Terry Allen

Biography

Terry Allen (born May 7, 1943) is an American singer-songwriter and visual artist from Lubbock, Texas. Allen's musical career spans several albums in the Texas country and outlaw country genres, and his visual art includes painting, conceptual art, performance, and sculpture, with a number of notable bronze sculptures installed publicly in various cities throughout the United States. He currently lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
Allen has recorded twelve albums of original songs, including the landmark releases Juarez×Juarez1975 · Studio albumSpotify (search)YouTube Music (search)Tracklist · 15 tracksA1The Juarez Device1:23A2Dialogue: The Characters / A Simple Story2:08A3Cortez Sail6:03A4Border Palace1:48A5Dogwood4:25A6Writing on Rocks Across the Sea2:50A7The Radio... And Real Life4:45B1There Oughta Be a Law Against Sunny Southern California4:30B2What of Alicia5:03B3Honeymoon in Cortez2:36B4Four Corners4:22B5Dialogue: The Run South1:26B6Jabo / Street Walkin Women1:41B7Cantina Carlotta3:15B8The Despedida (The Parting)5:03 (1975) and Lubbock (On Everything) (1979). His song "Amarillo Highway" has been covered by Bobby Bare, Sturgill Simpson, Robert Earl Keen and The Amos Garrett/Doug Sahm/Gene Taylor Band. Other artists who have recorded Allen's songs include Guy Clark, Little Feat, David Byrne, Doug Sahm, Ricky Nelson, and Lucinda Williams. Rolling Stone magazine describes his catalog, reaching back to Juarez as "..uniformly eccentric and uncompromising, savage and beautiful, literate and guttural."
Allen also works with a wide variety of media including musical and theatrical performances, sculpture, painting, drawing and video, and installations which incorporate any and all of these media. His work has been shown throughout the United States and internationally.

Early life

He was born in Wichita, Kansas, United States.
Allen's father was Fletcher ("Sled") Allen (August 23, 1886 in West Plains, Missouri – October 16, 1959 in Lubbock, Texas) a catcher in 1910 for the St. Louis Browns, who continued his career as a player-manager in the Texas League.
Allen attended Monterey High School in Lubbock, Texas. His contemporaries at Monterey High School included Butch Hancock, Jimmie Dale Gilmore, Joe Ely, Jo Harvey Allen and Jo Carol Pierce. Trained as an architect, he received a B.F.A. from the Chouinard Art Institute in 1966. After briefly teaching at his alma mater (1968–1969) and the University of California, Berkeley (1971), Allen served on the faculty of the California State University, Fresno as a guest lecturer (1971–1973), associate professor (1974–1977) and professor (1978–1979) of art before resigning his appointment to pursue other opportunities. His art has been supported by three National Endowment for the Arts grants and a prestigious Guggenheim Fellowship. His work Trees (the music, literary and third trees) is installed on the campus of the University of California, San Diego as part of the Stuart Collection. His artwork has been featured at the L.A. Louver art gallery in Venice, California.

Visual artist

His works are represented in the collections of many international museums including the New York Museum of Modern Art, the Detroit Institute of Arts, the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City, the San Diego Museum of Contemporary Art, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art, Espace Lyonnais d'Art Contemporain, Musée Saint-Pierre, Lyon, France, the Houston Museum of Fine Arts, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, The Contemporary Austin, the Dallas Museum of Art, the Art Museum of Southeast Texas, and the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art.
Kansas City, Missouri is home to both his controversial public sculpture Modern Communication as well as The Belger Collection which features Terry Allen as one of their seven "core artists".
Scioto Lounge is a series of three deer statues by Allen in Downtown Columbus, Ohio.

Music

Allen first learned to play piano from his mother, Pauline Pierce Allen, a professional musician. In 1962, while in high school, he wrote his first song, "Red Bird", which he would go on to perform live on Shindig! in 1965, and record for his 1980 album Smokin' the Dummy.
In 1975, Allen released his debut art-country album, Juarez×Juarez1975 · Studio albumSpotify (search)YouTube Music (search)Tracklist · 15 tracksA1The Juarez Device1:23A2Dialogue: The Characters / A Simple Story2:08A3Cortez Sail6:03A4Border Palace1:48A5Dogwood4:25A6Writing on Rocks Across the Sea2:50A7The Radio... And Real Life4:45B1There Oughta Be a Law Against Sunny Southern California4:30B2What of Alicia5:03B3Honeymoon in Cortez2:36B4Four Corners4:22B5Dialogue: The Run South1:26B6Jabo / Street Walkin Women1:41B7Cantina Carlotta3:15B8The Despedida (The Parting)5:03, which is considered "one of the greatest concept albums of all time" according to PopMatters. Rolling Stone later called it an "outlaw classic".
Allen's 1979 follow up was the groundbreaking Lubbock (On Everything). The songwriter's deeply moving and satirical lyrics capture his complex memory of growing up in his hometown of Lubbock. According to AllMusic, Lubbock (On Everything) is "one of the finest country albums of all time" and a progenitor of the alt-country movement. One of the songs, "New Delhi Freight Train×New Delhi Freight Train30 September 2016 · SingleSpotifyYouTube Music (search)Tracklist · 1 track1New Delhi Freight Train7:28", was first recorded by Little Feat and appears on their 1977 album Time Loves a Hero. Guy Clark said of the song, "It's such an interesting piece of work. It’s really fun to play. The music, it’s really nice. But it's the juxtaposition of the song."
In 1980, Allen released Smokin' the Dummy, recorded with the Panhandle Mystery Band.
His 1983 album Bloodlines includes one of his better-known songs, "Gimme a Ride to Heaven Boy", the tale of a driver who picks up a hitchhiker on the road one night who claims to be Jesus Christ.
In 1986, Allen collaborated with director David Byrne on the soundtrack for the film True Stories.
Over the following decade (1985–1995), Allen released a series of albums with avant-garde elements, as companions to visual art, theatrical and musical projects – Pedal Steal, Amerasia and Chippy (the latter also the soundtrack of a stage play in collaboration with Joe Ely, Butch Hancock, Robert Earl Keen and Wayne Hancock).
In 1996, he released the country album Human Remains×Human Remains1996 · Studio albumSpotify (search)YouTube Music (search)Tracklist · 13 tracks1Gone to Texas6:232Room to Room4:133Back to Black3:294Wilderness of This World4:035Little Sandy3:096Buck Naked3:157What of Alicia4:468That Kind of Girl2:469Galleria delle armi4:0310Crisis Site 133:1311Peggy Legg4:0912After the Fall5:2113Flatland Boogie5:33, which features guests including David Byrne, Joe Ely, Charlie and Will Sexton and Lucinda Williams.
In 2007, Allen appeared on the track "Ghost of Travelin' Jones" on Ryan Bingham's album Mescalito.
Allen's 2013 album Bottom of the World×Bottom of the World5 February 2013 · Studio albumSpotify (search)YouTube Music (search)Tracklist · 11 tracks1Four Corners4:162Queenie's Song3:413Hold On to the House3:034Do They Dream of Hell In Heaven3:105The Bottom of the World4:306Angels of the Wind3:517Emergency Human Blood Courier4:408Wake of the Red Witch3:529The Gift5:0710Sidekick Anthem3:3411Covenant2:12 features "Queenie's Song", inspired by the death of his dog and co-written with Guy Clark.

Personal life

Allen has two children, Bukka and Bale Creek.