INTERVIEW: ALLIE COLLEEN – October 2026

Photo Credit: Ryan Waneka

According to a recent press release: “Country artist Allie Colleen turns years of persistence into a declaration with “Our Turn,” a bold new release for those who have put in the work, challenged expectations, and refused to compromise the stories they believe deserve to be heard. Rooted in her own experience building a career one stage and one song at a time, the track captures the conviction of an artist no longer waiting for an invitation to step forward. “Our Turn” is both personal and universal, giving a voice to anyone determined to create a place for themselves rather than wait for one to be offered. Through years of writing, recording, touring, and independently growing her audience, she has built a career that includes nearly 12 million lifetime streams, national and international touring opportunities, and performances across an increasingly diverse range of stages. Allie has been selected to support nationally recognized headlining artists on major tours across the country while continuing to expand her own touring footprint. Her music and live performances remain grounded in the independence, resilience, and work ethic that have shaped her career from the beginning. Allie Colleen is a country artist, singer, and songwriter whose impeccably strong voice, rooted in timeless tradition yet fresh with modern influence, has made her one of today’s most compelling independent acts. Known for silencing a room with heartfelt stories of love and heartbreak, and for penning witty, relatable lyrics that connect deeply with audiences, she is quickly earning recognition as one of country music’s breakout stars.” Once again, it was a great conversation when I got Allie on the phone to discuss new music, misconceptions, and much more…

Toddstar: As always thank you for taking time for us.  I love speaking with you. It’s been a couple of years, but it’s always great to get you on the phone. You have had a lot going on since the last time we spoke. You were just getting ready to head out on the Jelly Roll tour and you’ve dropped some singles since then. You’ve been quite a force on social media.

Allie: It’s a really wild, really big world for music right now, man. You know what I mean? I do feel like we’re just lucky every day that we get to do it. We’ve had a really good last year or two since the Jelly Roll tour. We are just really trying to go out there and find our audience where we can come back and maybe move some tickets, and we’re just so lucky.

Toddstar: It’s fun to watch you, especially when you’re going old school – peddling your music and asking for likes. You’re not just assuming that everybody’s just going to go out and click like or click pre-save. You’re going out and asking for it, which is cool to see that you want it bad enough to go get it.

Allie: I have never wanted to do anything other than music, and I will be the first to admit that it has kicked our butts a little more than I thought it would. I don’t know how you do this without working your tail off. All my friends here in Nashville… they go and work every day to promote themselves, to try and get advances, and everything. The independent artist world is not for the weak, but man, it’s such a privilege. The social media world is just getting crazier by the day, but we’re really lucky to have the interactions that we do have.

Toddstar: It’s great to see and hear. I still go back and listen to your catalog, but I think “Ain’t The Only Hell (My Mama Raised)” is probably my favorite all-time Allie Colleen track.

Allie: I love that.

Toddstar: I’ve been listening to Stones all morning.  I digress… you’re promoting new stuff. You’ve got “Our Turn” and “Buck It.” Let’s talk about these new songs. The new material is still very personal, but how have you gone from the very introspective, like, “Ain’t The Only Hell (My Mama Raised)” to these songs?

Allie: For us, it’s just been the live show. It’s the one thing that we’re privileged the most to do. We get to go and take the actual 90-minute Allie Colleen show to places opposed to, when you start playing music, you’re always doing covers and you’re always doing other people’s music. When it came down to my live show and writing towards the music I love to perform. Then you get stuff like “Buck It” and that all kind of came out of a song called “Halos & Horns.” A couple of years ago we really changed our live set because I loved playing that song so much. I told everyone I want to do big anthem stuff, as opposed to the Stones album, which I love that you listen to. I still listen to it quite a lot. I just traded my car in, and I left my Stones CD in my car when I traded it as a little memento. I thought somebody one day will get my car, and they’ll have an Allie Colleen CD in there. I have to say, that was an album of songs for other people. Does that make any sense? They were songs that I wrote trying to find audiences that needed these songs to kind of live with as a singer-songwriter perspective, because I do think it’s so important for us to kind of make room for people to spend times with certain emotions and things like that. That’s where the Stones album came out of and we performed like that for a couple of years. As soon as we wrote “Halos & Horns,” we had something that big in the set list on the live show, it was like, how do we get 90 minutes of this? This is so much fun for me, so that’s changed a lot about the songs we’ve chosen to put out. I can’t wait to perform every night.

Toddstar: That said, with that big arena and anthemic feel in those tracks, who influenced you sonically to move into that vibe and song style?

Allie: I only listened to alternative music growing up. I’m a huge Amy Lee fan. I listened to bands and singers like Daughtry, Evanescence, Nickelback, Three Days Grace. I listened to those big vocalists and bands. We were all athletes growing up and that’s what you would work out to… that was on your pump-up playlist before your games. Like you said, that big arena-feel sonic, huge thing. We’ve tried in the last couple of years to partner that feel with the narratives that we love to sing about so much like horses. I’ve been trying to find a world between the alternative music that I grew up listening to and country.

Toddstar: It’s very cool insight. Building on that, because you mentioned the country vibe, you grew up on Oklahoma, and you’re cutting teeth in Nashville, how hard has it been to, we’ll say, convert the people that expected that an Oklahoma or Nashville sound out of you to, “Holy shit, she can rock too.”

Allie: It’s a little bit like pulling teeth some days. I’ll tell you what. I get a lot of nice compliments after the shows, but I will not lie to you. We’re still to a point where a good bit of them tell is “We really love that sweet stuff that you do. We love it when you do the sweet stuff.” I know, but I just want to party up there and I just want to run around. So, it’s been well received. It is not lost on me though it was a shift. There are a lot of people who have followed us forever, who are so kind to say we will still follow you forever, but tell us “Ain’t The Only Hell (My Mama Raised)” is their favorite song. We’re just lucky for them to care about anything that we’ve done, honestly. I’m also lucky to grow new fans with every show as you alter your sound and evolve and grow. So, like I said, we’ve just been lucky.

Toddstar: One of the things I love about your music specifically is the vibe. I love the sound. I’ve been able to see you live. I also love that you will turn the mirror on yourself at every turn in most of your songs. When it doesn’t seem like it on the surface, even a song like “South Side” is still very introspective. Is it easier now than it was a few years ago to strip back the layers and expose yourself?

Allie: In a lot of ways, yes and in a lot of ways, no. You know, as I’ve gotten older, I definitely care less than I ever have about people judging me or taking any of the personal narratives that I choose to sing about in any kind of personal way. I’m always surprised… it doesn’t matter how specific you get about yourself, your lyrics, and what you’re able to share. These beautiful people are still showing up listening to this music thinking about themselves. It’s always so perplexing to me how vulnerable I can get with my lyrics and how much I can confess and share about my personal world and people are listening to songs thinking about whatever it makes them feel. That’s one of the coolest things about songwriting is you can feel very exposed, but at the end of the song, they look at you and they’re like, ‘is that about me?’ I’m like, ‘no, it’s about me.’ That’s been so cool, so I’ve actually leaned in. I feel like in the last couple of years to a little bit more of a personal exposure thing for that reason because it’s been so cool to see people be validated by something that’s vulnerable.

Toddstar: I feel the same thing. I’ve been listening to music a long time, and to me, the true ingredient of a great song is that you can relay that feeling to where you automatically draw someone in and for them to think somebody else knows what they went through. Somebody else knows what they felt. I think from the beginning, that’s what I really appreciated about your music – that you invited everybody into your world, but you were also taking the invitation into theirs.

Allie: Thank you for saying that. I have been so validated by music my whole life and I had a really hard time communicating as a kid. I felt like that with both people my age and adults. When you were able to package that in a song, in a beautiful three-minute space that sounded pretty and maybe was fun to sing along with, it made connections so much easier. So, I’m grateful for songwriting in that way and grateful to get to share that experience with anyone that cares to spend time with our music.

Toddstar: You’ve written song with a lot of your friends. I was lucky enough years ago in Florida to meet one of them when you were out touring with Carly (Rogers). Stones had a lot of co-writes for you. Who’s still out there that you would love to do something with? Who’s still on your bucket list to write a song with or record a song with?

Allie: I’m really loving the women right now that are putting themselves out there in country music and that are making their own ways with their own narratives. Like you said, there’s a lot of friends here in Nashville that are really talented. There’s a younger artist – Lou Ridley. She seems so cool. She’s much younger than me and she’s coming up. She doesn’t care, she’s just very forthgoing, she’s very strong, and she reminds me a lot of what I saw in Ashley (McBride) that made me feel so encouraged and represented in what we do in country music. There are a lot of younger artists coming up in Nashville that I’ve been watching that I would really love to get to write either for them or if they wanted to come in and write with me. I’ve been lucky to open for Ashley. As you know, she’ll always be my answer to that question. I would love to really spend time with her writing. Cody Johnson will still always be a write that I want badly. I think his narratives are so cool. There are a lot of really cool young artists coming up through Nashville right now that I would be lucky to get to work with.

Toddstar: Got it. Looking at your catalog, what is the song or two that you believe will be a part of your set until the day you stop? I would love to get the answer to come more from you than from a fan perspective. What are the songs that you believe will always be a part of what you do?

Allie: For me, it’s definitely “Only Oklahoma.” It’s my time in the set list where I get to tell the audience that I’m going to go home for three minutes. I always tell them I hope they go somewhere kind and I always follow it up with “and if you don’t have anywhere to go, you can come back to Oklahoma with me.’ It’s just such a sweet space, especially when the set has gotten so big, rocky, and fun. It’s just such a cool moment to kind of strip everything back down to the music that we started making in the beginning. They were just stories and things I hoped fans could relate to and be vulnerable with, so “Only Oklahoma” is one of them. “Halos And Horns” is my baby. I wait for it in the set every single night. I just love it so much and I never want that song to NOT be on my set list. I know you said not to do this, but the fan song is “Wildflower.” A couple of years ago, we were playing this little festival somewhere in Ohio. At the very end of “Wildflower,” there was a bunch of little girls dancing in front of the stage and a good bit of them knew the song, which was really surprising to me. It’s always surprising to me when people know the music before you get there. I’ll never forget this – there was a little girl who was singing in the front row, and I asked her if she wanted to sing a last word and she said yes. She took the last ‘Wildflower’ that’s in the song. Dude, I cried like a baby for days just thinking about her. She was just so fun. She couldn’t have been more than 8 years old, and I saw myself and every single version when I was 8. So “Wildflower” became a song that we’ve given back to the audience and that’s been really rewarding for me.

Toddstar: It’s a beautiful song, and it’s funny you mention it, because it’s actually what’s on right now here in my office.

Allie: Yay! Serendipitous.

Toddstar: This demonstrates how you love the anthemic tracks, but you still dig the stripped back material, as if to say ‘this is me, this is who I am.’ It speaks to how strong your music is, whether it’s the more introspective or the more in your face. That’s what I love about your stuff. If you had to, and you don’t mind disclosing, what’s the biggest misconception you think fans have about you and your music?

Allie: I think there’s two. I’ve wanted to do this for so long and I’ve really taken a lot of care and put effort into the persona of who Allie Colleen is. I believe people think that I think I’m cooler than I am. It’s not lost on me, you guys. okay? I am emotional, a bit of a nerd, and I have trouble with some simple things, okay? Not lost on me. Allie Colleen is the coolest, toughest, and most confident person there ever was. There’s always that personal difference because it’s so funny. I think one of the greatest compliments – but if I think about it too much, it can hurt my feelings – people are always like, ‘wow, you’re so much nicer and like goofier in person than we thought.’ I always tell them, ‘No, I’m a nerd for sure and there’s nothing to be scared of.’ That’s why I look so scary because there’s nothing to be scared of. I’m trying to make you a little scared of me before you come over here and hurt my feelings. I feel like that’s a big one too. To your point earlier, we’re going out there and we’re really asking our audience very specific ways that they can interact with my music that’s helpful towards our growth, like pre-saves, social media likes, and engaging with certain content over others. It’s so flattering to me. People think we’re doing a lot better than we’re doing. I always need the fans’ help. Just because the content looks a little cleaner than it’s ever looked, or because it looks like we’re busier than we’ve ever looked, please don’t stop coming to my shows. Please don’t assume that someone else is going to buy the ticket or my front row will be full. Please keep showing up for us because we really have worked so hard. We’re in that limbo place of not growing the way that we thought that we would. There’s nothing wrong with any of these things. I love this so much, but I still need you guys to come and help me out. They’ve been so responsive to it and that’s been so cool. You don’t do anything by yourself when it comes to success. You know what I mean? It takes a village and it takes so many people. I’m so grateful to the people who have followed us for as long as they have.

Toddstar: It does take a village, and you have built that village stone by stone. I’ve watched you do it. I watched you do it on a little stage in Florida. I know you played The Machine Shop up in Flint, Michigan. You’ve played big arenas with Jelly Roll. It’s the little things in my mind that make the difference. I keep a bunch of guitar picks on display in my office, but the fact that I’ve got an Allie Colleen heart-shaped guitar pick is cool.

Allie: Aren’t they the best?

You: They are, but while it may mean something to you meeting fans, I don’t think it’s lost on you how much it means to someone else.

Allie: That will always be crazy to me. Because this was my dream. You didn’t want this since you were 8 years old for me. I did. It’s always so crazy to me how many people come together that want to be a part of that. It has always seemed like such a big ego driven dream to me, being an artist. I’m always so surprised to see how much actually goes into being an artist. I’m so grateful to keep doing this and for outlets people like you who continue to allow us a space to promote and represent ourselves. I’m grateful, and hopefully I will get to do this for a really long time.

Toddstar: I promise you, as long as you stay true to yourself, who you are, and what you’ve done so far, we will always have space for you.

Allie: Yay, thank you. You are part of my village.

Photo credit: Todd Jolicoeur – Toddstar Photo

Toddstar: I know you’re busy and I’m going to get to it myself, but I want to thank you again for all the time. I’m watching and waiting for 2027 tour dates and hopefully we can get something lined up and do something in person again.

Allie: Thank you. That would be awesome. I would love that.

Toddstar: Thanks again for the time, Allie. Be safe and we’ll talk to you soon.

Allie: Of course, talk to you soon. Thank you again. Have a good day.

ALLIE COLLEEN LINKS:

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ALLIE COLLEEN – APPLE MUSIC

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Category: Interviews