You might not know Johnny Dowd. In fact, the self-deprecating Dowd would say the same thing. But your favorite musician probably knows who he is. 

Amy LaVere told a story recently on a Memphis radio station about the time that Talking Heads frontman David Byrne gave Texas outlaw country legend Terry Allen a copy of Dowd’s 1998 debut album, Wrong Side of Memphis. 

And she relayed the story about how Jim Dickinson, producer of classics by the Replacements and Big Star, mused about the same album, “I’ll never be able to make something like this.”