, and it's his first Oklahoma City date since June 7, 2019, also at the Tower. Tickets run $37.50 to $66 through Prekindle. The theater holds about 1,000, which is the right size for a songwriter whose shows lean on the stories between songs as much as the songs themselves.

Murphey has spent recent years keeping a foot in two traditions. One is the cowboy song, and he still takes his Cowboy Christmas show out on the road every holiday season; this year it plays ACL Live at the Moody Theater in Austin on November 27, a week before he reaches Oklahoma City. The other is Austin's cosmic cowboy era, which he looked back on with *Austinology: Alleys of Austin*, a retrospective of that scene covered by Lone Star Music Magazine. Texas Highways noted that his touring could also pull standouts from that release.

The Tower billing doesn't say whether December 4 is a Christmas show or a regular set, and the timing could go either way. If you're going, it's worth checking the Prekindle listing closer to the date, though anybody who has seen him before knows the man doesn't need a theme to fill a night.

Anybody who has seen him before knows the man doesn't need a theme to fill a night.

For Oklahoma City, the gap is the story. Seven-plus years is a long time between visits for someone whose audience skews toward the people who have been listening for decades, and it's a good bet a fair share of the crowd at the Tower in 2019 will be back in the same seats. The genre tags on this one read country and rock, which is about right for an artist whose career runs from the Austin songwriter scene to cowboy music and back.

The practical stuff: it's a Friday, an 8 p.m. start, and the Tower sits in the middle of Uptown's restaurants and bars on 23rd, so dinner beforehand is easy. Ticket prices are posted on the low end of what a theater show costs these days.

If you caught him last time, you know why this one is worth putting on the calendar. If you didn't, the first Friday in December is a good time to fix that.

Sources: Michael Martin Murphey at Tower Theatre (Prekindle) (prekindle.com); Michael Martin Murphey saddles up for Cowboy Christmas tour (Texas Highways) (texashighways.com); Michael Martin Murphey's Cowboy Christmas, Nov. 27, 2026 (ACL Live at The Moody Theater) (acllive.com); Michael Martin Murphey: Alleys of Austin (Lone Star Music Magazine) (lonestarmusicmagazine.com); Michael Martin Murphey (Wikipedia) (en.wikipedia.org)