Tav Falco

Gustavo Antonio "Tav" Falco is an American-born musician, performance artist, filmmaker, actor, author, photographer, and dancer.

In the mid-1970s, he started the nonprofit Televista "art-action" video group with fellow Arkansas poet/performance artist/videographer Randall Lyon to create art and to document local musicians and artists.

While with Televista, Falco worked with and trained in photography and filmmaking under Memphis color photographer William Eggleston.

Starting in the 1970s, Falco created a number of short films on varying topics focusing on "underground" art-actions and cultural assets around the mid-American South. The Cinémathèque Française in Paris accepted and archived six of Falco's short films into its permanent collection.

Among the titles archived are Masque of Hôtel Orient, Born Too Late, Helene of Memphis, Memphis Beat, Shadetree Mechanic, and 71 Salvage.

After studying theater and film at the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville, Falco moved to Memphis in 1973.

He filmed a black & white short film of blues artist R.L. Burnside performing at Brotherhood Sportsmen's Lodge in Como, Mississippi, on September 28, 1974.

After assembling The Panther Burns, Falco performed and collaborated with legacy rockabilly and blues performers such as Charlie Feathers, James Luther Dickinson, and Cordell Jackson.

In 1978, Alex Chilton teamed up with Falco after being impressed by Falco's performance of the song "Bourgeois Blues" at The Orpheum Theatre in Memphis, which culminated in the chainsawing of an electric guitar.

Falco has fronted the rock band Tav Falco's Panther Burns since 1979, and founded a parallel solo career that incorporates other styles such as cabaret, tango, and vocal jazz.

He has directed one feature film and numerous short films, and has played minor acting roles in motion pictures filmed in both North America and Europe.

He is the author of two books, one a psychography of the city of Memphis, and the other a collection of his photography.

Falco was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania to a family of Italian descent but grew up in rural southwest Arkansas between Whelen Springs and Gurdon.

The two founded the self-styled "art damage" rock and roll band Tav Falco's Panther Burns in 1979.

The group was named after lore surrounding a plantation in Mississippi.

The Panther Burns' debut album, Behind The Magnolia Curtain, was recorded at Ardent Studios in Memphis and released by Rough Trade Records.

A December 3, 1980, session recorded at Sam Phillips Recording Service was released in 1992 on Marilyn Records as The Unreleased Sessions. Falco moved to New York in 1981, and released his official follow-up album, Blow Your Top, on Chris Stein's Animal Records imprint, which was distributed by Chrysalis Records.

Downtown 81 was shot in New York in 1981 and was directed by Edo Bertoglio.

The film starred artist Jean-Michel Basquiat and featured Debbie Harry, James Chance, Arto Lindsay, and August Darnell in supporting roles.

Falco was featured in a cameo role shot on Super 16mm film, where he created and then recited improvised dialogue with Basquiat.

Basquiat hated the dialogue so much he walked off the set.

His record imprint, Frenzi Records, released a 1986 compilation of area artists entitled Swamp Surfing in Memphis, as well as a 1988 studio EP by female-led group The Hellcats.

These records received respective international distribution from Au Go Go Records (Australia) and New Rose Records (France).

His photography was used for the Charlie Feathers album Honky Tonk Man (New Rose Records, 1988).

Falco would also promote and work with lesser-known regional contemporaries.

In the 1990s, Falco relocated from the United States to Paris, and then to Vienna, where he lived for nearly two decades.

In January 2022, he located to Bangkok, where he currently resides.

Often Falco has claimed his main artistic purpose is "to stir up the dark waters of the unconscious."

Initially abandoned, the film was released by Metrograph Pictures in 2000.

A selection of Falco's short films were shown in a retrospective at the Cinémathèque Française in 2006, with Falco himself in attendance.

In 2014, Falco compiled a double album of some of his favorite tracks from his music collection, Tav Falco's Wild & Exotic World of Musical Obscurities, which was released on Stag-O-Lee Records.

The album set included a cover song by The Panther Burns and liner notes by Falco.

Urania Descending, the first feature film directed by Falco, was completed in 2014 and released in 2016 by Lamplighter Films.

The film consists of portions of what is intended to be a be a film trilogy.

As of October 2021, Falco is editing the full Urania trilogy.

In addition to the Cinémathèque Française, Falco's film work has been screened at The Horse Hospital, London; the David Lynch-designed Silencio Cinema, Paris; Anthology Film Archives, New York; Roxie Theater, San Francisco; Oxford Film Festival, Mississippi; Austria Film Archiv Metrokino, Vienna; and by the American Cinematheque in the Steven Spielberg Cinema at the Egyptian Theatre in Hollywood.

Falco appeared as an actor with minor roles in the feature films Great Balls of Fire!, A nagy postarablás (The Great Post Office Robbery), Highway 61, Downtown 81, and Wayne County Rambling.

Tav Falco's Panther Burns celebrated its 40th anniversary in 2019 with a tour dubbed the "40th Anniversary Howl", with its prime show taking place May 21 of that year in Memphis at Lafayette's Music Room.

Falco devoted portions of his musical career to highlighting traditional regional artists from Memphis and Mississippi who had not gained media attention.

In a 2019 interview, Falco described himself as a "Utopian anarchist".