Terry Allen Interview

We're going to welcome Terry Allen here to KUNM and Albuquerque. He's going to be performing Friday night APM at the chemo theater and I'm glad to have you here Terry. Thanks Leon. That's cool and now we're going to get out to this interview which we've been dealing with for a minute here. Tell me one thing, how would you describe your work? How would you describe this? Well I guess the best way to describe it is when I was in junior high school I used to keep this little notebook and I used to write kind of what I wanted to be and I'd put I want to be an artist and then I want to be a writer and I want to be a musician. And then the next and it'd be in that order and then the next week it'd be the same three things but it'd be in another order and it was always kind of those three things and I didn't have any idea at that time what those three things meant at all really but kind

of that's what I do you know. I think what any artist does is like you kind of do what you did when you were a kid when you played you know in a way but when you get older you call it art or you call it this or you call it that but it's still just basically that kind of that kind of response or that kind of way you choose to deal with your time you know except now we've got all these labels and terms one. Well you said you've been to New Mexico but you've never been to Albuquerque before. I've been in Albuquerque a million times but it's always passing through so I was driving with in fact that's kind of my whole situation with New Mexico because I was raised in Texas but live in California and spend about half the year still in Texas so I go back and forth a lot and drive and New Mexico is just kind of like one of the things you have

to go through to get back to Texas. Yeah well I tell you what I think that you see that half the people from New Mexico are from Texas you know and I don't know how many of those are from love. Probably quite a few of them who knows you know at least the best thing in New Mexico deluxe has gone for it is that it didn't Arizona because I've never been through Arizona I didn't have a bad trouble or Buffalo right. Buffalo yeah I've never been to Buffalo but I've seen it on the news yeah right tell me something Terry what have you been doing lately what was your latest project. Well I got a project coming up in Lubbock they're having the Texas sesquicentennial which is the 150 year celebration of the history of Texas so consequently everybody in their dogs applied for some kind of grant to do something but the Texas Tech Museum has invited a bunch of artists to come and do pieces there and then it's going to travel to different

museums throughout the state in conjunction with this celebration and so I'm going there to build installation piece the last part of this month and that's what I've got coming up I just recently did a which I was talking to you about earlier but I did a soundtrack called Pedal Steel for I was invited to collaborate with this dance company in San Francisco for the Brooklyn Academy of Music Festival I have every year and I did the sets and the music for this piece that is Margaret Jenkins dance company and they choreographed the dance to the music but it was the song or the songs and stories and whatever it's like it's kind of like a long story the the whole tape or the whole soundtrack using a lot of different people telling stories and then I wrote the music different people singing I'm singing

whatever but it's it's dedicated to a musician who was from Albuquerque named Wayne Galey who was one of the premier steel guitar players as far as influence on a lot of musicians around this part of the country he's one of those people it was really good at what he did but not many people will ever hear about him he played primarily in like little bars up in the mountains and so forth but he was one of the first people to use that instrument in rock and roll band and so this is the pedal steel piece is kind of based on the pedal steel player from New Mexico who OD'd in the late 70s and that's kind of the only similarity between Galey all rest of its suspicions completely made up yeah I'll be singing some of those songs probably

tomorrow night yeah I can dig it well I know you do a lot of music songwriting and what have you and I see that you might be getting into some film and video tell us a little bit about that yeah I did two years ago I was invited to go to Thailand by a German filmmaker who wanted me to do the music for this documentary film he was making called Amarazia which was about a American veterans from Vietnam that are living in kind of his ex-patriots in Thailand so I was over there for six weeks and I worked with a tie band and traveled and played music with them all over the Thailand and then we recorded half of the soundtrack in Bangkok and then I brought back a bunch of tie instruments and gave them to the band Panhandle Mystery Band in Lubbock and they learned how to kind of play these instruments and then we cut the other half of the soundtrack in Lubbock so

that film it's going to be released in Europe in September and soundtrack hopefully is going to be the next album that I did also I'm going to do an album of the soundtrack of this dance piece the Pedal Steel piece I'm telling you about yeah so I've got those two projects that are finished but I they're just not out yet as far as records yeah but what is your musical background as far as what you play in the dark no I have no I have no background as far as any kind of formal musical background I have a well I come from Lubbock which is a real heavy music town and what we were talking about earlier my father had this sold abandoned aircraft hanger in Lubbock when I was a little kid and he used to throw dances out there and Lubbock at that time was was segregated so in Friday night he'd have these all black dances and and had some of the really premier blues

people to come in T-bone Walker and and blues boy King BB King Jimmy Reed a lot in Hopkins a lot of people a lot of a lot of Texas blues blues bands and then on Saturday night he'd have this kind of a country nice called the Saturday Night Jamboree where the Ernest tub little Jimmy Dickens Hank Williams all these people would come in and so I literally grew up in that kind of an environment working every weekend out there selling setups and stuff to people and then my mother was also a piano player who played kind of ragtime piano in fact she was she played in the last silent movie house in Denver and also got thrown out of SMU for playing jazz in the 20s yeah I can I can relate to that well tell me something I see you started off your career as an artist and you moved into music from art how'd you do that uh well it's that's not really

quite right because I've I've always played music and I've always made drawings and made made things and and written stories and I never thought I'm doing any of that stuff as as a career I've always thought of it pretty much as a choice a choice you make about how you're going to live your life and and those those like music to me is every bit as important as as any of the visual things I do or any of the written things it's it's like they all kind of come from the same place they all kind of feed one another and and I really have no prejudices about what I choose to use in in work or how I choose to use it I usually just try to pick what I feel like makes the most sense for whatever the idea is that I have that'll work and try to try to make it work and

so it our combinations of of things I'm real interested in theater and theater could almost be like an umbrella term I suppose for what I do because it incorporates all of those things in a way together and I've I've worked in in theater in that sense so I don't ever just say you know I'd in fact I always kind of go into some kind of seizure blank when someone says well what do you do you know because you know I have to go either I say words of the bathroom you know not go and try to figure out exactly what it is that I do because I've never quite got it figured out from myself what I do yeah I don't know if I won't do that's cool too well who influenced your musical style or and what you do today oh god everybody I mean I like all different kinds of music I don't I don't have any you know I mean we can talk the rest of the night on just naming names

and so forth I'm doing it right now my wife was just in David Burns new movie true stories that he filmed in Dallas and and I just got a tape from David the other day to write the lyrics to this song that's for the for the film and I've never done that before I've never worked from somebody else's tune you know and and then it's like the movie thing that I did the German film I've never done a soundtrack before so it's like I have all these incredible opportunities to do things that I haven't done before and I really like that and pursue that in a sense you know so I'm I usually just engage myself in in what seems the most interesting to me yeah what tell me something if you are written about in the history books when you are written about in the history books how would you like to go down in it probably that I didn't

do too much damage to my children yeah yeah well you know when I listen to your music is compared to a lot of the other people that go on vinyl today I see they write about a lot of the so-called love ballots and party and so on and so forth and I see that you do a lot of stories and you know what do you get these stories from and why do you write about stuff like God I don't know I mean you know that's that's one of the big mysteries I think Utah Phillips said that you know all you have to do is sit down and put a pencil on the sheet of paper and a song will jump into the pencil you know because they're in the air I mean there's stories everywhere you know and I think it's just it's it's some kind of funny meeting that happens between you and what you're thinking about and what you're feeling at a time and maybe what you're looking at what you're smelling I don't know I've written a lot of songs and cars you know just own long trips late at

night driving and I think I think I think tires have a big influence on own American music you know just just that rhythm and and that boredom that you know so you're trying to think of something so you start you start singing like give me a ride to heaven that's that's exactly when that song came up I'd actually had just I was on the road between this little town called Los Bannos and and going to Fresno and it was about three in the morning and and I passed this hearse and the guy had the lights on inside the car and I kind of drove up beside him and he looked and he was he looked like he was dead you know he looked like he was this dead body and he had band-aids all over his face like hundreds of band-aids not just two or three hundreds of them all over his face and he turned and just kind of looked at me and grand you know and I just took off like a bat out of hell you know and I guess I immediately started thinking about

Jesus I guess we're playing that song now I show you paradise so I come screeching to a halt I said hop on in we said thanks a lot for the lift I forgive you love your sins hell I just come from to listen I'm worth things to go and bad oh give me a ride heaven boy need to talk to my dad

if you need a ride heaven boy I'll show you paradise if you need a ride heaven boy my name is Jesus Christ well I didn't know what to do so I jammed her down in gear I'm gonna kick him a fleet beneath the seat I was trying to hide the beer all he just grinned and said my friend I know you must think it's odd you got nothing to fear about drinking a beer if you share with the son of God hey give me a ride heaven boy I'll show you paradise well you know Terry there there's a quote I got here and it says you said there's no difference between the real and the imaginary what do you mean by that well I mean I actually totally believe that I think that we think of real you hear you I mean we say that word just like the ear it you know but real is plural I mean it's multi plural you know because what's real

one time it necessarily real the next time what's real in front it necessarily real in back in other words it has to do I think with with context it has to do with the way you look at things the way you feel about things what you're afraid of what your mood is or you know I mean it's reality is you know it's like air as for and and I think in a sense your imagination especially when it has some outlet and you nail it as a song or you nail it as a work or you nail it as an idea or something your imagination in a way is more singular are the imagined is more singular in a way than then what is really real what we're born into you know in the sense and but how many people do you know get up and make up their life every day you know

and lots of people I do I have to tell material you got to hear rose people you say oh hey that's cool oh god yeah I got a lot of heroes that's a good question I guess I really admire people that have courage you know I admire a lot of artists I like admire a lot of people that kind of throw themselves into the the breach to do whatever it is that they're going to do and I really admire people that kind of manage to get through doing things that are unpleasant for them to do you know I think one of the hardest things like one of the hard things about I suppose it not just making art but but it is hard about for me it's like going to go into my studio on a really beautiful day and I don't want to go in there but I it's like I have to get in a way like a

Nazi you know to myself you know and say okay you're gonna spend X amount of time in there no matter what it's like outside or whatever you know otherwise I would just kind of fly away you know and but I admire people that kind of take on these these things for themselves and people that really push the limits of their knowledge and their imaginations and so forth and I mean god that you know there's there's a lot of people like that there's a lot of people I mean thank goodness there's a lot of people like that I don't think our culture right now is acknowledge is that I think we have a pretty gutless culture as far as taking a chance or taking a risk and and it's indicative of the way our institutions operate including schools etc etc etc but

you know I mean it's there's still a lot of people out there going at it full tilt and I admire that yeah that's cool but tell me something why did you why did you go into music you know well I guess you could have done a lot of things probably could have been a politician no no way I could play a politician I just you know I've always played music I've always I remember when I went to this art school in LA and and I had a I played in this band called the Black Wall Blues Quintet and I had this illusion that I was going to I was going to make money playing music to support my art you know ha ha you know I couldn't make money doing nothing to support anything you know but I mean one of the things that like you asked that question about well for you start out as an artist and you became a musician but like in the 60s which is when I was in school

there was nothing as volatile and nothing that addressed your energy like rock and roll you know like if you think about all of the bands big bands in the 60s a lot of spent like the English bands a lot of those people came out of art school it's like in the Beatles some of the stones uh well like the talking heads I mean they all came out of Rhode Island School of Design so it's it's like a I think rock and roll was like the major influence on contemporary art on our culture because rock and roll made it of made things like Sony Walkman's available they made because and records I mean if it had if if people hadn't bought rock and roll records you it tapes wouldn't have been developed and then you wouldn't be able to buy all of this kind of really relatively cheap kind of stuff you know to have and now it's video the same things happening

with video so and then visual artists I think in the 60s you know saw all this stuff happening and started using it and consequently there was this big kind of flux that happened where dancers were working with with painters painters were working or with music and musicians were where everybody was kind of coming out of the same the same kind of struggle to find something some new way to talk you know and so it all connects I think I'm looking at your album here and it says you know bloodlines Terry Allen in the Panhandle mystery band yeah my name is real while how do you get the year well when I cut Lubbock on everything I went back to Lubbock and worked with with all these guys it was the first time I'd worked with the band I the first album was called War as night was cut in San Francisco and it was basically a solo album and so when I did

Lubbock on everything I'd originally planned a friend of mine Lowell George with a band called Little Feet was gonna produce kind of the California section of it and then I was gonna do a part in New York with some friends of mine then and do a part of it in in Lubbock and so it was gonna be kind of a geographic kind of thing but but none of the kind of the thing with Lowell they had to go on tour the other thing didn't come out so I did it all in Lubbock and after the album came out a lot of people started wanting us to play and I'd never performed really other than solo that much before and so we had to come up with a name for a band and my feeling kind of about the Panhandle mystery band is that it's everybody I ever played with are kind of ever ever wanted to play with you know so that includes not a lot of people you know in a way and but that was the name that we picked to record under after that and and also travel with when

we play you know with the band yeah well you know you got a record call the the Wolfman of Del Rio yeah and uh I know the Wolfman but I don't know the one about Del Rio why don't you tell us a little bit about that uh well I'm listening to the song and the statement uh in uh in the late 50s and early 60s there was this mystery voice that came out of Via Cunha which was right across River from Del Rio and and uh it was Wolfman Jack and but none of us knew who this voice was if it was a black guy if it was a Mexican if it was he was like this in a Martian nobody knew he gonna are you a woman because he sounded like a comic then called mom's Maybelline and uh but he

played the most incredible music can you ever said ever heard at that time he played stuff that we'd never heard on the radios you know like uh Cajun stuff uh Delta Blues stuff that was just amazing and all and it was always on from like 12 to one and in the middle of it just about ever cut he put a uh these wolves hailing and it was just eerie as hell you know and you I can remember what this song is really about which you'll never know now since I'm talking about it talking over it but it was it's it's one of the first things I think the first big release you have in your life at least on and you know that part of the country I was raised in is when you get your first car you know and uh you get in that car and you whenever you get all balled up or whatever inside and you get out in that car in the middle of the night and you drive it as fast as you can you turn the radio up as loud as it'll go and by the time you get down to the you know okay the end

of that perfectly straight road uh you've gotten rid of something that you need it to get rid of and you've gotten something that you need it you know and in a sense that's what this song is about on your face she's all made up of the need the trade in some empty that place is a false and speed and that good old American dream Terry what was your first car it's 1953 green she'll like it's like in this song killer with a chicken wire grill we've been talking with Terry Allen here KUNM enjoyed it partner same here Leon I'm

thanks for having me we down there tomorrow night to check you out there I hope so don't throw nothing it's been fun same here all right bye bye