On the eve of their first-ever tour of the UK and EU, Nashville’s Promised Land Sound holed up in the studio with Pat Sansone (Wilco) and Billy Bennett (MGMT) to cut their first official recording since their acclaimed 2015 album For Use and Delight. It’s now available as a digital-only single here, or via your favorite platform for digital music.
Here’s something for your weekend: a Spotify playlist of Terry Allen songs covered by admirers, friends, collaborators… and himself. The gang’s all here: everyone from Doug Sahm to Richard Buckner to Guy Clark to Little Feat. Dig in.
Happy Release Day to Terry Allen (again)! We’ve spilled plenty of ink on this album, in the liner notes and elsewhere, so for now, please just enjoy this masterpiece of West Texas art-country. Order the record, visit your favorite local shop to grip it, or stream it herein. The physical package must be seen to be believed, so please check out the unboxing video, as well as some incredible ephemera related to the original record release show in spring 1979.
Michael Chapman’s new record 50, produced by Steve Gunn and titled to commemorate fifty years of touring—and released four days before Michael’s 76th birthday—stands as a formidable monument of retrospection and introspection in his adventurous catalog, embodying his undeniable late career masterpiece. Today Chapman shares debut track “That Time of Night” via NPR Music’s Songs We Love. Pre-order and watch an album trailer.
This Friday, Oct. 14 marks the release date of our highly anticipated reissue of Terry Allen’s 1979 masterpiece Lubbock (on everything), the follow-up to Juarez. Check out some of the recent press and other evidence below, and stream the remastered, pitch-corrected album in full in advance of its release. Now, for the first time ever, you can hear the entire album as it was intended by Allen. Orders now shipping.
David Byrne, a noted fan, friend, and collaborator of Terry Allen, has written a new essay on his love for Terry Lubbock (on everything) to accompany our reissue of the 1979 classic. Today Dangerous Minds has published the essay, titled “A Sleeping Bag In The West Texas Scrub,” in full. In it he discusses his own connections to Lubbock, the first time he met Terry and his wife, actor and writer Jo Harvey Allen, and digs deep into his favorite songs.
Frieze Magazine has published a feature on our reissues of Terry Allen’s classic art-country albums: “A singular moment in the history of country music [and] one of the most singular and underrated works in the history of US conceptual art. Lubbock (on everything) and Juarez are restless travelogues, songs of feeling out of place and in search of home.” Plus, check out some shots of the deluxe LP package en plein air.
Watch Allen and The Panhandle Mystery Band (with Delbert McClinton and Robert Earl Keen) tear into “New Delhi Freight Train,” originally released on the classic Lubbock (on everything) (and famously covered by Little Feat), at Texas Tech in Lubbock, TX, the first-ever live performance of the album in its entirety. Hear the remastered album version and check out Terry’s tour dates, including a show today at the Hardly Strictly Bluegrass festival.
“No spring nor summer beauty hath such grace/As I have seen in one autumnal face.” – John Donne. A week past the autumn equinox and a few hours till quittin’ time, now is an opportune moment to pause, heed the growing chorus of acclaim for Itasca’s gorgeous record, and spend some time with these absorbing songs, full of grit and grace and perfect for the fold into fall. Catch Itasca on tour this fall and winter in the US, UK, and EU, with Ryley Walker et al.
Thanks to Folk Radio UK for hosting an advance stream of Itasca’s mesmerizing PoB debut Open to Chance, and to MOJO for their aptly written 4-star review: “simultaneously spare and complex, observational folk ballads turned psychic and strange by metal-stringed dissonance and troubling Symbolist metaphor.” Pitchfork calls the album “a sprawling fascination with the natural world and the nature of people.”
