“Terry Allen (On Everything)” Feature in CREEM Magazine

A recent Terry Allen piece in CREEM’s newest print edition explores each of his many lives as a “Portrait of a panhandlin’, manhandlin’, postholin’, high-rollin’, dust-bowlin’ daddy.” Several exclusive photos taken by Knoxy Knox accompany Sam Reiss‘s piece, “Terry Allen (On Everything).” 

Reiss writes that movement is key in Allen’s work, assuming even a literal connotation as many a Terry Allen song has been written in a moving car. “Art shifts from one medium to another, paintings become installations, songs veer into illustration, music accompanies sculptures, and things speak to each other,” Reiss says.

There’s a certain fluidity amongst Allen’s artistic mediums, his stories weaving seamlessly from record to drawing to sculpture and everything in between. Reiss notes that “it’s easier to understand Allen’s works if we think of them as different ways to tell varying, connected stories,” in which characters “seem to be made up mostly of feelings.”

Digital subscribers of CREEM magazine can read an additional interview with Allen here.

Photo by Knoxy Knox

Terry Allen: MemWars + The New Yorker and Texas Monthly features

Terry Allen’s exhibition, MemWars, showcased at the Blanton Museum of Art in Austin, Texas between December 2021 and July 2022. Featuring a selection of drawings and a three-channel video installation, MemWars dissolves the margins of artistic genre in a reimagination of the memoir.

Three distinct videos comprise the installation, two of which feature Terry and Jo Harvey Allen, each filmed by a different camera and projected onto an opposite wall. The pair take turns introducing songs and their origins, immersing the viewer in a space of vivid recollection. Following each introduction, a third video is projected, featuring musical performances by Allen (plus archival footage). 

In a feature for Texas Monthly on Allen’s MemWars exhibition, Michael Agresta explores the way in which Allen has chosen to share his “back pages.”

“Allen’s memories sparkle with the one-of-a-kind aura of art objects. Each is precious to him, and we feel the mysterious ways they intersect with his songwriting craft. Whereas the narrative engine of a book-length memoir requires a broad (and too often false and forced) sense of causality, arc, and building stakes, here each recollection only needs to carry its own weight, floating in its unique moment. Most importantly, Allen’s memories are not required to cohere into a story in which he himself is the protagonist—a role he tends to artfully avoid in his character-driven songwriting.”

22 drawings composed in pastel, gouache, graphite, and colored pencil make up the other half the exhibit, most of which contain collaged text sharing anecdotes from Terry’s life. For any die-hard Terry Allen fan, the show can be likened to a pilgrimage destination, suggests Agresta.

The Gorilla Girl
The Exact Moment
Wolfman of del Rio
Courtesy of L.A. Louver

As mentioned in a Terry Allen feature in The New Yorker, after Juarez (1975) and Lubbock (on everything) (1979) went out of print, Terry Allen soon became better known as a visual artist, who’s “refusal to stick to one medium means he exists as something of an outsider.”

The reissues of Allen’s first two releases by Paradise of Bachelors in 2016 garnered him new attention as a musician, but to this day, he continues to make art across different mediums. In the interview for The New Yorker, Allen discusses his Texas roots and the Southwest as a place of inspiration.

Read the interview here. 

Watch Terry Allen’s Austin City Limits Performance

Terry Allen returned to Austin City Limits in January 2022 for his first appearance since 1998. Joined by his Panhandle Mystery Band, Terry performs a selection of highlights from his musical career, some of which you can watch here. Scroll down for the full setlist. 

Setlist

Lubbock Tornado 
Death of the Last Stripper
All These Blues Go Walkin’ By
City of the Vampires
What of Alicia
There Oughta Be A Law Against Sunny Southern California
Red Bird
Flatland Boogie
New Delhi Freight Train
Gimme A Ride To Heaven Boy
Sailin’ On Through

Upcoming Live Dates and Events

CAW CAW BLUES: Terry Allen’s Tribute to His Friend, Guy Clark

On October 30 at 2 p.m. CDT, The Wittliff Collections at Texas State University will host a conversation with Terry Allen on the backstory of his tribute to the late Guy Clark: a bronze crow sculpture incorporating Clark’s ashes. The sculpture is titled Caw Caw Blues, referencing the last song that Clark worked on before his death in 2016. 

For those who cannot attend, the event will be livestreamed here at 2 p.m. CDT (3 p.m. EST / 12 p.m. PDT) on October 30. 

For more details and to RSVP, visit the Wittliff Collections’ website. 

On November 3-8, Terry Allen and the Panhandle Mystery Band will play the Outlaw Country West Cruise, sailing from Los Angeles, CA to Cabo San Lucas and Ensenada, Mexico.

Poster by Wills Brewer

On November 8, Terry Allen will perform at Zebulon in Los Angeles, in conjunction with his gallery LA Louver. Join the waitlist for tickets here.

Past Event Highlights

OFF THE RAILS benefit for SITE Santa Fe

In June, Terry Allen and Kurt Vile headlined OFF THE RAILS with covers of Townes Van Zandt‘s “Loretta” and Vile’s own song, “Bassackwards.” The concert was a benefit for SITE Santa Fe, taking place outdoors at Santa Fe’s Railyard Park.

Wilco’s Solid Sound Festival

Terry Allen and the Panhandle Mystery Band performed at Wilco’s Solid Sound Festival in May, at MASS MoCA in North Adams, MA. The setlist featured a surprise appearance by David Byrne, who joined Terry onstage for two songs: Byrne’s “Buck Naked” (previously covered on Terry Allen’s 1996 album Human Remains) and “Gimme A Ride To Heaven Boy” from Terry Allen’s Smokin the Dummy.

Terry Allen Links

Paradise of Bachelors | Facebook | Instagram | Spotify | Bandcamp

Smokin the Dummy (1980, PoB-065)

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Recorded exactly two years after acclaimed visual artist and songwriter Terry Allen’s masterpiece Lubbock (on everything), the feral follow-up Smokin the Dummy is less conceptually focused but more sonically and stylistically unified than its predecessor—it’s also rougher and rowdier, wilder and more wired, and altogether more menacingly rock and roll. The first album by Allen to share top billing with the Panhandle Mystery Band, here featuring Jesse Taylor on blistering lead guitar alongside the Maines brothers and Richard Bowden, Dummy documents a ferocious new band in fully telepathic, tornado-fueled flight, refining its caliber, increasing its range, and never looking down. 

A weirdo country classic. A tremendous collection of rowdy honky-tonk stompers in which Allen takes a sort of defiant relish in the barrel-bottom lives he narrates … [with] something of the belligerent snarl of the 1970s outlaw country records of David Allen Coe or Johnny Paycheck. – Uncut

[By the 1980s], he’d already earned fans in David Byrne and Little Feat’s Lowell George, and it’s easy to hear why. Allen had a fever for much of the recording, but his Panhandle Mystery Band pushed him to new heights… The guitars are louder, the beat is wilder and Allen makes the journey sound almost metaphysical: “Jesus Christ on the dash / won’t keep it from the crash / and every curve’s just your nerves closing in.” The open road promises freedom, but in Allen’s hands, it can also be an existential trap. – NPR Music

Some of the strangest art-rock you ever heard … desperado dadaism. Dummy is environmental art at its best. – The Village Voice (1981)

Like The Grapes of Wrath revisited … masterfully done. Call it Lubbock New Wave. It’s going to offend some people, like the best rock and roll should. One of the best albums I’ve heard in a long time, period. Dazzling. – The L.A. Times (1981)

  • The first-ever vinyl reissue of the feral 1980 follow-up to Lubbock (on everything), remastered from the original analog tapes. Unlike previous editions, the CD restores the original unabridged track list.
  • Deluxe LP edition features 140g virgin vinyl; a gatefold jacket and inner sleeve with restored, new, and alternate art and photos by Terry and Jo Harvey Allen; an insert with lyrics, original notes, and Terry’s letter to H.C. Westermann about the songs; and a high-res download code.
  • Deluxe CD edition features a trifold jacket and inner sleeve with original notes and restored, new, and alternate art and photos by Terry and Jo Harvey Allen; and a six-panel insert with lyrics and Terry’s letter to H.C. Westermann about the songs.

The Smokin the Dummy Button

Smoke the dummy (that’s Bob the Dummy to you) with Terry to commemorate our reissue of his 1980 album. Enhance any lapel with irreverent style and grace. This exquisite artifact measures 1.5″ in diameter, with a durable steel pin-back. The text on the rim reads: TERRY ALLEN & THE PANHANDLE MYSTERY BAND / SMOKIN THE DUMMY.

$3.00

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Bloodlines (1983, PoB-066)

$5.00 – $35.00

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On his manifold fourth album, acclaimed songwriter and visual artist Terry Allen contemplates kinship—the ways sex and violence stitch and sever the ties of family, faith, and society—with skewering satire and affection alike. Bloodlines compiles thematically related but disparate recordings from miscellaneous sources both theatrical and historical: two songs written for plays; two full-band reprises of selections from Juarez; the irreverent hellfire-hitchhiker-on-highway ballad “Gimme a Ride to Heaven Boy” (featuring Joe Ely); and the poignant eponymous ode to the arteries of ancestry and landscape (the debut recording of eight-year-old Natalie Maines, later covered by Lucinda Williams). 

Allen plunges even further into morbid role-play and mordant fable… The Jerry Jeff Walker-ish country shuffle “Gimme a Ride to Heaven Boy,” a tale of being carjacked by Christ on some desert highway, can be heard as both a funny story well told, and a contemplation of the perilous slenderness of the sliver that divides faith and credulity. – Uncut

Stuffed with waggishly eclectic gems, all alive with their author’s rebel-eye view and populated by the kinds of hard-luck heroes found in one of Harry Crews’ brutally funny yarns. Eccentric, emotional, poetic, and acerbic, this is Allen sowing the seeds for alt-country’s unruly crop. – Record Collector

A song cycle with a dark/darkly comic take on religion, its best-known song is the glorious “Gimme a Ride to Heaven Boy,” where a driver gives a ride to a gun-toting, hitchhiking Jesus. – MOJO

One of the most compelling American songwriters working today. He is making the most unique art-pop of our time … The bloodlines coursing through this alternately rueful and rowdy work are the marks of blood as a sign of family lineage, an effect of violence, an emblem of sex and death, the price of sacrifice and sacrament. – L.A. Herald Examiner (1984)

I’ve never heard such a consistent assortment of unpopular styles. – Dave Hickey (1983)

  • The first-ever vinyl reissue of Allen’s manifold, moving fourth album, remastered from the original analog tapes. 
  •  Deluxe LP edition features 140g virgin vinyl; a gatefold jacket and inner sleeve with restored, new, and alternate art and photos by Terry and Jo Harvey Allen and friends; an insert with lyrics and original notes, and a high-res download code. 
  • Deluxe CD edition features a trifold jacket and inner sleeve with original notes and restored, new, and alternate art and photos by Terry and Jo Harvey Allen and friends; and a six-panel insert with lyrics and alternate art.

The There Oughta Be a Law Against Sunny Southern California Bumper Sticker

Put some illegal vibrations on that bumper, and show the open road how you truly feel about SoCal. A ferocious full-band reprise of “There Oughta Be a Law Against Sunny Southern California,” originally released on Terry Allen‘s immortal 1975 debut album Juarez, appears on 1983’s Bloodlines.

Printed on thick, durable vinyl this 3″ x 11.5″ bumper sticker is resistant to scratches, sun, and water.

$5.00

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