Boogie: Six New Terry Allen Songs + Truckload of Art Book Tour Events

Terry Allen, Boogie, 1966

 

It’s nearly here. Truckload of Art: The Life and Work of Terry Allen, the authorized (and the first-ever) biography of the internationally acclaimed visual artist and iconoclastic musician by Brendan Greaves of Paradise of Bachelors, is out via Hachette Books in just four days, on March 19.

On the occasion of its imminent publication, we have released two archival Terry Allen EPs of rare and unheard early recordings. Both Gonna California and Cowboy and the Stranger are now streaming worldwide for your delectation and edification.

Scroll down to listen, to purchase the book or one of the few remaining copies of the special limited-edition Gonna California 7″, to read some recent press, and to RSVP for free Truckload of Art book tour events in NC, DC, PA, NY, and TX, including a special Austin library concert.

 

Gonna California EP (PoB-076)

Gonna California imagines an alternate reality where Allen’s long-lost first studio recordings, captured with a full band in LA in 1968, saw a proper release. (Instead nearly the entire pressing was destroyed by a fire set by the so-called “Hollywood Arsonist,” and remaining copies were repurposed in artworks.) This first-ever (re)issue edition, limited to 500 copies—few of which remain—features recently rediscovered and remastered early (and superior) mixes of both songs; the original liner notes by Allen; an excerpt from the book; a lyrics insert; and Allen’s contemporaneous visual art in an arresting gatefold jacket.

 

Buy Gonna California vinyl 7″ (few copies remaining) from PoB:

$34.00

 

Cowboy and the Stranger EP (PoB-054)

 

Comprising the first recording, in 2018, of a song written in 1969 and three solo demo recordings dating to 1968—all previously unissued—Cowboy and the Stranger was originally a co-release of L.A. Louver and Paradise of Bachelors, on the occasion of Terry Allen’s 2019 retrospective drawing exhibition The Exact Moment It Happens in the West (Stories, Pictures, and Songs from the ’60s ’Til Now) at L.A. Louver. Originally limited to an edition of 500 cassettes, it is now available digitally for the first time.

 

Buy Cowboy and the Stranger digital album from PoB:

$5.00$15.00

 

RSVP for Free Truckload of Art Book Events

 

Beginning with a publication-day launch at Flyleaf Books in Chapel Hill on March 19, Brendan is hitting the road this spring on the Truckload of Art for a series of readings, book signings, and discussions in North Carolina and up the Northeast Corridor, as well as a special Truckload of Art Road Show + MemWars concert event with Terry, Jo Harvey, and Bukka Allen with Richard Bowden in Austin.

These events are all FREE, but space is limited. Please see details and RSVP at the below link if you’re able to attend. Stay tuned for more events TBA.

Buy the book from PoB (while supplies last):

$34.00

 

 

Early Reviews for Truckload of Art

Masterful … An endlessly fascinating biography of an endlessly fascinating artist. – Booklist (starred review)

Dazzling … [Greaves’s] research is as meticulous and exhaustive as his writing is inspired … He deftly moves between biography and criticism, unpacking Allen’s famously inscrutable drawings and verses, capable of spooling in and out of one another for decades as if gliding along a Möbius strip, through empathetic understanding of where the artist has been … A true testament to commitment from both artist and biographer. – MOJO

[A] rollicking debut biography … a thrilling whirl … Scrupulous detail and raucous picaresque merge with evocative discussions of the artist’s work … It adds up to a fascinating portrait of an American original. – Publishers Weekly

In Greaves, Allen has found a meticulous and empathetic Boswell … Truckload emerges not as a standard tale of the rise and fall (or fall and rise) of a tortured genius outsider/outlaw, but a patient study in artistic process and memory, the cultural intricacies of the twentieth-century West, and in people, how they scar and save you, like the lightning in Allen’s song “Cortez Sail”—“tearing the clouds, then closing the tear.” – 4 Columns

 

TERRY ALLEN LINKS

Paradise of Bachelors | Instagram | Facebook | YouTubeBandcamp | Spotify

BRENDAN GREAVES LINKS

Paradise of Bachelors | WebsiteInstagram | Facebook | Twitter

Truckload of Art Facebook Page – Follow for News and Updates

 

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