Blood Sucking Maniacs, the multigenerational family band helmed by Terry Allen and Jo Harvey Allen, have announced their self-titled debut album, due April 24th via Paradise of Bachelors. The announcement arrives alongside the release of the album’s title track and theme song, “Blood Sucking Maniacs,” available now as a single.
Spanning five generations and 121 years, the band draws together the Allen family tree in all its sprawling, tangled glory. Terry and Jo Harvey are joined by sons Bukka and Bale Allen, grandsons Kru, Sled, and Calder, granddaughter-in-law Sophie, and great-grandchild Lucky Marlo, whose fetal heartbeat opens and closes the album. Panhandle Mystery Band stalwarts Charlie Sexton, Lloyd Maines, and Richard Bowden round out the cast, credited affectionately as “Blood Brothers” and “Bastard Children.”
The album marks Terry Allen’s first release of all-new recordings since Just Like Moby Dick in 2020. The songs range from heartrending ballads to arch in-jokes, bound together by what the band describes as “not so much blood harmony as blood entropy.” Even Terry’s mother, Pauline, who died in 1984, appears via cassette recordings captured in the 1970s.
“Getting everybody together was like herding cockroaches,” Terry reported. Jo Harvey painted a warmer picture of the sessions at the family’s Santa Fe home: “You could hear music coming from all over the house… everyone was learning new licks and just having so much fun.”
Release Show set for May 21st in Austin, TX at The Paramount Theatre (Tickets and Info HERE). The Allens will also perform two nights, in different configurations, at Big Ears in Knoxville, TN, with the Truckload of Art Road Show (an intimate book reading/signing, concert, and discussion/Q&A) on March 26th and with the full Panhandle Mystery Band on March 27th (Tickets and Info HERE).
The deluxe gatefold double-LP edition features an insert booklet with lyrics and an essay by Brendan Greaves, author of the biography Truckload of Art: The Life and Work of Terry Allen, a New York Times Best Art Book of 2024. The gatefold single-CD edition features replica LP artwork and an 8pp. insert.
Pre-Order/Save Blood Sucking Maniacs, out April 24th, 2026 on Paradise of Bachelors HERE