Terry Allen

[Frank Newgent]

Can't stop listening to this (http://www.popmatters.com/music/reviews/a/allenterry-juarez.shtml)

[Bikewer]

I've been a Terry Allen fan for years. Our local community radio station, KDHX-FM, has a show called "songwriter's showcase" that features tons of good singer-songwriter material.

They started playing Allen's "Give Me a Ride to Heaven" years back.

Allen is also an accomplished artist and sculptor, and produced one of my favorite pieces of political art.
It's a bust of an individual with it's face detached as if flying off, and a baseball bat fetched up against the back of the head. The title..."The all-American sport".

Sorry, looked for a pic...

[Frank Newgent]

You're way ahead of me then. Have only very recently discovered the brilliance of "Juarez" and "Lubbock (On Everything)". What great weird music.

Funny thing is my wife grew up in Lubbock. Even went to the same (Monterey) high school as Terry Allen.

Still hates the memories of the place, the dust storms and gunfire. Thinks I'm nuts for this new fascination. But from old interviews I've read with Terry Allen he mainly loathed the place, too.

Something about that horizon produced some mighty big personalities.

[Bikewer]

The radio station I mentioned had an on-air interview with Allen some years back. Asked what growing up in Lubbock gave him, he said "an overwhelming desire to leave."

[Frank Newgent]

At least one promotional genius still lives there...

http://www.cafepress.com/keeplubbockflat.26243099

[Frank Newgent]

PSF: What made you interested in working in the arts when you were growing up in Lubbock?

My father was an old baseball player and when he got too old to play, he rented a gospel church that had gone belly up and started putting on wrestling matches and boxing matches and on the weekends, they had big dances with live music. He became the local entrepreneur/promoter in the town. He brought in some of the very first rock and roll shows. On Friday nights, because it was segregated in that part of the country, they had all-black dances. T-Bone Walker, B.B. King (he was called 'Blues Boy' then), Jimmy Reed would all play. Saturday night was the country jamboree where they had the white equivalent- Hank Williams, Ernest Tubb, Little Jimmy Dickens, Minnie Pearl, people like that.

From the time I was about six years old, I worked out there and sold 'set up's.' Lubbock was dry so people brought their own bottles and I would sell ice with lemons and Cokes so they could mix drinks under the table. That had a huge influence on my life but of course at the time, I didn't realize it. Also, my mother was a professional piano player up to the time that she married my father. She gave me the only lessons I ever had. She taught me "St Louis Blues" and then she said 'you're on your own.'

I grew up in kind of a musical environment in that sense. I don't think that ANYBODY grew up in Lubbock in a visual environment because there was barely one tree in town and it was especially flat in every direction. In retrospect, I think that was a huge influence because there was something about the absence of everything that made story-telling, music and any kind of imagery have a double impact. Plus, just the seduction of a horizon in a conservative, straight-laced place that Lubbock was and pretty much still is.

I think probably what had the biggest impact on me and most of my peers was rock and roll. It was the first thing that kind of addressed you as a human and not some institution that you cuddled up to, like school or family or church. It was the first big open door that I smelled that there might be something else in life besides Lubbock.

That and also my first automobile. A lot of times I do the song "Wolfman of Del Rio" (from Lubbock (On Everything)) and introduce the song by saying 'the first memory that anybody has growing up in that part of the country is when you get your first car because there's absolutely no reason to have a memory up until that point.' A car really became the ultimate vehicle of every first-thing that ever happened to you in your life and the outside world and music-wise. It was also the early days of television and those funky black and white shows. It all just kind of jumbles together. Years away from it, it's pretty rich. At the time, it seemed barren.

I didn't really find out how rich it was until I went back to record Lubbock (On Everything). Pretty much as soon as I got my driver's license, I got out of there and went to California. I went to art school and lived most of the '60's in L.A. but I went back constantly because my family and my wife's family was in Lubbock. Every time I went back, I convinced myself that I despised it more. I used it as a classic vehicle like any kid with an imagination who uses their home ground. I made myself hate it to propel myself out of there. It was kind of a pretense, which I really learned after going back. After really hating this place for so long, circumstances got me back to there to do a record that I ended up calling Lubbock (On Everything). Until we had completely recorded it and listening to the mixes, it didn't dawn on me that all this lip service dislike, all of the songs that I was writing at this time were about anything but disliking that country. It made fun of a lot of stuff but it really dawned on me how endearing it was to me and how much I cared about it. It made one of those funny circles that life makes where you kind of run back in on yourself but all different. That's how I came to terms with it and loved going back there ever since.

http://www.furious.com/Perfect/terryallen.html


Wolfman of del Rio (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EOMchnzusvY)

[Ixion]

Having lived in Lubbock for 5 years, I would have to say I agree. A desire to leave is mostly what I had as well.

[Frank Newgent]

Having lived in Lubbock for 5 years, I would have to say I agree. A desire to leave is mostly what I had as well.

You fled Lubbock to land in Tucson? Exactly what my wife did (a while back).

No lack of escape routes:

http://www.mapquest.com/maps?city=Lubbock&state=TX

[Ixion]

You fled Lubbock to land in Tucson? Exactly what my wife did (a while back).

No lack of escape routes:

http://www.mapquest.com/maps?city=Lubbock&state=TX

Funny how that happens! At least Tucson has some beautiful scenery.

[Frank Newgent]

Funny how that happens! At least Tucson has some beautiful scenery.

Good tacos here! Weird name, though.

http://www.yelp.com/biz/panchos-and-beer-tucson

[Ixion]

Good tacos here! Weird name, though.

http://www.yelp.com/biz/panchos-and-beer-tucson

No shortage of delicious Mexican food! So where did your wife end up?

[Frank Newgent]

No shortage of delicious Mexican food! So where did your wife end up?

Uptairs at the moment :) Though I met her way way down in Mexico.

We still spend our winter months in Tucson. Saw Los Lobos at the Rialto last New Year's Eve and a couple guys with the band tried to take off with her.

http://forums.randi.org/showpost.php?p=4312554&postcount=3453