Rhizome DC is pleased to welcome Brendan Greaves, author of Truckload of Art: The Life and Work of Terry Allen — An Authorized Biography, for a reading and conversation with local music journalist John Lingan.

People’s Book will be there with copies of the book for sale!

TRUCKLOAD OF ART  is the definitive, deep-dive, authorized, and first-ever biography of Terry Allen, the internationally acclaimed visual artist and iconoclastic musician whose work bridges the disparate worlds of contemporary 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. Tracing influences from his Lubbock, Texas childhood, spent amidst wrestling matches and concerts organized by his father, to his formative years in the explosive Los Angeles art scene of the 1960s, author Brendan Greaves meticulously captures twenty years of both Allen’s art and music careers.

With humor and critical acumen, Greaves deftly recounts how Allen built a cult following with pioneering 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, exclusive interviews with Allen, his family members, and many of his notable friends, colleagues, and collaborators—from musicians like Richard Buckner, David Byrne, Rodney Crowell, Steve Earle, and Kurt Vile to artists such as Larry Bell, Bruce Nauman, Allen Ruppersberg, Kiki Smith, and Doug Wheeler Greaves offers a poetic, deeply personal portrait of arguably the most singularly multivalent storyteller of the American West.

About the Author:

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.

About the Moderator:
John Lingan has written for The New York Times Magazine, The Oxford American, Smithsonian, The Washington Post, and many other places. He is currently writing “A History of Rock and Roll in 15 Drummers,” due out in 2025 from Scribner. His most recent book is A Song for Everyone: The Story of Creedence Clearwater Revival, (Hachette Books, August 2022).

If you’d like to purchase this book online and still support People’s Book, follow the link below:

https://bookshop.org/a/88548/9780306924545