Lubbock: Terry Allen

You can leave Lubbock. You cannot leave it behind. Terry Allen grew up in Lubbock, Texas in the 1950s and 1960s. Then he left. Then the 1979 double album Lubbock (On Everything) happened. AllMusic calls it “one of the finest country albums of all time.” It’s the most honest reckoning with a place that Texas music has ever produced.

Allen’s father, Fletcher “Sled” Allen, promoted music and wrestling events across West Texas in the 1940s and 1950s. Those promotions brought Hank Williams, T-Bone Walker, Ray Charles, Little Richard, and Elvis Presley to Lubbock stages. Terry met Elvis on one of his Lubbock visits in 1955 and 1956. His mother Pauline Pierce Allen was a professional piano player. She taught Terry the piano. He wrote his first song, “Red Bird,” in 1962 while still in high school. Three years later, he performed it live on the television show Shindig! Brian Epstein — the Beatles’ manager — was in the audience.

The Lubbock He Carried

Allen left Lubbock for the Chouinard Art Institute in Los Angeles in 1966. He trained as a visual artist. But the music never stopped. In 1978, he came back to Lubbock to record the album that would define his legacy. The sessions happened at Caldwell Studios with Lloyd Maines, who also played pedal steel. The result was Lubbock (On Everything) — a double album Rolling Stone called an “outlaw classic.” It is also a progenitor of what critics would eventually name alt-country. The songs Allen wrote in Lubbock became music that Guy Clark, Lucinda Williams, Sturgill Simpson, and others covered for decades. He received a Guggenheim Fellowship. Texas inducted him into the West Texas Walk of Fame. The Walk of Fame lives at the Buddy Holly Center on Crickets Avenue in Lubbock.

Allen’s Lubbock years built a musician and a visual artist. He now has bronze sculptures in airports and museums across the country. At Monterey High School, Allen sat in class with Joe Ely, Jimmie Dale Gilmore, and Butch Hancock. Those four built the Lubbock sound. He is also the man who sculpted the memorial to CB Stubblefield at 108 East Broadway. Lubbock got into Terry Allen early. Everything he made afterward proves it.