Charlie Terrell

Born in Birmingham and steeped from childhood in the sounds and rituals of sacred harp singing alongside the Allman Brothers, Lynyrd Skynyrd, snake-handling traditions, voodoo lore, and the songwriting of Springsteen, Prine, Zevon, and Dylan, Charlie Terrell later settled in Austin, Texas, where he works as a visual artist, playwright, and roots musician. In the late 1980s he left Nashville for Los Angeles, secured a major-label contract with Giant/Warner Bros., and issued the warmly received On the Wings of Dirty Angels under the name Terrell. Creative clashes and misfortune—including the theft of the band’s equipment truck—prompted a hiatus from full-time music, yet he reentered the studio in 1995 to record Angry Southern Gentleman for Point Blank/Virgin Records. The follow-up, Beautiful Side of Madness, appeared in 1996; three years later he self-released 3 Links in a Broken Chain, and in 2009 he staged the unruly multimedia theatrical work Taking the Jesus Pill. Under the banner of the gritty blues-inflected roots outfit Charlie Terrell and the Murdered Johns, he delivered Alabama Steampunk Blues in 2010.