David Byrne on Marfa, Texas

Singer Songwriter and former Talking Heads frontman David Byrne contemplates "Art, Money, Industry and Landscape" in the context of his recent trip to Marfa, Texas.



An excerpt from Part 1:
I’d never been to this area, so when my friends Terry and Jo Harvey Allen announced that they’d be having their biennial wedding anniversary blowout here it seemed like a great opportunity to see them — and all the singer-songwriter and artist friends of theirs who will arrive. It’s also a chance to see the spectacular landscapes around here... It was during the prep for True Stories that I met Jo Harvey and Terry. They were recommended to me by Joan Tewkesbury, screenwriter of “Nashville” and a number of other films... She said I HAD to see Jo Harvey’s performance work and listen to Terry’s music, which I did. We became friends and over many get-togethers in Santa Fe and elsewhere I got to know some of the Allens’ circle of friends — many of whom are also artists or singer-songwriters. Their New Year’s Eve parties would often end, as is common for Texas musicians (and Brazilian ones too) with a guitar being passed around and everyone who wrote or sang taking a turn and singing a song, often until late into the wee hours. (This tradition was continued here around the Thunderbird hotel fireplace, where most of the others stayed.) It took me a bit to get used to this homey approach to music and performance. New Yorkers are sadly more “professional” in their attitude towards their art. We usually perform for money under controlled circumstances. We see ourselves as artistes whose performances... Part 1

And from Part Two:
Where to begin with an attempt at detangling the threads of recent Marfa history? The presence of the Art Mob, lead by the early 70s arrival of the late NY artist Donald Judd, is pervasive now, but everyone asks why? How?
As far as I can piece together the Marfa area had gone through a 12-year drought when Judd bought a house. Therefore real estate was incredibly cheap and plentiful. The town was on the verge of closing the door and turning off the lights — many large structures, banks, supermarkets, savings and loans — all abandoned. So here is an artist that had passed through this way previously, and had also admired the spacious desolate landscape in Baja. He had purchased a whole building in SoHo previously — this guy was a smart cookie — where his own work and that of his friends was on semi-permanent display. The notion that he could control and aestheticize the manner of presentation, the context, well it all must have been attractive. My guess is that the wide-open spaces of Texas offered the lure of more such opportunities.... full journal entry