Terry Allen

Beginning in the mid-1970s, few figures in country music have rivaled the independent streak of Terry Allen. Through long acquaintance and shared projects with Jimmie Dale Gilmore, Joe Ely, and Butch Hancock, he has served as a central presence in the Lubbock, Texas country milieu. Although this circle has received limited mainstream notice, it constitutes the most forward-looking strain in present-day country, tackling current social questions from a bold, progressive stance while remaining anchored in local country and folk roots. Allen has pursued the most expansive ambitions among them, devising elaborate thematic song cycles realized with the assistance of wide-ranging collaborators from Lowell George to David Byrne.

Like other Lubbock innovators, Allen has drawn little support from the country mainstream. His core appeal instead extends to receptive listeners in alternative folk and rock circles, even as his sound stays firmly country. In place of the cautious platitudes or sentimental reassurances common among most contemporary country performers, his lyrics probe and challenge the difficulties of ordinary life. He delivers this perspective with a brand of humor and irreverence unlikely to find favor in Nashville or across much of Middle America.

Country music represents only one dimension of Allen’s creative activity, which helps explain the breadth of his outlook. The internationally exhibited visual artist has earned three NEA grants and a Guggenheim Fellowship. Working across multiple disciplines, he has produced painting, sculpture, film, video, installation, theater, and poetry. Among his notable undertakings are the score for the film Amerasia, which concerns American servicemen living in Thailand after the Vietnam War; a new national anthem composed with Ely, Hancock, and Gilmore for a book on Vietnam; and the stage play Chippy, developed with his wife Jo Harvey Allen along with Ely and Hancock.

Allen has also written material for established country artists including Bobby Bare and Robert Earl Keen. Beyond that sphere he supplied “New Delhi Freight Train” to Little Feat and contributed songs to the soundtrack of David Byrne’s True Stories. Cinema has long shaped his approach. His debut album Juarez, issued in the mid-1970s, began as a conceptual project conceived as the soundtrack for an imaginary film before becoming a collection of songs drawn from Mexican imagery.

The 1979 release Lubbock (On Everything) is widely viewed as his defining work. Rooted in his upbringing in the Texas town, the album was praised for rendering the particulars of regional life and characters with a sensitivity and wit more characteristic of rock and folk singer/songwriters than of country artists. His music itself, separate from the lyrical themes, remains grounded in the Texan country tradition.

Because numerous artistic commitments have always occupied him, Allen has recorded infrequently. His vocal and songwriting strengths stayed undiminished on Human Remains in 1996, which also broadened his musical reach through contributions from David Byrne, Lucinda Williams, Ponty Bone, Lloyd Maines, and Joe Ely. Salivation appeared in 1999.

In the opening years of the twenty-first century Allen concentrated on visual art and poetry, mounting exhibitions of paintings and sculpture. His next album, Amerasia: A Film by Wolf-Eckart Buhler, surfaced in 2003 as the soundtrack to an obscure 1987 film about American soldiers who remained in Southwest Asia after the Vietnam War. The recordings were made in Cambodia with the local rock band Caravan and in Lubbock with his own Panhandle Mystery Band. He continued to exhibit work internationally, collaborate with playwrights and performance artists, and tour both solo and with small ensembles.

In 2005 the University of Texas Press published his play Dugout; five years later an extensive self-titled monograph followed. Allen did not release another album until late 2012, when he issued Bottom of the World on his own tla label. Critics commended the record for its dark, wry perspective. The sessions featured Maines, Bukka Allen, Sally Allen, and Richard Bowden.