AUK’s Chain Gang: Terry Allen “Amarillo Highway”

Having spent the last two weeks in Australia courtesy of The Triffids and Kasey Chambers, I’ve decided to steer the ship back into more familiar americana waters. Indeed nowhere could be more familiar to lovers of the genre than the state of Texas. So we move from Chambers’ ‘Hard Road’ to ‘Amarillo Highway’ by the redoubtable Terry Allen. Allen’s own version of the song first appeared on his iconic ‘Lubbock on Everything’ album in 1979 but had actually been recorded four years previously by Bobby Bare in 1975. The Maines Brothers recorded a lame version in 1980 and it wasn’t until Amos Garrett, Doug Sahm and Gene Taylor recorded it for their ‘The Return of the Formerly Brothers’ album in 1987 and then Robert Earl Keen’s 1993 version, that the song was truly done justice by others. It has since been covered by a number of others over the years, but it never sounds better than when performed by Allen himself as this clip ably illustrates.