INTERVIEW: ALLIE COLLEEN – September 2024

Photo credit: Argyle and Lace Photography

According to a recent press release: “Allie Colleen is a Country Artist, singer and songwriter who is currently releasing new singles in advance of her upcoming EP and continues to tour in support of her well-received debut album, STONES, released in 2020. Allie’s music style defines how life shaped her, alongside the personal lyrics and transparency in her vocals and performance. She has earned a reputation of being a notable songwriter with an iconic-sounding voice and impeccably strong voice with hints of timeless tradition that falls between classic and emerging country sounds. The room never fails to silence as Allie Colleen begins to sing about the layers of love and heartbreak that have shaped her. Unlike most today, some of her newest songs bring well-thought-out lyrics and a special connection to the song. She is one of the most powerful and popular female independent label acts on a trajectory to stardom.” As always I appreciate the time Allie gave me to discuss new music, touring, and much more…

Todd: Allie, thank you so much for taking time out. It’s always a pleasure to talk to you.

Allie: Absolutely. Thanks for having some time for us. We appreciate it.

Todd: Well, I always have time for you. Let’s start with something we have discussed a couple times. We had talked about it when we met in 2021 and in following interviews.  You finally played one of my favorite joints in the world, The Machine Shop in Flint, Michigan.

Allie: So fun. That place is cool. We haven’t stopped talking about it since, I can promise you that. That was really cool.

Todd: There’s something about that place. Now you’re onto bigger, not necessarily better. You are going out on some dates with Jelly Roll. Tell us about how that came together and what’s your anticipation of that run?

Allie: We are so excited. All that we know, all that anyone in my band knows and especially me, is that it is not October 29th today. We head out for that tour on October 29th. We are on the last twenty cities of the Beautiful Broken tour. It is me, Shaboozey, Ernest, and Jelly, and we’re so excited. I was very lucky to put out a song called “Halos and Horns” in 2022, May of 2022. It ended up in the Bobby Bone Show in his Top 30 artist countdown thing or something that he was doing. It was such a cool experience. I guess Jelly had heard it somehow or somewhere, because I got a DM from Jelly in June of 2022 and I thought, “What an inconvenience for Jelly Roll’s Instagram to get hacked. Someone’s going to have to really deal with this today.” It was just so cool. He was so kind, and he said, “Hey, I’m so sorry. I don’t have a clue who you are, but I love this. I’d really love to work with you.” Then for the last two years, watching him just do his commercial thing, it’s just been a weird little waiting game. Had a song on hold and been talking about a couple of the other different things and I was like, “Dang, well, at least we were recognized. That was cool. We’ll probably never catch him again, but at least we’re recognized.” That was awesome. Then we got the call just maybe a month ago that we were on the last twenty cities as an independent national opener. So we’re so proud and we’re so excited, and I’m so grateful that he just came through on something that he told me two years ago. He didn’t owe me that, so I’m so excited. And it is not October 29th today.

Todd: Well, that it isn’t. It’s got to be some kind of validation that playing the smaller places, going out and hustling, and doing everything you’ve done… all the ups, all the downs, all the highs and lows over the last few years are finally paying off. You’re getting noticed. Do you feel like it’s a validation for you or is it just another step in the right direction?

Allie: I feel like it’s absolutely validating. The placement is what is exciting about this for us. It’s such a good placement of music for what Allie Colleen wants to do and wants to sound like. When we put out “Halos and Horns,” and even still now, I don’t hear too much of it, but nobody was making any kind of alternative country at the time. I was excited to get to do it but was so nervous because it just hasn’t really been received. The woman outlaw thing hasn’t really been received yet commercially. It’s been a really long time of sticking to who and what we are. I think that’s why this is such a big payoff for us, just because it’s a tour placement where we also get to go out and be 100% authentic to the Allie Colleen sound and to sound like what we sound like, as opposed to other opportunities in the past. I felt like we either had to blend into the crowd just a little bit enough to make them then go check out the music on their own, but I feel like on this tour we can really be truly represented, let go, and just freaking kill it. We’re so excited.

Todd: That’s awesome. You have referenced “Halos and Horns,” but you have a lot of other stuff out there. You’ve been releasing music steadily since “Halos And Horns” in 2022. You’ve had three killer singles this year. You started off with “While We’re Still Friends,” followed that with “Grass On The Grave,” and most recently, “Boys Like You.” Where do you still find the inspiration? We’ve talked about it before. We know you write with friends, and you’ve ‘stolen’ songs.

Allie: I’ve been doing that.

Todd: So where are you still finding the inspiration? Your professional life is on an upswing. You’ve had some struggles along with everything that most up-and-coming artists have.

Allie: There’s this weird concept, and I find it a lot in my friends that come to town. It’s this concept of, “Oh man, I write my best stuff when I’m sad” or “You got to give me a heartbreak, so I can write a song” or whatever the case is. I’ve always found there’s this very weird plague that is also equally kind of an honor of being a creative where there’ll never be a time in my life where I don’t remember what just that depth of bottom felt like. There’s never a time in my life where I’m not going to remember what that feels like. You know what I mean? There’s this weird ebb and flow of creation for us that just doesn’t ever seem to stop. I don’t know if any of my friends who has the luxury of not writing at any session, even if it’s a personal writing session where the songs will never see the light of day. That stuff never shuts off in our brains and it is cool to be in a town where I can always find someone to write with. I can always find someone to spend some time wanting to create music because that’s all that we do here.

Todd: Well, I’d like your take on some different things I’ve read regarding “Boys Like You.” In the press release, you were quoted – “Boys, can’t live with them, can’t… well.” Was this kind of a benchmark song for you to finally shed some of those things from your past and to turn an eye to the future personally and professionally?

Allie: I think a lot of it was more of just a writing session I had. “Boys Like You” was more about the songs before it than it was “Boys Like You” in the sense of I had spent two releases, “While We’re Still Friends” and “Grass On The Grave,” on a very personal area of my life and a very vulnerable part of my life that I shared as I released those songs. It was what it was, having the divorce song and then the move on from divorce song kind of thing. So for “Boys Like You,” I just called my girlfriend Kate and said, “Hey, will you and Drake sit down with me, and can we just write a song about boys? How we just don’t like boys anymore. She goes, “Yes, dude, let’s do it” and that was it. It was just as simple as let’s give people a little summer party song, and we’re just like, don’t really boys today. No boys. That’s also an amazing part of the creation in this town too, to get to just experience a different emotional vein than you’re not actually experiencing to be honest. So that was a cool thing with “Boys Like You,” to just write a fun boy song, something that wasn’t too serious, something that we got to have fun performing and something that I knew in the set list as it came up was going to be this little party like, “Oh, we’re headed towards “Boys Like You.” We got this.” So that’s what “Boys Like You” is. For me, it’s just a little moment of absolute fun.

Photo credit: Victoria Roth

Todd: That was going to be my next question. As you’re ramping up and thinking about a set list for shows on the Jelly Roll run, are these new songs holding just as strong a grasp on you as some of your earlier stuff when you’re thinking about putting those set lists together? Are there still songs from your catalog that you’re like, “I’ve got to play this?”

Allie: There are always songs that you just have to play, and those ones get tricky, especially when it’s a song that I feel like is really, well-known of mine, but maybe it’s not my favorite song kind of thing. Those ones are always tricky, like, “Oh dang, do I play what I want to play today, or do I play what they came for?” God help anyone who’s ever drove a decent amount of time to go to a show and they didn’t play that one song you came for. That’s my biggest fear really. How do we make the set list so we don’t have that guy who came and didn’t get to hear what he came for? When something leaves a set list for the first time, there’s always a weird little bittersweet moment of it. It’s like, “Oh dang, we’ve played on the road for the last year and now it’s not in the set anymore.” So it’s always a moment, but we’re always writing for the set list We used to write for albums, and we used to write for this whole collection of what we wanted someone to experience in the session we were in. Now that’s just turned into a set list in the sense of, okay, well no one has the money, the time, or the marketing to promote an entire project. So if we’re going to stick singles, what’s my set list for the year going to look like? I write towards what I get to perform all year and what kind of narrative I get to share with people. We’ve really turned a new sonic leaf of this really fun music that I’ve always been waiting to play. Finding the band that I found this last year has really helped solidify that for me. We’re really excited going forward about the new set list, but always keeping in a couple old ones.

Todd: I listen to all the new stuff as it comes out and love everything you do, but I’m a fan boy at times too. It is fun for me to be able to talk to you. I always go back to songs like “Ain’t the Only Hell” and “Work in Progress.” Those are two songs that will forever be part of my memory of you, seeing you live, talking to you. With the new songs, as much as I dig them, I still find myself flipping back and listening to “Work in Progress,” so I get what you’re talking about when you say you get those responses like, “I wanted to hear…”

Allie: And that means something. That’s the cool thing about the evolution of artistry and artists. It maybe something that I don’t know that is mentioned too often, because the other side gets a lot of attention… artists being frustrated with people not following their evolution as well as they want them to or people really wanting the artists to be a certain type of thing forever. I don’t consume music that way. I feel like I fall in love with albums and not artists. For me, my Cody Johnson song is always going to be the Cody Johnson song that I think of. It’s never going to be the most recent album. It’s same thing with Ashley McBride. It’s never going to be the most recent album. It’s always going to be that one song for me. So for people that never cared about anything past “Work In Progress” for me, I think that’s the coolest thing on the planet. As a human being, not as an artist, that just means you would’ve loved nineteen-year-old Allie. Not to say that that’s not me anymore. It’s like that was a season in my life that you still really appreciate sonically and what I was writing about. I always thought that was really cool. I think a lot of artists have a different take on it because they want fans to be fans forever. I think even if you got that one song, that’s the coolest thing on the planet.

Todd: I think a lot of fans or listeners forget that nineteen-year-old Allie doesn’t have the same perspective in songwriting that 23, 25, 28-year-old Allie has. You’ve grown and changed. You couldn’t write the same song if you had to today.

Allie: Right.

Todd: I think people forget that.

Allie: I think they do.

Todd: That said, what of the newer songs are you really chomping to throw out there at a live crowd?

Allie: Man, there’s two, and I’ve been waiting what feels like forever. There’s two and both are unreleased. One is called “Outlaw,” which we’re going to debut on the Jelly Roll tour. I don’t know when it’s coming out release wise, but I know that we’re going to start adding it to the live set on the upcoming tour. It’ll come out during the tour at some point. Sonically, it’s a good vocal placement for me where I get to both sing and do the rough thing, but it’s still really pretty. It just makes me feel cool. I’m just going to be honest with you. That’s kind of it. When it comes to playing it for a live audience, I’m going to feel so cool. There’s no way that I sing this song and not feel cool. So I’m so excited about “Outlaw.” Then we have a song that’s really personal for me. It’s called “Household Name” and it’s just as much about my family background as it is me trying to make Allie Colleen a household name and something that is recognized and understood as a product, a brand, and a legacy. “Household Name” is a song that I’ve wanted to write for years, and we wrote it a year ago now. We’ve got it fully mastered, ready to go. It’ll come out on the next EP that we’re putting out in 2025. It is one of the only songs I’ve ever written about my dad and me. There’s one sample in it that has samples like a big thunder cloud in the song. We’re not doing it on the Jelly Roll arena tour. To get to do that song one day in an arena would be the sickest thing on the planet. Those little moments I’ve created in there that are all in respect to the greatest artist of all time for me. I’m really excited about those two songs, and I have no clue how the crowd will receive either of those two songs. That’s also why I have so much anticipation about them. It’s like, “Oh my gosh, what if my favorite two aren’t the fans favorite two?”

Todd: It’s something to not worry about so much, but to at least be conscious of. It’s funny you talk about family background. I didn’t realize you had a family background. (laughs)

Allie: You know what everyone’s got one, everyone’s coming from somewhere. Isn’t that funny?

Todd: We’ve talked about that before. You are your own artist. I don’t need to lean into that for an interview about you. I joked about being a fanboy earlier, but I still cheese when I’m able to show the picture we took backstage back in 2021. When you get people like me, especially a younger girl starting to write songs, starting to play guitar, and starting to put a band together, look at you and say, “You are my inspiration. What advice do you have?” What’s that like for you when you get that young artist that wants your spin on it?

Photo credit: Todd Jolicoeur @ToddstarPhoto

Allie: I’m going to be honest; I think that people have always been the coolest thing about their heroes anyway. The magic and the absolute wonder that people can put behind other people and imagining who they are and what they are and idolizing someone, all that. When I meet young people that have talked to me the way that I’ve talked to my idols, I think “What a wild world that someone chose me to idolize” because I don’t think that I’m much to look up to. I work really hard and I’m very proud of who and what I am, but that seems a little wild to me. I struggle with so many things and I have such a hard time navigating life, and for a little young fan to look at me and say, “I want to do what you do and be what you are and do all those things.” That’s the coolest thing on the planet for me, for them to have chosen me of all people. Their version of Allie is 100,000 times cooler than I am. That’s the truth of the matter. So it’s really cool to meet somebody who in their mind has created a cool version of me. That’s pretty rad. Not to be critical of myself, but there’s something special about being something like that for somebody else. It’s also terrifying because you think “Man, I hope if we ever did hang out, I would be everything that you think that I am.”

Todd: I’ll say you’ve always been very humble from that respect. You’re not an artist or a performer that has held themselves out as better than anyone else in the room. I still look back to the 2021 show at The Stockyard. Before the opener played, you’re out at the merch table selling T-shirts and CDs, and you were taking more pictures with people who weren’t buying anything than people who were.

Allie: That’s always the case. Oh, it’s so frustrating.

Todd: That’s cool though. It speaks to you as a person and as a performer that you just want to be there for the fans. If they have $10 for an EP or whatever, great. If not, you still want to be there for them. I thought that was cool to witness because so many artists aren’t like that.

Allie: It’s just so cool. Coming to Nashville and meeting people who had decided they wanted to do music as a career later in life or as an adult is always really cool and special to me because that just wasn’t the case for me. There’s never been a time when I thought for a moment I was going to do something else. I shared a room with both of my siblings growing up my entire life. I had a decent sized closet, and that’s where I chose to sit and learned how to play guitar and write my songs. Everything was in that walk-in area. I sat there since I was eight or nine and just played for me. To think that someone showed up early at a bar, drove through traffic, spent a part of their evening, or bought a ticket is insane. It’s cool when people have waited in line and did all the things just to say hello or to say thank you for the music. It’s the coolest thing on the planet to me; someone showing up and caring about something that I couldn’t NOT do if I tried.

Todd: It’s always fun to see you and talk to you. This is the fourth time I’ve had the opportunity to interview you, and I enjoy every minute of it. Listening to other people and their advice is often hard, especially when you’re younger. You were young and starting off in an industry that is cutthroat. What’s the best advice you got that you never took?

Allie: The best advice I got that I never took. When I say I never took it, I’m going to say it in the sense of this wouldn’t have worked out and it won’t work out until I take it. In the sense this town is so cutthroat, and it doesn’t know what it’s doing either. This town is so far ahead of itself right now with the advancement of AI, just like every market is right now. It’s so frustrating. If you are not your biggest fan, if you don’t start being who and what you think that you are… I’ll never forget being in a bar a couple of years ago and someone sat me down and they were just like, “Man, you can try all day long to be the next big thing and the next whatever, but what you have is really special. As soon as you just start leaning into who and what you are, I swear stuff is going to start moving for you a little more.” I have seen it come true in the sense of if you’re going to put in all of the mental work of showing up to this town, trying to be an artist, trying to fit into this world, and trying to fit into this industry, you might as well go the extra step to not take anything that isn’t 100% perfect for you as an artist. I don’t mean being picky about your shows. You show up and you play that show. I don’t care what it is. I don’t care if you’re getting paid or not. I don’t care if anyone else showed up to the show. You show up and you play your show. Don’t sign deals that don’t take care of you and don’t sign things that don’t immediately reflect what you’re worth is as an artist. It took me a lot of learning that Allie Colleen is going to be the only person who stands up and really fights for Allie Colleen in this town. I could not do that if I didn’t fully believe in what I was doing. It’s taken all these years to just really settle into, “You know what music you like, you know what you like to create, you know what you like to say, you know how to sing, you know who you are; you got to step up and you got to be that kind of thing.” I fought that for years because I thought that I knew what people wanted me to be, and I thought that that was going to work better.

Todd: That’s so true. That’s just a good view on life, not just being an artist, but in everything in life. No one will be your best advocate but you.

Allie: It means so much more. To know that the people showing up to my shows now are showing up for who and what I am 100% authentically, is an absolute honor. Not that I ever put out anything that wasn’t actually truly who I was, but it’s just now, there’s not a question in my mind when I show up and people love the songs that I put on the set list and songs that I’m choosing to sing these days and people love them. It’s a very different feeling than it was showing up in the past and having the best cover set that I could bring. That was what I knew people wanted to hear and what I knew people already were familiar with. It’s so different knowing that they’re just coming for Allie. It’s such an honor just to do this and to be able to do this.

Todd: Well, closing on that, it’s an honor every time I get some of your time to talk Allie. I feel like every time I can crack a little deeper into who you are and just try and help share that with the world. I think you’re an amazing performer and an amazing person that wears your heart on your sleeve. In my opinion, it doesn’t get more genuine than that Allie.

Allie: Thank you so much. It’s been such a privilege also evolving with you and getting to grow up in this industry as an artist and have people consistently show up for you. You are one of those people and one of those outlets, both. I’ll acknowledge you as a person and as an outlet separately because they’re not the same thing. But you show up for us and it’s been incredible and we’re very grateful, and I look forward to the next time that we get to do this. I always do.

Todd: Hopefully after the Jelly Roll run, we can catch up again. I’m hoping to catch that show here in Detroit.

Allie: Please do. I’m manifesting. I’ll be there. I can promise you that. I will not be anywhere else.

Todd: Until then, good luck with everything you have going on and I hope prep for the tour goes well. We will talk again soon.

Allie: Thank you. Good to hear from you.

Todd: Always good, Allie.

Allie: Until next time.

ALLIE COLLEEN LINKS:

OFFICIAL SITE

FACEBOOK

X – TWITTER

INSTAGRAM

Tags: featured

Category: Interviews