Madison photo-historian, gallery owner, and musician Terry Talbot

You found Wisconsin's local music authority.

This is Magsync Radio.

We are Local Music.

That is a piece of Madison history.

That is Luther Allison. Bad news is coming.

Boy, we love Luther Allison.

My name is Rocker here with Jane.

You're listening to Magsync Radio.

Right now, I'm going to turn it over to Jane.

Jane, how are you doing over there in the city?

I'm doing pretty good.

I can't believe we get to swap places a little bit.

I have taken over the control.

I'm behind the glass.

You've been banished to the producer, K.

You've been banished.

Because today, something pretty special is happening.

I get to lead the first interview.

Terry Talbot has been documenting Madison's music and art

scene since 1971,

photographing some of our storied artists like Luther Allison

and Paul Filippowitz and continues to this day covering

all the current artists in the scene.

And he's got a gallery.

Talbot Gallery resides on 2118 at Wood Avenue.

On Madison's each side,

literally right next door to the Barrymore Theater.

In the studio with us is Madison historian,

musician, art gallery owner,

and legendary photographer, Terry Talbot.

Welcome to Magsync Radio.

Well, thank you for those very generously kind words.

We just listened to a Madison legend, Luther Allison.

Tell us something about Luther that we may not know.

Gee, I don't know that if I know anything about Luther Allison

that you don't know, all I can say about Luther

is that I photographed him.

And the first time I photographed him was at the

second annual Bethlehem Street block party.

It was an incredible bash.

There were thousands and thousands of

thousands of people in the street for that.

And Luther had a great time.

I've got some great photographs of him on stage.

And he's a Madison legend.

Let me tell you.

Okay, historian, musician, photographer since the 70s.

Let's go back to the beginning.

Like, who is Terry Talbot?

What are you all about?

What's your backstory?

What's my backstory?

Well, I'm 78 years old now.

I think that what's important is I came to the university

Wisconsin in 1965 for a year.

I paid my own way to college.

I dropped out to make some more money.

Got drafted, went away for a few years, came back.

And when I got back, I took a photojournalism course.

It's the only photography class I ever took.

And it inspired me to become a photographer.

The first project I did for this class was putting

on a rock festival because I was the president of a

musician's collective at the time in whitewater.

And on the basis of the photos, I took a that event.

The professor gave me an A in the course and encouraged me not to be a writer,

but to be a photographer.

He's the only mentor I had.

And I really appreciate his encouragement.

Yeah, I know you were a musician in the scene for many years as well.

Like, what instrument did you play?

Like, what band were you in in the past?

Guitar and vocals.

I was in a band called...

My first band here was about a band called Bullfrog Blues Band.

Really, really popular band.

It was a great, really, really great band.

After that band broke up, well, sidebar, when that band broke up,

two of the musicians, my drummer and my bass player Rocky,

my entire...

Or not my bass player, my drummer and my saxophone player.

Jackson Crawl.

They went and Richie Keane went to New York City and became a

trio with a very famous jazz pianist...

Shoot.

Cecil Taylor?

Cecil Taylor.

Thank you for that rocker.

You got it.

You got it.

You got it right.

So I'm very proud of having been in a band that had two members that got in a

leading world-class jazz pianist group as a trio.

After that, I was in a band called Chronic Jones,

which I'm very proud of also.

It was a great band.

It was kind of a political band, like that aspect.

And in between, I was in a band called LiveBate.

It had some really great musicians in it, too.

Yeah, I know you just said that you got started with photography at the UW.

Was there any other influence besides that?

Was there a parent's role at all, like, did they?

No, my influences as a photographer came from going to underground films

at the UW 1965 when I was a freshman here.

And we was really into the surreal movies.

And they were always black and white.

And that really informed my photography

after a gallery army.

And I started taking pictures.

Also, it's a big fan of the beat movement.

And I really like to think that my fine art photography is informed

by beat poetry.

I like to think it's visual poetry.

Yeah, what's the object so your favorite to take pictures of?

My favorite, back when I first started, I did something

that I referred to as psychodromas.

And a lot of them had, they had nude women in them.

That was part of the psychology psychodrama thing.

And I would be in the...

Sure psychology, sure.

Well, anyway, but so I take a lot of pictures of things that I construct.

I used to.

Nowadays, I'm taking pictures of things that I find.

Now, I think of myself as a documentary photographer,

an art documentary photographer.

Yes, like telling it as it is.

And I know you also take a lot of videos and photos

for local bands here.

Currently.

I have my own YouTube channels about, I think,

326 videos at this time.

Sorry, doing that in 2010,

with some people that are extremely well known now

that back then, we're not very well known at all.

Wow, like do you have any examples?

John Primer.

Oh, yeah.

I have a bad memory.

But if you wouldn't look at my channel,

you'd be really surprised by all the great people.

It would be hard to remember all three of my five.

Paul Flipp, Paul Flipp, I've been videoing Flipp

since the beginning.

I've got so many videos from him.

Yeah, we'll get to him again a minute.

So tell us about Terry Talbot, the historian.

The historian.

I'm only a historian in the sense that I've been around

Madison taking pictures on the street

as a street photographer since 1971.

I worked for all the underground papers when I

when I first started doing photography.

All of them.

There were four major papers here.

So that was that was journalism,

documenting photographer.

But now I really do think of myself as documentarian.

And recently going through all my old contact sheets,

I just found so many wonderful photographs

of the city,

my neighborhood,

black and white shots.

I have pictures of the

Monty's blue plate when it was a gas station.

The people changing my tires.

Wow.

And if you looked at the gas pump and some of these,

I said, one, you see the pump, 25 cents a gallon.

Yeah.

So it was a while back.

But I'm still doing that.

What's the most important historical event you think

you've covered taking a picture of?

I think the most important historical things

that I photographed,

there's are all of the street actions in Madison.

I've always been down for the protest.

I played in the band Chronic Jones that was a political band

and I would do photographs

and then make them into YouTube videos

with the music and the photographs.

But the photographs would be of various protests.

And what I'm really proud of from Chronic Jones is

2005 Day of the Dead.

Everybody's carrying signs that say free Palestine.

We're talking 2005.

And then the music track is a kind of a political

yeah.

So we know you have your Talbot gallery on Atwood Avenue.

Like tell us the story of how you came to get that property.

Like what was your inspiration for having your own gallery?

My inspiration was a woman friend of mine

pointing her finger at it and saying,

well, that's for rent.

And while I'm just going to do my last wedding,

I did wedding photography.

I did well enough, I owned an airplane

so I flew down to Mexico.

But right before I left,

my friend pointed at the building that snouled my gallery.

And I went next toward to talk to Bob Hanson,

the owner of Mr. Roberts, Byron Grill.

And I just sort of asked him about it.

And then I went and shot my wedding.

And I came back two weeks later in the for sale

or the for rent signs down.

And I go and I say,

I see you rented the building and he said to me,

well, I decided to rent it to you.

And I was kind of, I didn't say I wanted to rent it.

But I went home, took a day and thought about it and rented it.

So that's how I got the building.

It was just fortuitous.

And now you've had your gallery since 2011,

but there are some pretty cool things coming up in its future.

I know you had a big surprise you wanted to talk about.

Well, the surprise I wanted to talk about

is the fact that unfortunately, Bob Hanson,

the man that rented my space to me, I died.

He died about three months ago.

And so my building is now being put up for sale by the family,

which means I have to move.

And of course, I'm seeing they're fretting about it.

Where am I going to go?

I really love my spot.

Am I going to go on the bottom of a retail?

I don't want to do that.

I just like my funky gallery.

So Bruce from Country Antiques,

which is four doors up on the block from me,

came into my gallery about a week after I started fretting and said,

I'm looking for somebody to rent my retail space.

Do you know anybody?

The star's aligned for you right there.

And I said, I need a spot.

And he went, really?

And he was thrilled and I'm thrilled.

Oh, wow.

And he's totally remodeling his space.

It's much bigger than my present gallery.

It's got three window walls.

Country Antiques, it's right.

Across this street from Monty's Blue Plate is perfect.

So that's my big surprise.

And I haven't talked about it.

And now I'm announcing it.

Wow, premiered right here.

I'm asking radio.

That's right.

Oh, that's pretty cool.

Hey, Terry, you know, we were messaging a little bit.

And you were telling me that you had photographed a Paul Black,

legendary slide guitar player here in Madison.

And he just recently passed.

Do you have anything to say on him?

I think he was a wonderful musician.

He was a beautiful human being.

He was grouchy as hell.

He was a great guy.

He was a great guy.

And I was just telling a friend of mine today

about having a run across the video I shot of him

with Doc and Terry Roddy.

I didn't know if you know them.

Yeah, sort of folk.

The Roddy's.

At their farm sitting around the campfire, jamming.

Wow.

And Paul Black was like Clyde.

Yeah.

You know, they both would, they were and Jim Schwalto.

Yes.

All three of those musicians were really wonderful musicians.

Very talented.

Judd totally down the earth.

No ego.

And they would sit in and play with anybody.

They really would.

I saw Clyde playing with the bad randies.

I'm trying through Proville, Wisconsin.

There's a sign that says bad randies.

He's like, what's that?

So I stopped to go here.

I can hear countrywester music.

Can I walk around the corner?

Yeah.

There's Clyde at the prep site.

Yeah.

And also, I know you have things going on at your gallery

right now.

Tell us about the gallery jam.

And I know we were talking about the future

of maybe having movie nights there.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I want to do that.

And I have jams on Sunday afternoons from 3 to 530.

A coup stick get together.

Well, sometimes they're electric too.

They'll be able to definitely be bigger and more electric

in the new space I'll be in.

Oh, something else I want to mention is I just yesterday

picked up my best of Madison third place

for our gallery.

Oh, yeah.

And this is the third year in a row.

You've won a best of Madison award.

Yep.

So congratulations.

So how can we keep up with you and the Talbot gallery online?

At Talbotphotography.com.

And www.talbotphotography.com.

And what's your YouTube channel handle?

My YouTube channel.

It is YouTube at Talbotphotography.

All right.

Terry, thank you so much for taking the time

to come into the studio tonight to chat with us.

We really appreciate it.

And now we're going to listen to another legend of our scene.

Chicago Blues, Hall of Famer, Paul Filippowitz.

Tell us about photographing Paul back in the old days.

He's always been a great player.

He's a great guy.

He's a great friend.

And he's just been playing great stuff for so long.

He's been part of the music scene here, I mean,

forever, as long as I have been.

And he's just, he's a great Texas blues guitar player.

He is.

And he's a wonderful man too.

All right, let's get right back into some music.

Gambling Woman by Paul Filippowitz.

You're listening to Maxing Gradio.

We are local music.

Gambling Woman by Paul Filippowitz.

Gambling Woman by Paul Filippowitz.

Shop local, eat local, listen local.

This is Maxing Gradio.

We are local music.