Terry Allen (born May 7, 1943) is an American musician and artist from Lubbock, Texas. Allen's musical career as a singer-songwriter has spanned many Texas country and outlaw country albums, and his work as a visual artist has included painting, conceptual art, performance, and sculpture, with a number of notable bronze sculptures installed publicly in various cities throughout the United States.
He was born in Wichita, Kansas, United States and attended Monterey High School in Lubbock, Texas. He began his musical career learning to play piano from his mother, Pauline Pierce Allen, who was a professional piano player. His contemporaries at Monterey High School included Butch Hancock, Jimmie Dale Gilmore, Joe Ely, Jo Harvey Allen and Jo Carol Pierce. Whist a teenager he sold soda at the dance hall run by his father, a baseball player turned event promoter; he heard Hank Williams and Little Richard there.
In 1962, while in High School, he wrote his first song, "Red Bird", which he would go on to perform live on Shindig! in 1965, and recorded on his 1980 album, Smokin' the Dummy. At art school in Los Angeles, in the nineteen-sixties, he hobnobbed with surrealists and befriended Ed Ruscha.
He trained as an architect, he received a B.F.A. from the Chouinard Art Institute in 1966. After briefly teaching at his alma mater (1968-1969) and the University of California, Berkeley (1971), Allen served on the faculty of the California State University, Fresno as a guest lecturer (1971-1973), associate professor (1974-1977) and professor (1978-1979) of art before resigning his appointment to pursue other opportunities.
It was during 1975, Allen released his debut, art-country album, Juarez, which is considered "one of the greatest concept albums of all time" according to PopMatters while Rolling Stone called it an "outlaw classic". Allen’s refusal to stick to one medium means he exists as something of an outsider, even as his work has been shown at the Museum of Modern Art, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and the Hirshhorn.
Years ago, the Smithsonian expressed interest in his archive, and Allen sent them reel-to-reel tapes with some of his old recordings. When the museum told Allen that they were interested only in his visual works, he called off the deal, opting instead to send the materials to Texas Tech, in Lubbock.
Released in 1979, Lubbock (On Everything) is considered his most significant album. Inspired by his experiences growing up in the Texas town, it won praise for observing the details of regional life and characters with a sensitivity and wit more akin to rock and folk singer/songwriters than country ones. Allen's music (if not his lyrical content), however, remains very much in the Texan country tradition.
His art has been supported by three National Endowment for the Arts grants and a prestigious Guggenheim Fellowship. His work Trees the music, literary and third trees) is installed on the campus of the University of California, San Diego as part of the Stuart Collection. His artwork has been featured at the L.A. Louver art gallery in Venice, California. The country singer Guy Clark, who died in 2016, requested that his ashes become part of a Terry Allen sculpture. Several years ago, when an interviewer asked Bob Dylan what contemporary art he followed, he said that he liked miniature-golf courses—and Terry Allen.
In 2005, his play Dugout was published by Univ. of Texas Press; it was followed five years later by an extensive self-titled monograph. Allen didn't record again until late 2012. Bottom of the World was self-released on his tla label, and was met with critical acclaim for its dark, wry vision. Its lineup featured Maines, Bukka Allen, Sally Allen, and Richard Bowden.
In 2016, the North Carolina record label Paradise of Bachelors rereleased “Juarez” and “Lubbock (on everything),” bringing new attention to Allen. “It was like a whole world opened up,” he told The New Yorker.
Allen’s longest-time collaborator, though, is his wife, the actor and writer Jo Harvey Allen. The couple met in Lubbock when they were eleven and have been together more or less ever since. These days, they live in Santa Fe, where Allen plays in a band that includes the couple’s sons, plus Charlie Sexton, Dylan’s guitar player.
(Edied from The New Yorker, AllMusic & Wikipedia)