Truckload of Art: The Life and Work of Terry Allen--An Authorized Biography

*A New York Times Best Art Book of 2024*

The definitive, authorized, and first-ever biography of Terry Allen, the internationally acclaimed visual artist and iconoclastic songwriter who occupies an utterly unique position straddling the disparate, and usually distant, worlds of conceptual art and country music. "People tell me it's country music," Terry Allen has joked, "and I ask, 'Which country?'" For nearly sixty years, Allen's inimitable art has explored the borderlands of memory, crossing boundaries between disciplines and audiences by conjuring indelible stories out of the howling West Texas wind.

In Truckload of Art, author Brendan Greaves exhaustively traces the influences that shaped Allen's extraordinary life, from his childhood in Lubbock, Texas, spent ringside and sidestage at the wrestling matches and concerts his father promoted, to his formative art-school years in incendiary 1960s Los Angeles, and through subsequent decades doggedly pursuing his uncompromising artistic vision. With humor and critical acumen, Greaves deftly recounts how Allen built a career and cult following with pioneering independent records like Lubbock (on everything) (1979)--widely considered an archetype of alternative country--and multiyear, multimedia bodies of richly narrative, interconnected art and theatrical works, including JUAREZ (ongoing since 1968), hailed as among the most significant statements in the history of American vernacular music and conceptual art.

Drawing on hundreds of revealing interviews with Allen himself, his family members, and his many notable friends, colleagues, and collaborators--from musicians like David Byrne and Kurt Vile to artists such as Bruce Nauman and Kiki Smith--and informed by unprecedented access to the artist's home, studio, journals, and archives, Greaves offers a poetic, deeply personal portrait of arguably the most singularly multivalent storyteller of the American West.


Author: Brendan Greaves
Publisher: Da Capo
Published: 03/19/2024
Pages: 560
Binding Type: Hardcover
Weight: 1.75lbs
Size: 9.00h x 6.40w x 1.70d
ISBN: 9780306924545


Review Citation(s):
Publishers Weekly 01/29/2024
Booklist 03/01/2024 pg. 11

About the Author
Terry Allen is a songwriter, visual and recording artist, and playwright. He's released more than a dozen studio albums since his 1975 debut, Juarez, and his wide-ranging artwork resides in collections around the world, including the Met, MoMA, and LACMA. Raised in Lubbock, Texas, since 1989 he has resided in Santa Fe, New Mexico, with his wife and collaborator, the performer and poet Jo Harvey Allen.

Brendan Greaves is founder and owner of the record label Paradise of Bachelors and has collaborated on numerous projects with Terry Allen, including Pedal Steal + Four Corners, for which he earned a Grammy nomination for Best Album Notes. A folklorist, essayist, and lapsed art worker, he studied at Harvard and UNC, and lives in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, with his wife, Samantha, and son, Asa.