Country musician and Longview native Justin Terrell will take the stage for the inaugural Green Street Monster Fest on Sept. 21. (Justin Cook/Courtesy Photo)

The treacherous, car-munching railroad underpass known as the Green Street Monster has claimed countless four-wheeled victims in Longview. Jonathan Terrell’s Honda Accord was one of them.

Two steep ramps on either side of the bridge — the monster’s mouth — were submerged by heavy rainfall and Terrell drove into its jaws.

Twenty years later, he’ll meet the Monster on his own terms. The country musician and Longview native will take the stage in the belly of the beast for the inaugural Green Street Monster Fest on Sept. 21. The event will feature 14 artists spread between two stages on Green Street and East Bank Alley.

“For the record, I have no beef with the Monster,” he said. “The Honda was a sacrifice.”

For Terrell, Monster Fest is an opportunity to revisit the city that helped develop his sound and a chance to come home.

Though he’s lived in and around Austin since 2005 and toured in 12 countries, shades of Piney Wood’s ethereal, haunting quality continue to reach through his songs.

“If I get anywhere near those pine trees, I feel a sense of calm come over me,” Terrell said. “There’s something swampy, almost old-word about East Texas that seeps into the music there and gives it a darker edge… That landscape is so entwined with my family.”

He grew up in a single-wide trailer with six siblings on the outskirts of Longview. His parents, Woodie and George Terrell, were once musicians living in Europe playing for a cult called the Children of God. That was until they were unsettled by the behavior of the group’s leader and moved back to Longview, where Terrell’s father is from.

“It wasn’t a glamorous upbringing, but it was cool. There was a lot of music, there was a lot of love, and it was competitive,” Terrell said. “Everybody in my family is a musician of some sort.”

His father taught him how to play guitar, and his mother noticed his performative streak during a fifth-grade choir concert.

“All the lights went out, a spotlight came on, and this little kid with a cowboy hat and boots comes strutting across the stage singing, ‘Hey, Good Lookin,’” Woodie Terrell said. “We were all hootin’ and hollering. I was like, ‘OK Jonathan, this is a side of you I didn’t know.”

She was watching a future recording artist but didn’t know it yet.

Terrell would need to cut his teeth in Longview playing gigs at Canton’s Chinese restaurant and the now defunct Texas Blues Club, a blue-collar watering hole popular with oil men. Novelist Sean Carswell described the blues bar as the kind of place “you walk into… and wonder if you’re gonna need to fight your way out.”

“I wouldn’t be the writer or the musician that I am now without those experiences,” Terrell said.

After a stint at Kilgore College, he bet on his talent and headed for Austin. It’s paid off.

The past few years saw Terrell featured in Rolling Stone magazine as well as on Vice and NPR. He found devoted fans, too. “Love Can Find You Anywhere,” his top track on Spotify, has more than a million listens.

He never lost touch with Longview or his family, even if it became harder and harder to find a venue in the city willing to host a touring musician. The demise of the AlleyFest in 2018 removed one of the last opportunities Terrell had for reaching his hometown crowd.

“Sometimes the pine curtain closes on you,” Terrell said. The inaugural Green Street Monster Fest might just open it up.

“I’m really … proud of everybody for getting this together and bringing something new and fresh to Longview,” Terrell said. “There was a time in my 20s when I was ready to never talk about Longview again. Then you get away and realize, ‘Man, this place is pretty special.’ ”

“I’m so excited to come home and play a cool show for people.”

Visit www.greenstreetmonsterfest.com or the dedicated Monster Fest Facebook page for ticket and festival information.

If you go

What: Green Street Monster Fest with live music, vendors and more

When: Begins at noon Saturday

Where: The area of Green and Tyler streets in downtown Longview

Tickets and other information: greenstreetmonsterfest.com