The shows are part of the university's Presidential Lecture & Performance Series. Allen was born in Wichita, Kansas, but grew up in Lubbock, and he has spent much of his career turning West Texas into art. His recording career stretches back more than 50 years.
Thursday's show, "Truckload of Art," is not a sit-down-and-play-the-hits concert. Allen and his wife and longtime collaborator, Jo Harvey Allen, will mix music, stories, spoken word and conversation. Musicians Bukka Allen and Richard Bowden join them. Author Brendan Greaves will read from Truckload of Art, his biography of Allen, and Lubbock musician and writer Andy Wilkinson will moderate.
Friday brings "Memwars" at the Allen Theatre, and this time the full Panhandle Mystery Band shows up. That lineup includes Charlie Sexton, Richard Bowden, Bale Allen, Bukka Allen, Lloyd Maines and Davis McLarty. The show pulls songs and stories from Allen's career and puts them on stage with the people who helped make them. Doors open at 6:30 p.m., and the performance begins at 7 p.m.
For people here, that means a hometown artist in two very different rooms on back-to-back nights, one built around conversation and one built around a band.
Most artists put Lubbock on a tour schedule, but Allen put it on an album title.