Hi, everybody.
I'm Claudia Bestor.
I'm director of Public Programs.
Thank you.
Welcome to the Hammer Museum.
This is a really,
really special night.
And I think a lot of you in the
audience probably have a hint
of that. You might know
what is in store. But
I, for one, am really, really
excited about tonight's program
with Terry Allen and Jo Harvey Allen
and Erin Machete.
I just wanna remind you that all of
the programs that we do here at the
Hammer Museum are offered
free to the public.
Of course, that doesn't mean they
actually are free.
So we have
a certain hard cost that goes
behind them. And I think maybe after
you walk out of here tonight
floating on air, you'll be
moved to join
and support us as a member.
Anyway, moving on,
I'm just going to quickly introduce
our amazing participants
and then let them do their thing.
Terry Allen is a visual artist,
musician and playwright.
He received a BFA from Shinada Art
Institute in 1966.
He's been awarded fellowships from
the Guggenheim and the National
Endowment for the Arts and was named
United States Artist Fellow.
He was also inducted into the Buddy
Holly Walk of Fame and was the first
recipient recipient of the Townes
Van Sant Songwriting Award at the
Austin Music Awards.
His artwork can be found in major
public collections, including
the Metropolitan Museum of Art,
MOMA, the Hirshhorn, Lackomar
MOCA and many others.
His theater works have been
performed in venues across the
United States at Redcap.
The UCLA Center for the Performing
Arts. The Lensink Center for the
Performing Arts, Brooklyn Academy
of Music and Mass MOCA.
And as radio plays have aired on Los
Angeles radio stations at KPFA K
K Exel U and KPCC
and broadcast nationally on NPR.
As a songwriter, he's recorded 12
albums of original music,
amazing music, including
the seminal classic Lubbock on
Everything, named one of the 50
essential albums of the 1970s
by Rolling Stone magazine and
20/20. He'll release a new album
titled Just Like Moby Dick.
A survey of his artwork from the
sixties to the present called The
Exact Moment that Happens in the
West is now on view at
L.A. louver galleries through
September 28
and Terrian. His longtime partner
and wife, Jo Harvey, recently
performed at the awesome nightclub
Zebulon here in L.A.
in conjunction with the L.A.
louver exhibition.
Full concert and tonight's
Talk and
Performance is intended to focus
specifically on Terry and Joe
Harvey's creative work that they've
produced together in theater and
performance.
Jo Harvey Allen is an actress,
playwright, poet and pioneer of
women and radio.
Perhaps best known for her numerous
film roles and critically acclaimed,
one woman shows she's
been praised as a storyteller and
the best Texas tradition by the L.A.
Weekly and has elicited comparisons
with Flannery O'Connor.
According to The New York Times,
she's written and starred and toured
her one-woman plays throughout the
U.S. and abroad, including
productions of a moment's hesitation
at the new school in New York.
Counter Angel also at the new
school.
And as it is in Texas,
at St Ann's Church in New York City.
Her other One-Man plays include
Hallelu.
Originally produced at the Aspen
Museum of Art and MOCA
Duck Blind at the Corner Theater
here in L.A.
and home run in Austin, Texas.
Among her many film credits are
roles and David Byrne's cult classic
True Stories.
Fried Green Tomatoes, The Client
and helmsmen.
And most recently, she was nominated
for Best Lead Actress by the
International Film Festival of World
Cinema Berlin for her role in
the 2015 film The Other
Kind. Directed by Roslyn
Rosen from 1967
to 1971, she hosted
the weekly radio show Rawhide
and Roses on KPCC,
making her the first female country
music deejay in the United States.
And you can hear it online.
Some of the remaining
recordings have been archived online
and they're amazing.
Terrian Joe halad Jo
Harvey Allen are both natives of
Lubbock, Texas, and been married for
57 years.
Since the 1970s, they've
collaborated and performed together
in over two dozen theatrical
productions for the stage and radio.
They live and work in Santa Fe, New
Mexico and Austin, Texas.
And tonight, the Hammer's own
curator Machete will be
moderating this dialog
and performance.
So please join me in welcoming
Air Marshal Eddie Terry Allen
and Jo Harvey Allen.
It is 1957.
He is at the kitchen window.
She has been gone for three days.
He never knew what to do.
So he just waited.
He knows she was probably out
drinking.
The piano in the living room was
not enough.
He understood it.
She was a lot younger than Ham.
But he still had the feeling.
So he waited.
Stand in the
kitchen.
Stand in the hall.
Stand and
stand against.
Better.
To the
standard.
Dan,
stand by.
Make you stand in the living
room,
stand a
better.
You better.
How?
Yes, close up
when
down.
Back
all the furniture you can find
better.
Better.
To the
better.
You better
do.
It's 1958.
They've been together longer than
they were ever with anyone else.
They lay in separate beds
and talk about their lives.
And the stories come up
one by one.
And great spaces open
up and move in and out between
them.
She says a person has to
dig into the heart of everything.
And all that gets dug
out, what little of it is all
there is or ever will be.
He says he remembers every
game.
She says she remembers
every song.
Suddenly, it's not just
about the two of them.
It's all of it, most
of which can never be saved.
It just lies there in the dark,
like the black gap between
the two bayard's that holds their
hands.
It has nothing to do with growing.
Oh,
really?
He just boneyard playing
a much good for much.
He just bonded.
Playing
run from.
He couldn't hold
his him hand to play
around.
Same Nanfu Wang back
home.
He just planned
blow a match
just by playing
that
in south Alabama.
Had stuck a pencil through the
batter's tongue during the bottom of
a batter.
Gotten beaned in the Adam's apple.
He was having a convulsion and
trying to swallow his own time
while the other players held him
down.
He grabbed the umpire's yella
scoring pencil and shoved it
straight through to the other side.
It didn't work.
The batter pastorek there in the
box. Purple is a turn at
both clubs.
Stood around awhile, looking at
two of the teammates, put dimes
in his eyes and carried him off
and laid him under a quale
behind the concession.
Then they finished the game.
There's a laugh moving around
blanda ball from town to town
to see.
We're not said to
be
playing the ball much
good for much else.
He just born to play on the ball.
The next day they played
a doubleheader up in Mobile,
then took the night trying back
to Houston.
He was forty six years.
He heard all over, and it
was nineteen two.
And he would never play ball
again.
That pink tongue he did.
He was hanging at the spot.
Got to play ball.
Settle down.
I remember, you know, lifted
Tillett, cursing the Yankees
off Sanders
River, but he just bonehead
play the ball much good
for much.
He just bonded playing.
He is cursing the Yankees.
It's the final game of the World
Series.
He's cursing the television, he
curses the players.
All they care about is the money
the pitcher takes ever
to throw the damn ball.
She can hear him in the kitchen.
She pours a small whiskey.
The Yankees win.
The television is all.
The game is over.
He's 73 years old.
She comes in and takes his hand.
It's time.
Her fingers move lightly
over his big knuckles like
she's playing the piano.
He feels himself suddenly come
loose and fly
out in a great high and
familiar. Ah.
And in some infinite and secret
place.
She flies away with him.
Hi, y'all.
Thank you both so much.
I have to say that it's a great
honor to share a stage with you,
but I'm reminded of my
talent lessness.
And I really
it's kind of amazing to be
as close to the performance as I am.
So. And play a small part
in some way. But we're gonna
have a couple of kind of interludes
of conversation between music.
And I thought maybe what
we could do is just to give a bit of
context because we're
specifically kind of organize this
around a few specific works.
And
to maybe one point of clarification
is that, you know, importantly,
they're not collaborative works in
any way, but they are
examples of of moments
in your kind of individual histories
where you've come together on
various projects, whether it's
Joe Harvey as a performer
or a voice in some
in some cases.
And specifically to start
with this piece dug out,
which is an excerpt that you just
performed and.
You know, it's it's I think in a
characteristic way of
many of these pieces is they're
multi-dimensional and multiforme.
So how are even experiencing it now
is probably perhaps like a kind
of extension of that in some
ways, knowing that they in some
cases began as installations
or take on another life as
a theater piece, have drawings
and and other objects or sculptural
works that
make up the many parts of dug out as
well.
But.
Maybe specifically if you could, you
know, talk about Dugout as it
relates to your, you know, the
family history, that it seems to be
evoked by the narrative of
the of the lyrics and of the
story.
Yeah. Dugout
is based on my parents.
And my dad was a professional
ballplayer and my mother was
a professional piano player.
My dad was 60 when I was born.
So he was born in 1886
and his dad fought in the
Civil War.
So that was my granddad.
So it was a very close kind
of history.
But both my parents were
kind of incredible
storytellers.
And
I grew up hearing these incredible
stories about
baseball and about music
and about the
lives of these two people who
had pretty much.
Gone that lived their lives.
By the time I came along,
what they loved to do.
My mother quit.
I think I played she played
her last gig when I was about
6 years old.
My dad was 60 when I was born.
So he had quit playing baseball,
but he always considered himself
a baseball player.
But anyway,
I heard all of these
stories and
I got asked to do a radio show by
New American radio.
And I
was always interested in how you
told stories and how they changed
and how they tell stories.
And these stories changed.
And I went and wanted to do
something with them with the radio.
And
so I started writing them all
down. And then I put them in kind of
a narrative and
made it the story of
this man and woman from the
time that they were born to
the time they met each other until
he passed away.
So it's like
all of the stories are probably lies
and now
goes there.
You know, they had no problem
lying like dogs all.
But there was a
there was a through line kind of
went through that.
That was our life.
And that's what Dugout
really became.
It became this
started out being a radio show
telling these stories
and then kind of developed
into a whole body of visual works.
Couple of installations and a
theater piece.
And then I got really interested in
what was happening to me at the time
that these stories were happening
and what my stories were.
And so I did a whole other body
of work called
War Boy.
And, you know,
there was a theater piece.
So it altogether
it was under this, you
know, idea of dug out.
My mother was born in a dugout
in Oklahoma.
My dad spent a lot of time
in dugouts playing baseball.
So that's where
that was a connector.
And a boy, he went up to
the majors in
1910
and played for the St. Louis Browns
and then spent the rest
of his life playing in
Texas league
player manager.
I have to say.
Terry came from a very
colorful family.
And I thought
when he started writing about his
family, he might begin to have
a nervous breakdown
and it scared the hell
out of me.
But everything
that was too crazy for print,
he turned into the
sweetest stories.
It's very.
And that was that the piece is.
It begins and kind of.
I mean, you started working on it
and then mid-90's.
Is that right?
Yeah, the radio show, I think was in
the early 90s or whatever.
So, I mean, somewhat before
we get kind of too far ahead,
though, I did think it would be
important to kind of go back maybe
to the to the late 60s
and Joe Harvey specifically,
because I think radio comes up
so much in these works,
as, you know, being conceived as
audio pieces for the radio,
which is, you know, fascinating that
you're thinking about that
arena for this work.
But knowing what we also know about
Joe Harvey's experience with radio,
you know, starting in 1967 with
Ride and Roses, I want to
I mean, I read a review
of Dug Out where the the writer
Molly Gaines says the most
consistent element of Terry
Allen's multi-part multi-media
invasion of Los Angeles
is the quirky and thoroughly
charming voice of his wife,
performer Joe Harvey.
Alan, who's Texas twang,
spits forth like dirt
clods in a slingshot.
I never heard that.
I couldn't have said it better
myself.
Oh, come on.
So, I mean, Joe Araby, I think
because it's it is such a
signature of your character
and this kind of lends itself so
well to the radio.
Maybe just if you could talk about
the kind of your earliest
experiences with radio and maybe
how it kind of led to then your role
in later pieces with Terry.
Well,
you know, we just had
two little boys, Buck and
Bale,
and I
really that's really the only thing
I ever really knew I wanted to
do was have kids.
And so I was very happy at home.
And Terry walked in one day
and said, well, are you kind of go
back to work again or
what?
And I guess, like, made it up
on the spot. I said, oh, yeah, I'm
going to radio school.
It never occurred to me in a
million years.
I never even knew there was a radio
school.
And the next day, Terry
walks in the door.
He says, Are you still going to
radio school?
And I go, Oh, Epps, yeah,
I am.
And he said, Well, I got your radio
show.
I get a lot of for Terry.
I mean, Claudia said something,
I forget what it was because it just
goes by me. I just take them all in.
You know, I got one review
here in L.A..
That was a film director.
I loved that.
So
anyway, you know, I'm very
happy with that situation.
So Terry said.
Well, the first one is going to
be.
We will tape it, but the second
one will be lives.
And so
I went it was KP P.C.
and fortunately, it was
the first underground rock station
in the whole country.
And you can actually say fuck
on the air.
So everybody
now everybody says it, you know.
But then everybody
was glued to it.
So it became a really popular show.
And so it was wonderful
because it was in the basement
of the First Presbyterian Church
in Pasadena.
And we did it early in the morning.
And it was all the rock and country
people came.
And then after that was Bernie
Perle's blues show.
So B.B.
King, all the great blues players
came nearby. Want to come?
You know, because I could say
anything.
And.
And then after that was live
Firesign Theater.
So that was the 60s.
So it was really fun.
Yeah, and the Holy Modal Rounders
were the Firesign Theater's house
band.
Yeah. And I think.
Thanks.
Sam Shepherd was playing drums form,
but it was
it was kind of a you know, everybody
was kind of pushing their first
records and pushing their records.
So we had these interviews and these
people came out and
it was literally no one would
leave. Once you got there,
you know, people want to see Bernie
Perle's show a night and then Bernie
Purl. All those people went to see
the Firesign Theater.
So it was a huge crowd in this
little studio.
By the time the day was over.
But I
programed the music and Joe Harvey
talk shows were like
the theme show was
like we do win about, you know,
illicit love, dogs,
trucks,
just kind of whatever popped up that
we had my real I guess.
Yeah, well, it didn't matter what
the show was about.
Joe Harvey, all she talked about
were her relatives.
There was a very artful show.
One of the things that you said
yesterday, Terry, when we're talking
you said that Joe Harvey has always
been the voice of your theater
pieces, which I think you meant
it also in just a very
straightforward way that, you know,
her voice, that's a dirt clod
and a slingshot has always been
kind of an integral part of the
work.
But I also kind of took it to mean
something much more.
And I think it would be a good
time to maybe just talk about the
nature of your creative
relationship.
In addition to how you've kind of
had such an incredible you know,
I mean, it's a one advantage of
having an actor in the house
now is that
you can throw ideas off a man.
Jo Harvey Allen kind of early on
he realized that
she could shift
personas like almost
in the middle of a sentence.
You could you know, she did that at
the kitchen table, too,
you know.
But but but
anyway, yes, when I when I
wrote these pieces,
I always heard her voice
because most of most of the pieces
initially especially were about
family and were about actually
about friends
that kind of came out of a
biographic fiction
of these people.
And Jo Harvey Allen knew
all of these very same people and
knew these same stories.
That was cause we you know, we've
known each other since we were 11
years old.
So and these people
that we grew up in were,
you know, that I ended up writing
things about and doing things
that she was kind of the
perfect foil and perfect voice
of those, not only in terms of
performing it, but also
in just talking out and developing
it. And whenever.
So
we always you know,
I Jaha has always acted
in what are the pieces
and I.D.ed.
And and so we'd work for each
other. She would work for me as an
actor.
I would work for her.
I'd write songs or do SATs
or
whatever. But.
So the only
time that, you know, life was really
a living hell was when we
collaborated.
And, you know, because we were
both so cold blooded
with one another.
When it comes to making something,
we're trying to be so as honest
with each other.
And when it came right
down to it, no one would ever be
as honest.
You know, that was your RV
as far as my writing went.
And it always pissed me off,
you know.
But but I've come back
and realized that there was
something absolutely true about it
and to consider.
And I think that it was mutual.
Yeah, that's Eartha.
The first time I showed
Terry, I'd written the first chapter
of a book and he said, well, that's
great. Now start over.
And I did
the one thing that I'll say before,
maybe we then we'll go on to
another.
It's just that this idea of living
with an actress and having to kind
of deal with the character aspect,
it's one of the anecdotes from David
Byrne about lying
woman going backwards is
her character. Right.
And when he approached Joe Harvey,
he said that, you know, he asked
if she'd be interested in
playing a part in true stories.
And she said, I'll play all of them.
No, not now.
He didn't say that.
He said
you could play all of these
parts.
I thought a minute.
And I put a lot of work into that.
And I went to New York
with just one goal in mind
because I'd nailed all the other
parts I thought.
And I was trying
to convince him that I could also
play the male parts
because I can look exactly
like a man when I put,
you know, hair, all in part my
hair and all that stuff.
And so
he didn't like that,
but he did promise me.
He said, you can pick one part.
But he said in the next movie,
you can play all
the parts.
So he sent me a script later
on, a Snow White and Seven Dwarfs.
He's the liar.
Should we do?
Yeah. We go to that,
too.
Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. This is.
From Memoir's, which is a piece,
it's up in Luber right now, a
video piece, but
I think it was written to be
performed.
Audio Liebert also possibly could
be performed
live.
And
it's a little section about
my uncles who were
very heavily tattooed.
They were all Navy people on my
mother's side of the family.
And
I think like a lot of people from
the panhandle of Texas, which
is just flat, is death,
you know, in every direction.
And I think it was that horizon
that drew, like a lot of people that
were enlisted in
service, enlisted in the Navy,
because I think there was a comfort
to that that horizon
in any
way my uncles would.
They were like I said, they were
heavily tattooed.
I had one uncle and had a Longhorn
steer tattooed on his chest
and eyes were about were
nipples were and
knows there were rabbits that came
running out and made a belt
around his running neck.
And the horns
the horns of the steer tilt
at the ends of his wrists.
When he did, that
was his Longhorns.
And I remember and it was beautiful.
And it was done in somewhere
like the Philippines with
bamboo.
You know, they
tend to.
So anyway, this is
this is a little thing about them.
In the summer of the late 40s and
early 50s, whenever there was a
family gathering, the whole bunch
would take chairs and wash tubs,
full Ashdown beer out to whatever
yard was there, put meat and roast
[Unrecognized] on the fire, stripped
down to their skivvies and sit
around sending them sales
that smoke drink i bottles
of beer and whiskey and paper cups
and tell what was sheerly outrageous
lies about various naval
battles and loose foreign women
seeing body sea ballads
and each trying to outdo the other
by showing off their heavily
tattooed bodies.
From the time you could barely
crawl, you would
sit in the dark between their
feet and gaze transfixed
at them, mesmerized
by the pictures on their scan,
and trace these fantastic
images slowly with your fingertips,
imprinting them in your memory.
Panthers' birds,
naked hula girls, angels,
the rock of ages, longhorn
steers with rabbits running out
their noses, raging
bull seitan snorting fire
monkeys' Jesus snakes,
skulls and hearts
wrapped in curly banners saying
Mom or joy or
remember pearl
so maged with machines and others
ham hammered with bamboo
sticks and needles,
wonderous drawings
from mysterious poor say
exotic countries all over the
world scrawled across their
arms and their bellies in their
chests, their throats back in
legs, the history
of their lives in ink.
And you as a child love
and it.
Absolutely enchanted.
Just looking at and touching those
living pictures on the flesh.
I didn't know it at the time, but
that experience, along with the
clutch of Tales from
the Crypt, Mad magazine and
classic comic books stashed
under my bed and finding
a couple of Tijuana Bibles in my
dad's sock drawer,
or my first deep seduction
into the true passions of the visual
arts.
Say
an ocean
sailing on deep
sea
sand.
See,
I'm just trying to keep
my ship.
O o o
o o
something crazy.
Something crazy.
Yes, something
crazy.
I'm just an
ocean.
Shouldn't try and.
Find.
You
just try to find,
you
find.
When your cousin finally came
back from the war, he lived
in a trailer out on the flats north
of Amarilla.
His feet were shot up,
his family being killed in a head on
collision with a drunk.
And the war he'd murdered is so.
When he found out about his family,
he was in a firefight in the jungle
near the Kuchi tunnels just out of
Saigon.
Someone tapped him on the shoulder
and told him that he had an
emergency call and was ordered
to get back to the rear faced.
Less than 24 hours later,
he was in Amarilla standing
in ice on the cement porch
in the middle of a blue norther,
looking at the front door of an
empty house.
His little girl, his wife and her
Jodi boyfriend were killed outright.
He said the little girl was
decapitated, his
little boy was critical
but would survive with the withered
arm. Bad temper
and a future in one penitentiary
after another.
Your cousin went back to finish his
first tour and
then did two more and
deserted in the middle of the last
one.
I walked outside with him.
He had a heavy bow and leather
quiver full of arrows.
It was 110 degrees and we
were smoking dope and drinking beer.
The horizon was dead, flat and
shimmering with heat.
When Old Dog was under the trailer
and its heavy breath was only then
you could hear a large
straw stuff.
Target was set up about 50
feet away.
He limped over to a worn spot
in the dirt and settled himself
facing the target.
I stood back and over to the side.
He pulled an arrow out, stuck the
bow string in a notch, raised
it, pull back and aimed.
I watched his face.
It was the emptiest thing I ever
saw.
He shot the arrow and it hit the
target.
He noticed and shot another one.
It's ancient, he said.
Oldest fucking Asia.
Every time I let it go, something
a whole lot deeper and older gets
let go.
I always feel better.
Then he shot several more very
deliberate and cold as ice
all stuck close together near the
center of the target.
I might go complete.
Compete pro..
I think I might have been meant to
do this shit since the day I was
born, but he wouldn't.
Over the years, his latest wife
would call and say, well, he's
gone again.
He'd become what is called a trip
wire, that he'd quit whatever
job he had and go off into some deep
wilderness. Armed to the teeth with
several of his buddies
for months at a time,
they try to get as far away from
humanity as they could
do a lot of drugs and live
like they lived over there.
Never panned out very well.
My cousin died in the nineties
and New Year's Eve outside of
Tacoma.
Remember those psychadelic
nights
when you had come loose and floated
into the lives
of girls without any
tops at all
down in the dirt
after the foam?
I remember how
the fantasies weren't
a little flags
in front of the track homes.
The church
is
a wonder things left.
Heard it all
down and returned
after the.
Yeah, remember the flower children
when they're shit eating grins,
wearing buckskin, build in
deep and be
Indians.
And remember the reservation
with the drunks against the wall
that turquoise to the
stem in the dirt
after the.
Remember the holy row
running ray
led
from the mouths of mystics when they
see
flesh from Jesus
while the crowd
down in the dirt
after the.
Remember the Christian soldiers
armed to the teeth beneath the
stars, watching
jungle burn from the side,
their armored cars
saw it on TV
while we ate just what we saw.
So we to partake in history
that our names being worn
down
after the.
Remember those
psychedelic night
hit and floaty, it
ended a lot.
Now girls have found a new
tops at.
After the.
Yeah,
it's interesting that the order.
I mean, it's obviously quite
deliberate. But hadn't really
noticed before that, you know, with
dug out, there is something of a
kind of through line that connects
maybe the civil war to the
kind of like post-World War Two era
American history.
And then especially the anecdote
about your own story and kind of
main impetus behind this work by
Mars has a lot to do with your
cousins experience.
Yeah. After after the war.
And just.
Which leads me are after the Vietnam
War, leads me to the question of
how, you know, these
personal experiences within your own
kind of family history becomes
such an important part of your work.
And because there is obviously
you're working in a number of
different formats, that this
question of storytelling comes up a
lot and how you're able to then
translate, you know, lived
experience into story and why
that form is so important for you.
Well, I think it's you know, work
comes from the things that
affect you, that affect your life.
That mean mean something to you.
And
I think for my generation, I know
that being
an ally all of the 60s
where everything was kind of
changing, all of the isms
were collapsing or merging or
whatever.
Art wise.
But also music was
every bit as much a volatile form
of expression, I think is
as
anything at least it
was for me.
And
I don't regarding the war, it's
it's you know, if you're dealing
with stories and you're dealing with
time and you're dealing with
America, then you're dealing with
a war because there's always one
going on, you know.
And
so I'd like memoirs.
I just kind of thought about start
thinking about all of these
connections and these
over long periods
of time with my family and how
certain wars were affecting their
lives and affecting everybody's
lives.
So they became
I know when
dealt very personally with my
cousin, I never made the connection
that what was happening
with him was
like something that was happening in
your family.
But it was the same thing that was
happening to the whole country.
It was collapsing in that way
or it was being damaged
in that particular kind of way.
And I started thinking
about and just the aftermath of
the war and the people I knew
were there and started making pieces
and writing songs.
And then I got invited to
Thailand to buy German
film company to do the soundtrack
for a film
on called Amerasian about
Amarasinghe kids coming from Vietnam
to Thailand because it was
kind of a safe zone.
And so
I worked with a Thai band and
I was kind of the translator
for that film company with these
American vets.
They were expatriates in
Thailand.
So that all of that information,
I think, just
kind of kept propelling
this this body of work,
which I did on pretty much all
through the 80s.
I did a lot of other works, too,
during that period of time.
But that was kind of a consistent
thing that
until I just got.
So I realized there was no ending
to it. And it just didn't end.
And so I just stopped doing it.
But that's
kind of where that was, what
that was about.
And Jo Harvey Allen tests
to a kind of similar and
you recently referred to yourself as
a documentarian of a certain
kind as well.
And I feel like.
So much of what you've tried to do
also is translate real life into
kind of story in some way.
So wondering if you can also talk
about that aspect.
Wow.
The first piece I did was
really autobiographical, but it was
all based on poems.
So it was a poetry
performance.
But
I think after that I
started interviewing
people at Terry's suggestion.
I had gone to
continuing the radio thing.
I'd gone to the Willie
Nelson thing to interview
Waylon Jennings and I'm talking to
Waylon.
And he said, Oh, God, I
gotta go. You know, we're having a
really nice time talking.
He said, I gotta go do this
interview. So I just didn't show up.
And so I was
supposed to be with you.
Yeah, with me. So I didn't
go.
And so I was miserable
about that.
And we were at a restaurant in
Lubbock and Terry said, you know,
why do you always have to talk to
people that are famous anyway?
Why don't you interview this
waitress?
So I ask if I could go to her house
and.
When I got to her house, she
was real bubbly at the cafe, but
when I got to her house, I sat
there with her two little children
and they had
waited and waited.
We waited for hours for her to get
home from work and they had
only eaten French fries from
McDonald's.
They bought fifteen cents from a
neighbor and
she came home with a bloody eye.
And then I started talking
to her and I just got
so involved
and how she could ever
get out of this hole that she was
in that
it started a book
first.
And then the book became a play
based on all these women that
I traveled around for several years
interviewing waitresses
and that sort of set up.
I did it first in truck stops
and first I dated the Chicken Burger
Cafe in Anchorage, Alaska.
And so I had
real people in the restaurant,
in the cafe, plus
people that knew it was apply and it
was all scripted.
But it set up
doing performances in the real
location based on
real people.
And so I sort of map
all my work became known as
that. I was really documenting
characters and the plays
were word for word.
These compulsives of these
characters.
And so at that sort
of I think that was sort of the
identity of my work for a very
long time.
Well, Jo Harvey Allen, do we get
information like very different,
like if we're sitting in a cafe
and in a booth
and I'm listening, I'm
certainly here some I'm interested
in some people behind me, then
that's how I get information.
Jo Harvey, if she's sitting down and
she hears somebody talking about
that, she gets she just gets up and
goes and sits with them.
So it's two different ways
of figuring stuff out.
Another interesting thing is that
I'll say, Terry,
you know, you can't see them, but
the people right behind you.
They're incredible.
You know, they're just this and
that. A.l say, yeah.
And the people right behind
you just threw up on their table
or something.
You know what
we're saying? Different stuff.
It's appropriate to talk about.
I think especially in relationship
to memoirs,
because as the installation
of memoirs is one of the most kind
of like, you know,
endearing aspects of it is that
you're both facing each other
and you kind of look at each other
as you're reciting these passages.
Kind of thought about it as I
watched, you know, Terry, you play
and Jo Harvey Allen look along
lovingly at Terry,
which is such
an important part of the
installation as well, that you're
both kind of playing off
of each other in a certain way.
And I wondered, I know
that it doesn't necessarily
correspond. But I also know that
recently, you know, you've had this
been part of this big kind of
archival project,
getting your archive ready.
And it's now at Texas Tech and
everything like that.
And so that already in itself must
carry with it a lot of kind of
retrospective kind of thinking
and looking back at your own
personal histories and how much
memoirs also, you know, deals
with that and such a direct way
crawling down memory lane.
And does that I mean, does that
inform the work in some way
or that that experience of kind of
processing your your lives
in this way that will have now a
kind of archival you make
makes you want to run away from it
and do something new?
Yeah, well, it does.
There's been like all these reissues
of records and then dealing
with the archives, which has been
eight years down a process.
And then these
pieces in the show that
louvers put together, which is
in our survey of
of work from the 60s to
the present.
It's.
Yeah.
It you know, it
really
was ready to move on that cut a new
record last May and
wrote all new songs for men been
performing no songs course.
But that's the thing with cutting
your record. That by the time it's
released, all those new songs
are so old you can't stand them
anymore.
You know, so many times.
But I think both
of us are kind of chomping at the
bit to to do to make
new pieces and so forth.
But
I think it's it's also I think
there's something inevitable that
you you reach our age and
you you think back, you
know, you think back on your life.
You think back what you've done.
You think about, you know, what you
still want to do.
And
so, you know, it's just
you're just kind of whistling
through the graveyard.
I know all he's saying.
Not me.
In I guess in the process of
looking back and you mentioned the
reissues of the albums
on Bachelors of Paradise.
Yeah.
And then in the context of the show
at L.A., louver know, which I feel
as in some ways as an extension,
that this program can kind of
shed light on another side of of
your respective works.
But one of the things that's so
apparent and I love our show is that
the connection between music and
visual art and it's also apparent
also in the reissues.
And I wondered maybe just to talk
about these kind of different
cultural arenas and how you've had
to kind of bounce back and forth,
you know, in very real
ways sometimes that they have very
different protocols
and.
Yeah. So it's always kind of
generalities being that,
you know, you deal with a record
company in the past
in a way for me.
And they would say,
well, you know, I like it
like this music.
But what's this art yet?
You know, and then then
you go talk to some
gallery person and
you get the same thing.
You know, you want, you know, what's
his music show, you know?
So I realized early
on kind of that
that was an attitude that
was prevalent in,
you know, with with a lot of these
institutions.
I don't think artists or musicians
I ever felt felt that way.
You know, and never thought
there was that.
I never felt that kind of thing
coming from friends or
whether a musician, an artist or
whatever.
But
I don't know. I always thought of it
as one thing.
And even when I was in junior
high school arms tell me the
other day, I used to keep a little
journal and I would put I want
to be an artist, a musician,
a writer.
And then and next time I would
write. I want to be a writer,
musician and artist and then
a musician or a writer or
artist.
And so I
tell them from early on,
you know, I managed to confuse
myself.
But they also think
that.
You know, for me, it is
totally one thing.
It's never been
making a painting or a sculpture
or
an installation or whatever.
It was never any more
important than writing
or meant anything more value
than writing. Just a little country
song. I think writing a song,
period.
So I'd I don't think
in those in those kind of terms
that there's one there's a
high art, low art or whatever.
It's just what you do.
It's what you make within your
necessity is to do something.
I was following it to like your
senses. You've got like five senses
at least, and
you somehow managed just to smell
here,
feel, smell, you know,
taste, whatever all of those senses
at once. You know, you can do it all
at once without just falling,
falling over, you know, and you
usually don't get up in the morning
and say, today, I'm only going to
I'm only gonna smell thanks.
I'm just gonna smell.
It's coming.
So to me, it's kind of it's fuller
if you kind of use whatever you've
got, you know, to use
and Jo Harvey Allen is it.
Would it be applicable to to say the
same about performance
and thinking about, you know,
performance within art context
versus theater versus television
versus film and how he'd managed
to kind of move fluidly between all
of those?
Yeah. Every one of them is
different, though.
I don't know, I I just.
It was the same play to do
it in a truck stop or honky tonk
and then do it, you know, or to
do a revival preacher by the side
of the road or to do it in the
theater.
And it just it's.
It just seems like.
Natural.
So, you know, it just
it's whatever comes
round. You know, it.
It's a lot of times I think it's the
context that you do it to.
It's like I've been in those
situations where I play a club
one night, you know, with a band
and the setlist.
And then the next night
I'll play a concert in a museum.
Same band, same setlist,
you know, and better
or worse, acoustics and better
or worse, acoustics in the museum.
Well, it's not even that.
It's it's like in a club,
it's direct.
People, you know, directly
respond to the music.
They just respond.
They dance, sing along
and they'll do whatever. But they
respond to what's happening
in an art kind of context.
It's much more people sitting
back and thinking, what should
I think about this
now and then?
And by the time they figure
out what they're supposed to think
about, it's over.
So didn't say
so we do Gosha.
Huh? Gosha.
Yeah.
Yeah, go ship.
It's a body of work
in theater piece about
Anthony Minato, the
visionary artist,
poet and playwright
who had a huge think influence
on American theater.
Contemporary American theater.
Living Theater.
Sam Shepard.
Patti Smith.
All in all, a whole generation
kind of, I think was informed by
what he did.
And I came across him when I was in
Shinada. I was up in
San Francisco at City Lights
Bookstore, and that was when
Ferlinghetti was actually there.
He came around the bookstore and
worked behind the counter.
And I remember seeing
this book that with
his face on it and
it was like so compelling.
I picked up the book and I started
looking at. And I had this series of
these incredible haunted faces
and drawings and kind of portraits,
self-portraits.
And I took
it up to the counter, not to memory.
Telling Ferlinghetti, I said I had
I have no money, but I really
have to have this book.
And he looked at me and he just
said, take the
fucker.
And so I took it.
And I later
found out it was Antón 9 Arto.
And it was the first kind of
English translation of a Jack
Hershfield and put together
an anthology of his writings.
And over the years I was always
interested in what he did and
read most of the stuff that I could.
But when we perform Dug
Out in Houston,
the French alliance of Houston
actually approached me and asked
me if I would be would do a
piece like for me
to write a piece and
do it in Leone at this
big theater workshop they
have there.
And so I you know,
I was very excited
about the possibility of doing that.
The first thing I thought is I want
to do a piece about our style
and which is eventually
what I did. There's also a
sculpture piece called Go Ship Road.
There's an
Momo Loamy Osmo, which was
over at the warehouse at louver.
But
anyway, these days we're getting
ready to do we'll do some excerpts
from that that play.
It is so beautiful hair.
So absolutely uncontrollable.
On the mountain, a green garden
stair step with rock walls
winding around, pots of flowers,
cactus, no vine covered
trees, a soft
dry breeze drifts through the
vague, soggy light
and a tiny native city
is enclosed inside a black,
burnt out hearth.
So surely
the sweet baby Jesus
breeze is impossible secret
into every cranny nook.
The house is perfect.
But the beautiful mountain
disappears.
Under dark green clients
crackling and falling apart
with lightning.
And a new mountain rises from
the choking dust.
Broken away from all of its natural.
Under ugly, cloudless
brown skies.
Desert.
The red plays.
It's absolutely uncontrollable.
Our Arto know
the power of this face.
He did numerous self-portraits
during his life,
but none is amazing and terrifying
as those he made while
institutionalized in
road days.
He made himself over and over.
Just himself.
Inside, outside.
Wrong side under.
He made every place he never
was.
He drew demon beings who
came at it not.
But all the images were of him say
off.
He was a beautiful young man.
He was handsome as a movie
star.
He stared at himself in the mirror
and would scream and scream
for hours.
In nineteen thirty six,
addicted to heroin
jaundice, from the infernal deluge
of his own language,
upset at the public failure
of his radical theater ideas,
he saw a fresh perspective
on the nature of magic.
And the condition of the world.
He got a haircut
and went to Mexico.
Do they dream
of heyo
in heaven?
Are they restless
with their reward?
Does God spend time
with his angel
or does he show
them?
No.
Rick.
Do they dream
of hell in
heaven?
Do they regret
how hard they
try?
Wish now that man.
Much more sinful.
Just a minute.
Landed in bare
beauty, made his teeth grind.
He took the first trying to Mexico
City.
He arrived, destined to
get a prestigious brand in Paris.
His security liked your farm and
the children's director.
His subject was the idiocy
of communism and Janet
Tail.
He thought it went very well.
He used to lecture money to buy
blank paper and codeine.
There's something
strange about him,
I
guess.
Don't want
to know.
Do they dream
of
heaven
before life is
sweeter?
Was.
Go
so far.
Close to
the
gates after.
Keep COO.
Later, he fell down and couldn't get
at.
Monda he cried,
but he couldn't get it.
A teenage passer by kicked
him in the head.
He woke up filthy in an infirmary.
On the street outside,
a violin was playing.
Weeks later, after
securing a loan from the one
wealthy French patron who still
had confidence saying
he left Mexico City.
Suffering severe headaches
and in morphine withdrawal.
He traveled north on horseback
into the deserts of Chihuahua
to the land of the Tom Marr,
his Indian guide was frightened
having.
He thought he was Elbridge Ho.
The which man?
He found a staff failure
and he believed it to be the staff
of St. George or the staff
of Jesus, and in his
madness he traveled
to Ireland to give it
back to the Irish people.
Upon his return from Ireland to
France, Arto spent
the rest of his life in various
mental institutions, one being
Roday days where he received
over 50 electroshock treatments.
It would also be one of his most
productive periods as an
artist and a writer.
Arto died of intestinal
cancer in 1948.
He was found by Gardner
in his small quarters
clutching a shoe.
The staff of St. George.
The staff of Jesus
was never recovered.
So he traveled
from the red place.
Into the mysterious world.
Grasping to take everythign.
Oh, but it is so
beautiful here.
So dangerous with the of.
So for.
And so absolutely
uncontrollable.
So, Joe Harvey, you said
yesterday that that
this was a particularly difficult
role to play.
And I think in part because
in that characteristic fashion,
there are also many voices and many
characters, but it's all kind of
circulating around the figure of
Arto.
And in some way you're getting into
the mind of him
and.
It's two part question just
again about the kind of your
willingness to be a conspirator
and in Terry's, you
know, projects in that
way, but then also if you can
just talk about that.
The difficulty of performing in
in such a way that you have to kind
of move through.
Voices or personalities or kind
of narratives that are also so
tied up within knots within
itself and within a single piece.
Well, I've always
really been honored to be in Terry's
pieces, Terry.
I love Terry's writing.
I've loved his plays and.
Really happy always to be
in those pieces.
But when he brought me, we
were on our way to France, we were
literally leaving next few
days. He was writing the play
right up until the last minute and
he brought it to me
and I was in the living room and he
gave it to me. And then he walked
out to his studio.
And when he came back,
I said, Well,
I trust you.
But I hated it,
I hated it.
And he knew I hated it, but we
were on our way to perform it.
And when I got to France, I just
could not do the play.
It was so vile
and
I mean seriously vile.
And while he was quite
mad, Arto and
I was to play not only our toe,
but all of the his mother
and all the demons in
his head called the daughters
of the heart to be born
and.
I didn't want out.
Chill out.
They were grown man by day, and I
still didn't want them to hear me
saying these things and I didn't
want. I just didn't want to do it.
And so I couldn't learn it at all.
I shouldn't even tell.
This is kind of long.
But anyway.
Yeah. Don't tell it.
Well, I was going to.
I was. I'm telling it anyway.
I was going to.
I was actually
up for real gun
to feign a heart attack
because I didn't think that
I thought Terry would
divorce me if
we got to France and I didn't do the
play.
And so
but a miracle happened.
And.
A real miracle happened.
And I walked out and called
everybody to come down
from the you know, they most of
spoke French.
They didn't. They really didn't
understand me properly for the
better.
But I told them now
I understood this play and I
was going to just really play
all the demons that haunted Ourt
Ardo.
And when
this thing happened to me, I just
had this thing with our toe
in my head.
And I said, I get
it now. And all the suffering
that you endured, he was brilliant.
He was just brilliant.
And everybody hated him.
And the French hated him and
all of his friends hated him.
But I said, I'm going to play these
characters is just.
Just like a son of a bitch.
Really? Because that's what you
endured.
And I just made friends with Arto
and the.
It was so redeeming.
The last part of the play was so
redeeming that
someone just asked me, they said,
well, what was your favorite thing
you ever did in anything you ever
did? And I was in a classroom
and I just burst into tears
and I said the last scene
of Terry's
play about Arto.
And Terry, was it similar for you
kind of getting in the mind of Arto
in that way?
Yeah, it was it was hard
to write, but it was.
Yeah. Yeah.
You know, he he.
He was so many different
people.
There are so many different aspects
of him.
As far as his.
Not only is language, but his
writing, his
addictions,
his attitudes about women, every-,
everything was
off kilter in a kind of
odd way.
And it was a he was a film star, was
a movie star, and it
was in that famous
film, Napoleon
and played Morat.
And there's a
great scene of him showing
at car de stabbing him
in the bathtub.
And I don't
know all of those images, which
I think it kind of culminated
like that interest in
distant theater in terms of the
living theater where no
one would Jo Harvey Allen first saw
that when an incredible impact it
had on us.
And I just think that
the fact that he wanted to take
everything to the to
its extreme, to its limit,
whether it was language or whether
it was.
Life, just life.
Everything, every way he lived was
pushed to the absolute max
and.
I just meant you and I became very
interested in him in Rome when I
wrote this piece.
It's interesting the contrast
between the extremity of our tell
on the one hand, but then also that
the smoothness of both the music,
but then also of Jo Harvey Allen
voice, that there's something that's
quite soft light softens
that I think.
But not every scene
in that play like there.
Well, there was an odd thing too,
because at the time it was it was
when Bush.
Bush was doing freedom fries,
you know, instead of French fries.
And we were coming from
the Houston French Connection
was where
the money came from for the piece of
the French people
when they heard that French fries
are being called freedom fries.
Thought it was hilarious, you know.
And but
I know the reviews, which we
were we were
nervous about doing the play
in front of a total French audience
that didn't know most of them
did not know English.
And they were very concerned
about the theater, was concerned
about it. So they brought in a guy,
an American, who had lived in France
for years and directed
a lot of Beckett plays
and worked with
a lot of
French writers and
English writers.
But he came and he talked
to the audience.
We did a special performance
for him.
He really liked the piece.
And each
night before we performed, he would
met with the audience about 30
minutes and talked to them about
kind of key points of
the piece and what was going on with
it. And
I think that helped them because
it was it was really very
well-received.
They said one reviewer said
thanks, that it took two
people from Bush country
to to bring
us back
Arto.
And so it was a
it was an odd kind of,
you know, collision
or ham.
You know, in France.
I think maybe for the sake of time
we may wish to round it out with.
Yeah, we'll get one more from a
piece called Covenant, which is a
piece that we wrote together.
This is just the tail end of it.
Terri not have a day.
He had knock on the door and he'd
say, run.
They're after us to run for their
lives. We'd just head out the door,
run and slam the doors and pull
out and hide
in the shopping center, in
the cotton fields all night long.
Just just running from,
you know, running and hide.
We're still running from the son of
a bitch.
You don't want to play
the song starts off nineteen
1956.
We were at a dance.
I was with Nerdist Murphy, the girl
with the snapping turtles by
beat dancing with murders
and bones come
out nearly break your finger on.
Jo Harvey Allen was with Fredi low
fat Frady, we call
them Dance Imam Johari.
I remember
Stan, I'll scrub down
and clean, kick
in the foot.
And director and machine,
I was watching you dance,
watch in your presence,
notice lands.
So it's my first chance
and ask you to dance
and with first time
with a song flying.
When you're
down in sand or
land
to.
Storms in
30.
The fares and
30.
To be accused and
those domain
thē when you put
goods.
August 7,
2009.
Well, now I'm still
stand
up and
kick in
that director and machine
till I remember the
dance.
Remember the chant?
Remember Lance
and
I brush off
my pains and ask
you to stay in
touch once again
with a song flying by
that smile on your
own stale pizza
I've ever known.
So
there
goes a way to
have
30.
Storms and
30.
The wars in
30.
It used to
mean
when you put.
Good Solms was.
Some corn.
When the stocks break off.
The hearse scanned.
The sale gone.
The air boiled.
Gobble and now and
second row.
Yeah, there's just a carb.
No more.
Shark off my momma
and my daddy.
My lover.
My baby's.
And my grand babies.
And all my friends.
All you've taught me.
Strip off the silks
one by one.
And what would be left?
Is the secret.
I remember sleeping down
in this basement when I was 5
years old and it was a really
hot night.
And I started just praying and
praying for snow.
And I woke to a white
morning with almost
enough faith for a whole lifetime.
Oh, my mother.
She is a mountain
and her breast.
It touched the sky
and my father.
He is a river
running through her
sweet by and by.
And my sister,
she is a song
bird and she's
singing
in her fly.
And my brother,
he is a moon
falling on her
in.
And I.
There is a river
run through the mountain
under moonlight.
Hear the song.
The blood line's
gone long be for
me.
After
moving home.
Ever after
moving.
So we have a bit of time
for some questions.
There are two answers that will come
down and we unfortunately
it's not in our control
at all which one of you gets
picked.
So
try to get their attention.
Hi, how are you?
Oh, I had occasion today
to listen to
Dugout at L.A.
louver.
It was not the dugout
that you perform tonight.
It was quite dark.
About a cave.
And a baby.
Could you illuminate
on that particular piece?
Caven, a baby, I think.
Well, you called it a dugout.
And it was about a little
baby that I think got killed.
Are you sure you went to my show?
Yes, it was around the
first corner.
Yeah. I really don't know.
Even a baby.
Yeah, I remember being born.
Yes.
What about you?
But your mother.
A dug out is a
it's a half.
It's half in and half out
the side of a hill
and.
The the story
is the way that the
structure of the first part
of the piece is that there are these
set pieces or stages
and each have six drawings that
carry out that carry the
narrative.
And there's six of those.
So that's
kind of the very first
line that you hear when you're
taller. And I said, that's what
you're talking about.
But it goes on and on and on and on,
it doesn't just stop at the cave and
the baby.
We were listening to a lot of
your music on the way down from
Santa Barbara on
the way here, and
we were wondering about the New
Delhi freight train.
And were you there in India?
And the other question we had
was truckload of art
with what happened on the five
today. It was like that
came up.
A truckload, a truckload of gasoline
fell over on the 5
and caused gridlock all through Los
Angeles today.
Well, nothing exploded.
And as far as I know,
anyway.
So where did you get the idea for a
truckload of art?
I know back in the 70s there
was a lot of consternation
on the back.
Each of the coast had this
guy.
Yeah, I was. It was written in the
late 60s, actually.
And it was kind of.
There was there was a.
There was a
great Roy A.F.
song called A Wreck on the Highway
that I always liked and I
just kind of lifted
the idea of that
and decided that it should be
about a truck full art.
And I think there was there is kind
of a weird paranoia at that time
in L.A. about New York artists.
And there was kind of an equal
kind of resentment
going on. It seemed like on the East
Coast, this is the climate, anyway,
of these upstart
California artists.
So
that's really kind of where they
came. The song came from
sora's New Delhi Freight Train goes,
I have been to India, but I haven't
been to New Delhi.
But that was written
while I was watching.
Jesse James, The
True Story of Jesse James with
Robert Wagner.
And I
was watching it.
Watching this TV show
and a friend of mine
had just come back from Vietnam
and we were.
Watching it together and
also the night before
Bobby Kennedy being killed.
And so we were talking
about that.
We were talking about Gandhi
and people laying in front of
train tracks.
And then we were watching Jesse
James and.
And we were smoking a lot of dope
in.
But that night, I remember going
back into the back
room and.
That's song happened.
New Delhi Freight Train.
So get out.
Those images came together
into that song.
That's where I think it came from.
I'm not sure you
ever know where a song really comes
from. I think it's always really
a mystery.
You know, you kind of make it up.
Which is what I'm doing right now.
Maybe just time for one or two more
questions.
Just one more.
Thank you.
Gosh, just listening this evening
and your little story
about listening to your music coming
in and it's funny because hearing
these songs takes me immediately to
where I was listening to them.
Warez We were driving around
the Southwest and Ghost Ship.
I was going back and forth between
San Diego a lot and I
wondered if you had any thoughts
in terms of your work kind
of being transported,
maybe transitional,
transcendent.
Because I think for a lot of us in
the audience today, the the
music and the art and the theater
is really taking us to a lot of
places. And tonight.
I was really moved by the tenderness
between the two.
Oh, that's
nice.
Thank you.
Thanks, Alison.
Thank you, Alison.
You have seen the bad.
See?
I don't know where to start.
Well,
I just want to say thank you both
again for being here and
really loving each
other onstage.
All right. Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you very much.
Thank you all very much.
Thank you.