Terry Allen announces his new family band project Blood Sucking Maniacs

Terry Allen's multi-generational family band, Blood Sucking Maniacs release their self-titled debut April 24th. You've been warned!

Here's the scoop...

BEWARE 💀: Terry Allen and Jo Harvey Allen, along with their children and grandchildren, are pleased to announce the self-titled debut (and double) album by their new project, BLOOD SUCKING MANIACS, a multi-generational family band, out on April 24th. You can pre-order the album (the first release of all-new Terry Allen recordings since 2020’s “Just Like Moby Dick”) via Bandcamp right here here. Check out the first single, the eponymous theme song, “Blood Sucking Maniacs” below. Buy tickets to the May 21st album release show at Austin’s Paramount Theatre, dubbed "A Night With Blood Sucking Maniacs right here.

Blood Sucking Maniacs, the Allen family band, helmed by Terry  and Jo Harvey Allen, spans five generations and 121 years, including (among others) their sons Bukka Allen and Bale Creek Allen; grandsons Kru, Sled Allen, and Calder Allen; Panhandle Mystery Band mainstays Charlie Sexton, Lloyd Maines, and Richard Bowden, and frequent collaborator Will Sexton. The wild and wide-ranging songs collected on their eponymous album are miscellaneous and multiplex, comprising heartrending ballads and arch in-jokes on a spectrum from sublime to unabashedly sentimental. The unifying principle here is not so much blood harmony as blood entropy.

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Get sucked ... 

The Allens will also perform two nights, in different configurations, at the fabulous Big Ears Festival in Knoxville, TN, with the Truckload of Art Road Show (an intimate book reading/signing, concert, and discussion/Q&A) on March 26th and with the full Panhandle Mystery Band on March 27th. For more info on the Big Ears Festival, visit their site right here. See y’all there.

For more information about Terry Allen, his music and artwork, visit his site right here. Listen to "Blood Sucking Maniacs" below.

Happy Birthday Lloyd Maines!

Raising a glass to steel guitar ace Lloyd Maines on his birthday with a performance accompanying Joe Ely on Austin City Limits.

Happy Birthday Alejandro Escovedo!

Celebrating Alejandro's birthday with his stellar versions of "Put You Down" & "Sally Was A Cop" at ACL's Hall Of Fame show.

That time the Joe Ely Band played Luckenbach in 1977

Watch 27 minutes of Joe Ely's performance with Lloyd Maines, Gregg Wright, Steve Keeton, Jesse Taylor and Ponty Bone. 

Terry Allen pays tribute to his pal Guy Clark

Check out Terry Allen's 2-hour Caw Caw Blues salute to Guy Clark featuring guests Lloyd Maines and Terri Hendrix.  

Flatlanders preview new album with "Sittin' On Top Of The World"

Lubbock pals Butch Hancock, Joe Ely and Jimmie Dale Gilmore are back with Treasure Of Love, out July 9 via Rack 'Em Records.

Here's the scoop...

The Flatlanders, the iconic Texas cosmic country combo featuring Butch Hancock, Joe Ely, and Jimmie Dale Gilmore, have just released the official video for their new single “Sittin’ on Top of the World.” The song is the closing rave-up from Treasure of Love, their first album of new recordings in more than 12 years slated for release on July 9 via Rack ‘Em Records/Thirty Tigers. Treasure of Love is now available for pre-order.

“This video reflects the combined energy of The Flatlanders from many performances over the past 50 years! It’s a damn miracle!” said Joe Ely about the video. Jimmie Dale Gilmore added: “In a way, this video encapsulates the history of The Flatlanders." Watch it below. 

Earlier this month, The Flatlanders announced their new album Treasure of Love, which was completed during COVID-19 lockdowns with the help of longtime friend and collaborator Lloyd Maines. Treasure of Love finds The Flatlanders in classic form, serving up a rollicking collection of typically twanged up and harmony heavy performances full of that wry humor we've come to expect. While a few of the songs here are never-before-heard originals, the vast majority of the tracklist consists of vintage tunes the band picked up during their 50-year career, some stretching as far back as the group’s earliest performances in the honky tonks around Lubbock, TX.

“I like to say that this album evolved more than it was recorded,” explains Joe Ely, who hosted the initial recording sessions and worked extensively on the tracks at his Spur Studios in Austin, TX. “We’d been chipping away at these songs for a while without ever really finishing anything, so when lockdown started, it seemed like the perfect time to really focus on it.”

The 15 tracks on Treasure of Love revisit songs they enjoyed playing from the early days and capturing them for the sheer joy of it. Not realizing at the time that they were actually making a record, the trio worked fast and loose in the studio, laying down raw, playful takes whenever they had free time between sessions or tours. It was only when the COVID-19 pandemic forced Ely, Gilmore, and Hancock to simultaneously clear all of their calendars that the band realized they had an album on their hands and the time to finally complete it.

“A lot of groups our age are either dead or not speaking to each other anymore,” says Gilmore, “but I think part of the reason The Flatlanders are still together is that we’ve all had our own separate careers along the way. We’re all such strange individualists, but we can co-captain this ship together because every time we come back to it, we feel that same magic we felt when we first started playing together.”

The Flatlanders – Treasure of Love 

01) Moanin’ of the Midnight Train

02) Long Time Gone

03) Snowin’ on Raton

04) She Smiles Like a River

05) Love Oh Love Please Come Home

06) Give My Love to Rose

07) Treasure of Love

08) Satin Shoes

09) The Ballad of Honest Sam

10) Mama Do the Kangaroo

11) She Belongs to Me

12) I Don’t Blame You

13) Mobile Blues

14) Ramblin’ Man

15) Sittin’ on Top of the World

 

Terry Allen's Pedal Steal + Four Corners get long overdue proper release

Two and a half hours of Terry Allen's songs, stories and sound collages from 1985-93 have been issued by Paradise of Bachelors.

LINKS
Texas Monthly: The Final Chapter of Terry Allen's "Pedal Steal"

Happy Birthday Lloyd Maines!

Celebrating the birthday of Lubbock legend Lloyd Maines with a 1980 clip performing Fingernails with Joe Ely. 

Wayne "The Train" Hancock @ Sportsmens Tavern (Buffalo), Sunday

It'll be well worth a trip to Buffalo to catch Wayne Hancock & crew playing a Sunday matinee from 4 to 7 pm. 

Here's the press release for the new Slingin' Rhythm album on Bloodshot Records...

An album from Wayne “The Train” Hancock is as refreshing as a beer pulled from a tub of ice on a summer’s day. You stick your hand deep into that tub, you know it’s gonna be cold, and you know it’s gonna be beer, but, dang, if it ain’t always a kick how surprisingly JUST RIGHT it is. Slingin’ Rhythm is just right, a finely honed, day-in-the-life brand of juke joint rhythm sitting in the sweet spot of American music invention between country, hillbilly, jazz and western swing.

And while “The Train” is indeed a throwback, the funny thing is, the more retro he gets, the fresher he sounds. His songs about the everyday and the everyman, with their driving pulse and live-in-the-moment vibe, have a character and passion that go beyond a particular time.

Even though it’s been over three years since his last album, Ride, no grass has grown under Wayne’s boots—he’s on the road 200 days a year. Slingin’ Rhythm, with its emphasis on off-the-cuff instrumental interplay and extended soloing, Wayne and his band drive down the centerline between tight and loose. Like a latter day Bob Wills, spontaneously calling out encouragement, or Hank Williams and Ernest Tubb effortlessly knocking out smile-through-the-pain honky-tonk, Wayne “The Train” Hancock delivers an unvarnished, BS-free restorative.

When it comes to classic trope of the murder ballad, the subject is often spoken through metaphor or deeply formalized imagery. Not so with Wayne. He gets to the point in “I Killed Them Both” with a chilling bluntness that’d make Johnny Paycheck nod with approval. The thing is, though, you might miss the tragedy at first because that bouncy back beat will have you on the dance floor. On the languid lament “Dog Day Blues” you can feel the sweat rolling down the back of your neck. The attention to detail in “Small Bouquet of Roses” paints a distinct picture of heartbreak.

Wayne teamed up once again with his producer-for-life Lloyd Maines (Uncle Tupelo, Terry Allen, Ray Wylie Hubbard) and recorded on the fly, never doing a song the same way twice. That’s what gives Slingin’ Rhythm its relentless energy—and with a band this killer, you’ve got to let them off the leash. “2 String Boogie” and Merle Travis’s “Divorce Me C. O. D.” bounce along on crisp, jazzy guitar licks, referencing masters like Chet Atkins and Hark Garland right up through the neo-retro scenesters like Deke Dickerson. And the loungy Texas swing in “Wear Out Your Welcome” and the instrumental “Over Easy” freshens up the template laid out by the great Texas Playboys steel player Leon McAuliffe.

Slingin' Rhythm is available on 180 gram vinyl w/digital download from Bloodshot Records.