Dust Bowlin' Daddy

Lubbock native Terry Allen is a true West Texas renaissance man, as famous (if not more so) for his contributions to the visual arts as he is for his quirky and intelligent country albums. Like a high plains, pre-Pixar Randy Newman, Allen mixes barrelhouse piano with biting social commentary to great effect on albums such as 1983's Bloodlines and the stone-cold 1979 classic Lubbock (On Everything). He also penned our absolute favorite song about Jesus, "Gimme a Ride to Heaven, Boy," in which the hitchhiking, bearded-and-sandaled antagonist mutters the immortal line "You got nothing to fear about drinking a beer/if you share it with the son of God" before carjacking a guy at gunpoint ("The Lord moves in mysterious ways/And tonight, my son...he's gonna use your car�). And while his albums can be found in finer record stores everywhere, his sculpture can be seen in highfalutin places such as the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and France. See Allen in a rare live appearance 8 p.m. Thursday at the Sons of Hermann Hall, 3414 Elm St. Tickets are $20, or far less than you’d pay to see some of his other works of art in person. Visit frontgatetickets.com.
Thu., Sept. 6