ROUTES & BRANCHES 
featuring the very best of americana, alt.country and roots music
January 26, 2020
Scott Foley, purveyor of dust

Terry Allen perches at a piano when he plays country music, shoulders hunched and leaning into the mic.  He is an essential legend of West Texas music who lives in Santa Fe.  While Allen is responsible for iconic songs like "Amarillo Highway" and "Flatland Boogie", he has also thrown some notorious curveballs, records incorporating experimental or theatrical elements.  A songwriter par excellence who fills galleries worldwide with his sculpture and his visual arts.  Terry Allen is a scoundrel, an enigma and a walking contradiction.  He is a treasure.  And at age 76, he has just released his most cohesive record in decades, Just Like Moby Dick (Paradise of Bachelors).

You'll get a great overview of the man by watching Everything For All Reasons, a 2019 documentary presently streaming on Amazon.  The short features interviews with friends and cohorts, interspersed with live classics from a terrific stage show by Allen and his longtime Panhandle Mystery Band.  Charlie Sexton sums it all up in a phrase: It's high art, covered in dust.

That Panhandle Mystery Band has shared Allen's spotlight in one form or another since the early days.  With Sexton on guitar, the ubiquitous Lloyd Maines on slide and dobro, Glenn Fukunaga on bass, Richard Bowden on fiddle and Terry's son Bukka on accordion and keys, it's a worldclass ensemble that grounds his flights of musical fancy in pure Texas country.  While Allen's voice and piano are all over Moby Dick, the band more than earns their co-headlining status.  You'll hear it in Maines' ghostly dobro on "Houdini Didn't Like the Spiritualists", or in Bukka's accordion that adds great character to "Abandonitis".  This is especially true of Mississippi vocalist Shannon McNally, who accompanies the songwriter on most cuts, and even takes lead on a couple, such as the beautiful "All These Blues Go Walkin' By". She shares a mic with Sexton on the warm and thoughtful "All That's Left Is Fare-Thee-Well".

Of course, more than anything we tune into Terry Allen's frequency in order to enjoy his otherworldly take on our worldly woes.  Half the world is screwed / The other half's insane, he sings on the breezy "Sailin' On Through". While he's as irreverent as ever, a sense of wistfulness pervades Moby Dick, a world-weariness Allen has earned along with other masters like John Prine or the late Guy Clark.  "Death of the Last Stripper" finds the narrator trying in vain to track down the next-of-kin for the last stripper / In the last club in town.  As Bukka's accordion weeps, there's a characteristic grotesquerie to the proceedings: We gave her clothes to Goodwill / Except for one pretty dress / Tried to make her face up / So she could look her best.  It's pure Terry Allen, a man who has penned enough caricatures of these down-and-outers to populate an entire windswept West Texas town.  On "City of Vampires", There's nary a soul to be found / When the sun glints off the church spires.

One of the points driven home by the new documentary is that Terry Allen doesn't delineate one artistic expression from the next.  He regards his sculptures as an outpouring from the same rich vein that produces his paintings or his songs.  This seems especially likely during the collection's more theatrical moments.  Richard Bowden's fiddle soars elegantly through "Houdini", a story about the magician's plans for a final illusion from beyond the grave.  The CD's most ambitious project is the three-part American Childhood.  The ominous, string-driven suite draws a line between a child's duck-and-cover drill, Vietnam and Iraq: It's just the war / Same fucking war / It's always been / It never ends.

Over the years, the term "outlaw" has been lazily applied to countless artists, but primarily for superficial reasons.  Terry Allen has contributed to the pillars of the outlaw country cannon, though his outlaw cred runs deeper than most.  Allen's origin story tells how he attended high school with future legends like Butch Hancock, Joe Ely and Jimmie Dale Gilmore.  Tossed and thrown atop these waves of artistic inspiration, on deck with his loyal Panhandle Mystery Band, a case can be made that he is the unlikely last man standing among his peers. At an age when nearly all of his contemporaries are cruising on covers and mere fumes of their past brilliance, in Just Like Moby Dick he has built a project that is almost as vital as anything else in his portfolio.


^ Terry Allen, "Houdini Didn't Like the Spiritualists" Just Like Moby Dick  (Paradise of Bachelors, 20)
- Katy Moffatt, "Walking On the Moon" Chrysalis  (Sunset Blvd, Feb 14)  D
- Bonny Light Horseman, "Bright Morning Stars" Bonny Light Horseman  (37d039, 20)
- Bart Budwig, "Northern Sky" Another Burn On the Astroturf  (Fluff & Gravy, 20)
- Wood Brothers, "Little Bit Broken" Kingdom In My Mind  (HoneyJar, 20)
- Sonny Landreth, "Wilds of Wonder" Blacktop Run  (Provogue, Feb 21)
- Waxahatchee, "Fire" Saint Cloud  (Merge, Mar 27)  D
- M Ward, "Unreal City" Migration Stories  (Anti, Apr 3)
- Bright Eyes, "Classic Cars" Cassadega  (Saddle Creek, 07)
- Stephen Malkmus, "Xian Man" Traditional Techniques  (Matador, Mar 6)  D
- No Ones, "No One Falls Alone" Great Lost No Ones Album  (Yep Roc, Mar 27)  D
- Sadies & King Khan, "Most Despicable Man Alive" single  (Ernest Jenning, 20)  D
- Pokey LaFarge, "Fuck Me Up" Rock Bottom Rhapsody  (New West, Apr 10)  D
- Clem Snide, "Roger Ebert" Forever Just Beyond  (Ramseur, Mar 27)  D
- Ryan Bingham, "Ghost of Travelin' Jones" Mescalito  (UMG, 07)
- Hailey Whitters, "Janice At the Bar" The Dream  (Pigasus, Feb 28)
- Blackie & the Rodeo Kings, "Trust Yourself" King of This Town  (BARK, 20)
- Pond Diver, "Loosen Up" Flashbacks EP  (Pond Diver, 20)
- Sadler Vaden, "Golden Child" Anybody Out There  (Dirty Mag, Mar 6)
- Left Arm Tan, "La Mirage" Left Arm Tan  (LAT, 20)
- Caleb Caudle, "Better Hurry Up" Better Hurry Up  (Baldwin County Public Records, Apr 3)  D
- Tift Merritt, "Traveling Alone" Traveling Alone  (Yep Roc, 12)
- Nathaniel Rateliff, "What a Drag" And It's Still Alright  (Stax, Feb 14)
- James Steinle, "Blue Collar Martyr" What I Came Here For  (Steinle, Feb 7)
- Mastersons, "Eyes Open Wide" No Time For Love Songs  (Red House, Mar 6)
- Sam Doores, "Other Side of Town" Sam Doores  (New West, Mar 13)
- Gill Landry, "Angeline" Skeleton At the Banquet  (Loose, 20)
- Katie Pruitt, "Grace Has a Gun" Expectations  (Rounder, Feb 21)
- Kurt Vile, "Songs For John in D" God Is Saying This To You  (Kemado, 09)
- Richard Buckner, "Dogwood" Old Enough To Know Better: 15 Years of Merge  (Merge, 04)


A week doesn't go by that we don't add a bunch of forthcoming records to A Routes & Branches Guide To Feeding Your Monster.  Just added, f'rinstance:  a March 27th Waxahatchee CD, Saint Cloud (Merge) that promises a more stripped back sound.  Scott Avett serves as producer for Forever Just Beyond, the first full-length from Eef Barzelay and Clem Snide in more than five years (Ramseur, Mar 27).  Caleb Caudle hasn't released an LP in the past several years that hasn't landed near the top of our year-end favorites list.  Expect the same for Better Hurry Up, recorded in Johnny Cash's cabin with contributions from Elizabeth Cook, Courtney Marie Andrews, John Paul White and more (Baldwin County Public Records, April 3).  With "Fuck Me Up", Pokey LaFarge has launched a fierce opening volley to introduce Rock Bottom Rhapsody, out April 10 on New West.  Expect just Shelby Lynne and a piano when she unleashes her topical self-titled project via Everso on April 17.  And we have an April 17 date as well for Light Sensitive, the next collection from Paul Burch and WPA Ballclub, also featuring Amy Rigby, Aaron Lee Tasjan, Luther Dickinson and more.  

Earlier ROUTES-casts have been removed; subscribe to our Spotify page to keep up with all our new playlists!