“Gimme a Ride to Heaven, Boy!”–Terry Allen on Homer and Guy Clark’s ashes

TERRY ALLEN is a 74 year old conceptual artist, painter, songwriter, recording artist (keyboards and vocals) and performer originally from Lubbock Texas who has made his home, with his wife actress Jo Harvey Allen and their children, for decades now in Santa Fe, New Mexico, where he has his art studio.  [For a detailed, informative and very readable summary of Terry Allen’s biography and music career, see Steve Terrell’s excellent Terry Allen story also in No Depression online.] Terry has released highly-praised and popular albums (including Juarez, Lubbock on Everything, Salivation and the Southeast Asia War epic Amerasia) of his unique, wryly humorous and insightful songs periodically over the years, and his earlier albums are now being re-released by Paradise of Bachelors Records in remastered and repackaged editions,  but his live performances are fairly rare, owing to the demands of his successful art career.

This September 8, Terry Allen will perform, accompanied by long time Texan friend and master guitar picker Lloyd Maines, at the annual MICHAEL HEARNE’s BIG BARN DANCE FESTIVAL in Kit Carson Park, Taos, New Mexico. [Full information on the Sept. 7-9 Big Barn Dance Festival is at bigbarndance.com  Festival organizer Michael Hearne recently told this reporter that this year’s 15th Big Barn Dance will be dedicated to those who are suffering from the aftermath of Hurricane Harvey and to ongoing relief efforts to help folks on the Texas/Louisiana/Mississippi Gulf Coast.]

Terry Allen spoke with me by phone from his Santa Fe studio on July 17, 2017.

BN Hi Terry. I know you are doing a show for AMP in Albuquerque and then you are doing a show up in Taos at Michael Hearne’s Big Barn Dance September 8. I wonder if you are looking forward to that?

TA I certainly am. Actually, Lloyd Maines will be up there playing with Terri Hendrix and he passed the word to see if I wanted to come up and play and I think it will be just the two of us playing together on Friday afternoon. And then my friend Joe Ely is playing that night. And I think it is going to be a lotta fun.

BN: I know you were working on the conceptual piece “MemWars, An Installation”. Are you still working on that, or do you have a new project coming up?

TA: Well, I did the MemWars installation outside Santa Fe last year, but it has also developed into some live shows based on stories from MemWars. They’re interchangeable with the music, so I have been continuing to write stories based on that. Most of them relate to songs that have already been written. They sort of feed each other. And I’m working on a sculpture to hold my late friend Guy Clark’s ashes, and I’m hoping to have that done soon, and hopefully finished and installed by next year. That’s pretty much it, except that I have started on a new body of work called “Homer’s Notebooks”, which has to do with Homer of the Odyssey and that other Homer.

BN: Homer Simpson?

TA: Yeah, Homer Simpson, not Homer and Jethro!

BN: Wow. Are you going to get those two Homers together?

TA: Yeah, it’s kind of taking the idea of a “notebook” and kind of cross-channelling the two of them together. The thing that’s always interesting about the classic Greek Homer of “The Illiad” and “The Odyssey” is that these incredible images came from him, and yet he was blind. Supposedly, y’know. And I’m not even sure he did write down the stories that are attributed to him. Some people say that he was blind and simply spoke the stories, and someone else wrote them down.  But anyway, that is what I am starting to work on now.

BN: I know that your art is sort of all of one piece, across lines of genres. You have songs that relate to the physical and visual art. Do you see a possible song writing event coming out of the “Homer’s Notebooks”?

TA: I never know. I never even think about pushing something in one direction of another, you know. Especially right now, I’m just kind of beginning to think about it, take notes and start a few drawings, whatever. But you know that is always kind of something that happens and can happen,that songs come out of the mist. It’s a toss up, kind of a crap shoot what happens.

BN: You’ve written a lot of songs–and done a great art installation– about the Vietnam War and its aftermath. Your early concept album “Amerasia” just stands out as a masterpiece and truly an important historical document, in my opinion. Do you see that album being re-released soon? I know that “Juarez” was recently re-released.

TA: Well, that has to do with when the licenses on the albums come up for renewal. “Amerasia”, I think it’s got another year to run on its license. I do like that album very much, and you know we worked with a Thai band in recording that one, so it has a very special, even exotic feel to it. I do hope new audiences, especially young people, will listen to it. I’m thinking about re-issuing “Pedal Steel” next. But I’m also thinking of doing another new record.

BN: Oh, that’s great news, a new Terry Allen record coming soon!

TA: Yeah, I’m really happy now with this record label called Paradise of Bachelors. They’ve been incredible to me as far as the re-issues they’ve put out, and so I’m feeling comfortable about doing a new record with them.

BN: That is good to hear.

TA: Yeah, it’s nice to have some kind of faith in a record company! What an oxymoron, huh? [Laughs.]

BN: Do they pretty much let you do what you want to, to go where your vision takes you? It seems like you’re past the stage where they are gonna try to  “market” you in an obnoxious way.

TA: Well, they dogged me for years about putting out re-issues of “Juarez” and others, and then I worked with the head of the company,  Brendan Greaves, in a gallery show where we did my musical play “Chippy” a while back. And so when “Juarez” came up for re-licensing, I was real interested in putting out an LP of that album. Sugar Hill Records, which I was working with at the time, was not at all interested in putting out LPs. So, much to my surprise, both “Juarez” and “Lubbock on Everything” came out as both CDs and LPs on Paradise of Bachelors and they took on this new life with a new audience, and that really surprised and delighted me.

BN: Congratulations on celebrating your 55th wedding anniversary recently, Terry. I know that you often collaborate on various arts projects with your wife Jo Harvey Allen, the actress. 

TA: Yes, 55 years! Isn’t it amazing how long two people can misunderstand? That was kind of our theme. (Laughs.)

BN: I love it! Are you going to be doing any projects in the near future with Joe Harvey?

TA: Yes, she’s doing a lot of these story pieces for “MemWars” with me. She’s not writing them, but she’s performing them with me. And also my son Bukka Allen is playing, at least on the couple of performances we’ve done. I am hoping that we will develop those pieces some more and maybe even do an audio recording to go with the big installation and we have a video I want to show again in the near future. Then I just did an installation at The Contemporary Museum in Austin of a piece called “Road Angel”. [See details at https://www.thecontemporaryaustin.org/exhibitions/terry-allen-road-angel/]   It’s a 1953 Chevy that is completely bronzed and I invite artists and musicians to perform something along with it. It’s a real wild kind of area near Lake Austin, kind of a swamp. So its like an abandoned car that you come upon. It has about 6 hours of music and stories in it now that have been programmed. And I hope to add to it every year so I have started asking other people to add pieces to it.

BN: That sounds like it is well worth a trip down past Austin to see it.

TA: Yeah, it is. I’m really happy with the piece. I think it turned out really well. Go check it out if you can!

BN: We will, and we’ll also see you at the Big Barn Dance in Taos on September 8, and get some dancing in to your music!