TERRY ALLEN

THE TEXAS RENAISSANCE MAN

Terry Allen Talks To Arthur Wood

(from November '96)

One of the most fulfilling CD releases by a Texas bred artist to appear this year is, Terry Allen's Human Remains, on the North Carolina based Sugar Hill label. Allen, a songwriter, playwright, painter, sculptor, college lecturer, musician, recording artist and probably eons more, recently undertook his first solo tour of the UK. His Birmingham show took place at The Foundry. This is a taste of an interview which took place a couple of hours prior to the gig …

Do you think that Human Remains is your most commercial album to date?

"I didn't go about it any different that I've gone about any of my stuff. The only thing that is different with this album, is that it's gotten more distribution than I ever got before. The Sugar Hill thing has been really great as far as that goes.

Will some of your earlier Fate label recordings eventually appear on Sugar Hill?

I'm hopin' so. We're talkin' right now about puttin' Bloodlines and Smokin' The Dummy out. I'm probably gonna keep The Silent Majority and Pedal Steal and Amerasia. I want to get Amerasia out on a CD, if I can. That's kind of the next plan. Also over the years, I have been doin' things for National Public Radio - I've done four radio shows that I want to put out as a box set. They're just like four stories.

You pulled together a pretty big team of support players on the backing tracks to Human Remains.Was the organisation and logistics difficult?

"Not at all. I'd known Lucinda Williams]for years and we'd always talked about doin' somethin'. Jo Carol Pierce sang on Peggy Legg, which seemed right on the money. David Byrne had just gotten off a big tour and he wanted to come down to Austin and hang out. I just said "Well, play." He knew I was going to cover his song Buck Naked on the album - because I had planned to include it from the beginning - even when I was just puttin' the album together, I wanted to do that song"

Where do you think that song came from. What influenced you to cut it?

"It's one of my favourite songs that David ever wrote. I was in India, recording over there, and David was over there recording and his sister-in-law died. David wrote that song and actually sang it at the funeral. I didn't know his sister-in-law well, but I knew his wife really well and that song - I actually wrote a song called Hearts Road that kind of dealt with Bonnie and Tina, the sister that died. It's dedicated to them. I just thought that Buck Naked was kind of a great song for those kind of circumstances. David does it totally different to me. We talked about it a long time, because the song had reaI serious intent. I didn't want to loose that, but at the same time I had a whole way I wanted to do it. I always heard it and played it the way I ended up recordin' it."