by Liv Stecker
Allen Stone is the first one to admit
that he’s always been seeking an audience. Growing up in the sleepy little town
of Chewelah, Washington as the son of a pastor, he found himself performing for
family and friends and the captive audience of his father’s congregation.
Barely in high school, Allen recalls watching the sudden rise to fame of a
familiar Christian performer. A family friend only one year older than Allen won
a music competition in Colorado and landed a record deal that shot her to
stardom. He was immediately captivated by the possibility of becoming something
more than the youngest child of a small town family, playing in the worship
band of a small church in the country.
In his early teens, Allen picked up a
guitar and began to learn the worship refrains that his father led in church.
Before long he was writing his own music, but kept his budding talent secreted away
between home and church while he flourished in high school as a self-proclaimed
drama geek and athlete. At 15, Allen discovered soul music when someone gave
him Stevie Wonder’s Innervisions
album. Listening to Dave Matthews, Billy Joel and other classics, Stone began
to find his own voice and create. He won a local music contest and the chance
to record ten original songs in one day with a studio in Spokane – a recording
that Stone laughingly says no one will ever hear, but it was the open door to
possibilities that Allen had been looking for. After graduating from Jenkins
High School in Chewelah he relocated to Spokane, where he began performing at
local college hangouts. “Nobody was listening, but I was playing!” he laughs.
It was soon after this that he moved to Seattle and started to meet artists and
musicians that saw the first glimpse of Stone as he emerged with his own voice.
It was what Allen views as his evolution as a person, an adult, and an artist.
“I was branching out from my social nest and figuring out what I believed and
what was thrown on me,” he says, “it was the separation of church and Allen.”
Allen was the third child of Dan Stone
and his wife Sandy, an OB nurse and breast cancer survivor. Growing up, Dan led
worship and served as the youth pastor at Addy New Life Christian Center, a
non-denominational community church a few miles north of Chewelah. Eventually
Dan took over as the head pastor of the church, and Allen played throughout
high school with the worship band and at youth group meetings. Dan and Sandy
have since moved back to central Washington to help run the family farm, and
Allen compares his father’s work as a pastor to the wheat farming he does now.
“Harvesting grain and harvesting souls isn’t that different,” he says with a
smile, musing that sewing and reaping are the same principles in the ground and
in the hearts of people, “although maybe grain is a little easier to work with
sometimes.” Allen says that his dad is still a pastor everywhere he goes, as
well as an entertainer, a skill that he has passed on. Stone says his parents and siblings have been
among his biggest supporters and promoters, super-fans from the get go.
In 2009 at the age of 22, Allen produced Last To Speak, his first self-released
album. A year later, self-titled Allen
Stone was released and Stone became an overnight international sensation.
Performing on the David Letterman Show, Ellen DeGeneres and opening for
legendary acts like Dave Matthews, the crowds were eating Allen up. His soulful
retelling of classic hits, and his old-school originals won him an
international following. Within months he was selling out audiences twice the
size of his hometown of 2,600 people.
Allen played over 600 shows in two years, and after the whirlwind of touring
and recording, he landed right back at the place where he began: Chewelah.
Building a recording studio in a remote
cabin on Waitts Lake, Stone says that the rural area helps keep him centered
and able to continually create – the thing that he considers true success.
While playing for crowds and becoming a household name was something at the top
of Allen’s list growing up, he says that the fame carries with it a sense of
falsehood. Sitting in Paul’s Coffee Shop in downtown Chewelah, Stone says that
it all depends on your definition of “making it”, which is the most important
part of success: knowing what that means on a personal level. “In art,” he
says, “there is no destination - you’ve ‘made it’ if you want to continually
create.” Once you think you’ve arrived, Allen
says it’s time to “punch a hole through that wall and move on.”
In 2013, Allen performed an outdoor
concert at Chewelah’s Chataqua, an annual festival that draws thousands from
Stevens County and beyond. Coming full circle, Allen left his tour in the
Midwest for a rushed visit back home. He
and the band flew in to Spokane, where his parents picked them up in vans for
the Sunday afternoon show that packed out the small park. When Allen told his
manager that he wanted to play the festival in his hometown, she was skeptical.
“She didn’t even believe that Chewelah existed. She couldn’t find it anywhere
and thought I made it up.” After a lot of trying, the event organizers were
finally contacted and when they heard the agent pitch Allen’s show using his recent
performances on David Letterman, and other successes, they responded that Allen
was definitely out of their budget. Writing off the costs on his own dime,
Allen swooped in and played a free concert to a crowd of friends and family
that couldn’t have been happier.
As a kid from a small town, Stone didn’t
have famous connections or money to get him where he was headed. When asked
what the hardest part of launching a career against the odds of rural living
and limited resources was, Allen stands up from the leather couch in the coffee
shops and takes a big step. “Getting up
and going – it’s the hardest part.” He says. Fear of failure, of risk and
leaving the safety of a small community are the biggest obstacles to what might
be out there. “Everything we do is fear based,” he speculates, but says that
fear can also be the motivator to change. “I was afraid that I was going to
turn 35 and feel like I hadn’t tried hard enough.” At 27, Allen has a few years
to go yet and he seems to be doing just fine, punching his way through the wall
and on to the next scene.
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