Gustavo Antonio "Tav" Falco is an American-born musician, performance artist, filmmaker, actor, author, photographer, and dancer. 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.
Tav Falco in Rome, 2018
Tav Falco with Tav Falco's Panther Burns member Giuseppe Sangirardi performing in Kuudes linja, Helsinki, Finland, 2019
Tav Falco in Bangkok, Thailand, July 2022.
Tav Falco's Panther Burns
Tav Falco's Panther Burns, sometimes shortened to (The) Panther Burns, is a rock band originally from Memphis, Tennessee, United States, led by Tav Falco. They are best known for having been part of a set of bands emerging in the late 1970s and early 1980s who helped nationally popularize the blending of blues, country, and other American traditional music styles with rock music among groups playing in alternative music and punk music venues of the time. The earliest and most renowned of these groups to imbue these styles with expressionist theatricality and primitive spontaneity were The Cramps, largely influenced by rockabilly music. Forming just after them in 1979, Panther Burns drew on obscure country blues music, Antonin Artaud's works like The Theater and Its Double, beat poetry, and Marshall McLuhan's media theories for their early inspiration. Alongside groups like The Cramps and The Gun Club, Panther Burns is also considered a representative of the Southern Gothic-tinged roots music revival scene.
Live in St. Gallen, Switzerland, 2004: Falco with drummer Pizzorno
Tav Falco & the Panther Burns playing in New Orleans, 1993
A 2006 photo from a Paris concert (left to right): Laurent "Lo" Lanouzière, band leader Tav Falco (back to camera), Grégoire "Cat" Garrigues. Photo by David Ulrich
The album cover of Behind the Magnolia Curtain, the band's debut album, recorded in 1981