ALBUM REVIEW: Terry Allen Brings a Family Full of Blood Sucking Maniacs on Latest Album
Terry Allen has been many things across eight decades of living, including an artist and musician. Since his 1975 debut Juarez, Allen’s made more than a dozen albums that have established him as one of the all-time great Texas songwriters, one with a perspective and style like none
Black News 
Terry Allen has been many things across eight decades of living, including an artist and musician. Since his 1975 debut Juarez, Allen’s made more than a dozen albums that have established him as one of the all-time great Texas songwriters, one with a perspective and style like none other. As a visual artist, his work includes major sculptural exhibits and installations across the world.
But he’s also been very much a family man. Born in Wichita, Kansas, in 1943 to baseball player/manager Fletcher “Sled” and barrelhouse blues pianist Pauline Allen, Terry grew up in Lubbock. Eventually he became associated with artists such as Joe Ely, Butch Hancock, Jimmie Dale Gilmore, and Lloyd Maines, who were building upon the legacy of native son Buddy Holly. Terry and his wife Jo Harvey ended up in California and then New Mexico, raising sons Bukka and Bale. They, in turn, welcomed grandsons Sled, Calder, and Kru. And, finally, in 2025, great-grandson Lucky. (You can search far and wide for an ordinary name in the Allen family tree, but you won’t find much.) From the late Pauline (who died in 1984) to Sled and his wife Sophie’s newborn Lucky, that’s five generations.
Allen’s latest album brings the family together as a band for their eponymous debut album, Blood Sucking Maniacs. The record starts with those familial chronological mileposts: First we hear a sonogram of Lucky’s heartbeat in his mother’s womb, followed immediately by a 1970s recording of Pauline’s piano playing. Twenty songs follow, from the tone-setting title track, to revived/reimagined classics from Terry’s catalogue, to spoken-word recitations from Bale and Sled, to Jo Harvey’s geographically mystical “Down to the River,” to ace pianist/accordionist Bukka’s exquisite ballads “These Four Rocks” and “Where We Belong,” to teenager Kru’s piano jams that reach full-circle back to Pauline’s old-school blues.
