Tav Falco

Tav Falco is an American-born musical performer, performance artist, actor, filmmaker, and photographer. He has led the psychedelic rock-and-roll group Tav Falco's Panther Burns (named af

Tav Falco is an American-born musical performer, performance artist, actor, filmmaker, and photographer. He has led the psychedelic rock-and-roll group Tav Falco's Panther Burns (named after a plantation in Mississippi) since 1979. He moved to Europe in the late 1990s and sometimes tours with European musicians in recent incarnations of his Panther Burns group.

Born Gustavo Antonio Falco in Philadelphia, he later briefly adopted the last name of his stepfather and was known for a time as "Gus Nelson" before eventually choosing the stage name "Tav Falco." Falco was raised in Gurdon, Arkansas, and moved to Memphis, Tennessee, in 1973. He started the nonprofit Televista "art-action" video group in Memphis to document local musicians and artists in the late 1970s with fellow Arkansas videographer/performance artist Randall Lyon. Falco and Lyon were both heavily influenced by the work of their mentor and friend, noted Memphis color photographer William Eggleston. After Alex Chilton was impressed by a 1978 performance of Falco's at The Orpheum in Memphis that culminated in the chainsawing of a guitar, the two teamed up to start the self-styled "art damage" band, Tav Falco's Panther Burns. The group recorded a first album for Rough Trade at Ardent Studios in Memphis, after a previous 1980 session for the label at Phillips Recording was temporarily shelved (later rereleased on Marilyn Records as The Unreleased Sessions in 1992).