Terry Allen with Brendan Greaves & Jo Harvey Allen: Truckload of Art

Terry Allen is a visionary artist of the late 20th and early 21st centuries, a polyglot painter, sculptor, singer-songwriter, writer, and storyteller raised on the hard luck and wisdom of the Texas plains and reared on the art-world avant-garde. In the late ’70s, Allen made at least two warped masterpieces of outsider outlaw country, Juarez and the indispensable Lubbock (on Everything), albums that used old sounds to articulate a new way of living, to suggest a different paradigm for what it might mean to be a kid stuck between the Permian and the Panhandle. He has applied the same jester’s sense of wonder to four decades of subsequent albums, whether exploring Southwestern myth-making or Middle Eastern peace-keeping. And from his luggage-guarding gargoyles and his playfully anthropomorphized deer bronzes to a universe of self-referential and insightful drawings and collages, Allen is a celebrated visual artist whose intricate world still seems to be revealing itself.

In 2024, Brendan Greaves—the cofounder of Paradise of Bachelors, the label that has been steadily reissuing Allen’s archive and issuing his new albums—published Truckload of Art, a masterfully detailed and analytical Allen biography and exploration of his life and work across all disciplines. In the Truckload of Art Road Show, Greaves will read from the book, followed by Allen’s revealing performance alongside his wife, the actress and playwright Jo Harvey Allen (True Stories, Fried Green Tomatoes), and their son, Bukka, on accordion, with Richard Bowden on fiddle. And then the Allens, natural raconteurs all, share stories of the friends and follies and maybe the fables that helped shape it all. Writer and filmmaker Tamara Saviano will moderate the show, followed by a question-and-answer session. Allen remains a very busy working artist and songwriter who once told The Creative Independent, “I’ve just been dealing with the past so much that I’m really glad to be back in my studio and see new things.” Thing is, it remains an inspiring delight to hear him limn his past and the pieces it shaped in a show that is itself a new work of art.