For the past 15 years or so, there’s been a revival of classic soul and R&B. Both are timeless styles, with heart at their creative nucleus and the result is sheer feeling and substantial emotion.
One of the many figures in this revival is Allen Stone, who is based out of Spokane, Washington. On Sunday, Sept. 7, Stone is taking the stage at Toad’s Place in New Haven. The show starts at 7 p.m. with singer-songwriter Ellery Harper, son of Ben Harper and actress Laura Dern, opening things up.
Stone and I had a chance to talk ahead of his appearance about a new song he just put out, using multimedia to promote his music, his thoughts on performing at Toad’s Place, and a new album he’s been working on.
RD: Last month, you released a single titled “Closer”, which has some bluesy instrumentation and an abundance of harmonies. It definitely sounds like a love song from listening to it, so what was the songwriting and recording process like for the tune?
AS: It was me, a guy named Mike Sabath and another guy named Lophiile who we had on as the producer. It was the three of us in the studio, and we were just minin’ for tunes over the course of a week during some sessions. I like having three people in the room, I can co-write with another person, but I typically like a three-person session, and when you’re mining for songs, you’re aiming to put together something that lives on for eternity.
RD: Very cool. Along with a few other songs, you made a music video for the single at Placeholder Studios. Where exactly is Placeholder located and what inspired you to do these sessions there with these vibrant backgrounds? For example, the video for “Closer” has these polkadots with a color scheme of blue and yellow while you’re wearing a flashy and puffy suit while sitting on a couch.
AS: Placeholder Studios is a little project and venture I have with my creative partner Justin Frick, and it’s in my hometown of Spokane, Washington. We were lucky enough to take over a studio after the local public broadcasting station moved out of there, and it had all of this incredible stuff. A bunch of scaffolding for lights and green screens, it’s a production playground, and we got in there towards the end of last year. Justin is a director and cinematographer, so he just loves vibrant colors. When you go look at his work, it all has that while being joyful and playful, which sort of aligns with where my head is at with production stuff.
I like it typically to feel fun and vibrant, so we both drew a lot of inspiration from that. There’s an online music video channel on YouTube called “Colors”, and they essentially bring artists in, it’s one mic and each one has a new color background. I’ve always enjoyed how much the singer would pop during those sorts of scenarios, and I also drew a lot of inspiration from that, but we do our best to make sure that we’re having fun. We’re not getting paid a good amount, so we might as well have a good time while doing it.
RD: Yeah, you want to make it worth your while, I totally hear that. Was there any reasoning behind having “Closer” be a standalone single rather than have it be part of the “Mystery” EP you put out last year? Was the recording for it from a totally different session?
AS: When I’m making a record, I typically have a bunch of songs written for it. Then I whittle those down until I find the 12 or 17, and some songs are really great, but they don’t feel like they belong to the same body of work. For the album I’m currently mixing and mastering, there’s about 17 to 20 songs, and “Closer” didn’t really feel like it had a spot on that record, but I really liked it. We decided to release it as a single as a way of continuing to release as much new material as possible, and I really like the song so I figured the audience might like it, so rather than have it dying a slow death on a hard drive, I wanted to put it out into the world.
RD: That makes total sense. Toad’s Place is one of the most legendary venues on the planet with the likes of The Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan, Parliament Funkadelic, David Bowie, Muddy Waters and John Lee Hooker playing there among many others. When it comes to performing in a place with so much history, what are your thoughts?
AS: I’m taken aback, really. I’m also glad that the venue is still around because there’s been so many iconic venues that haven’t stood the test of time due to everything a venue has to go up against. I don’t envy the venue owners or promoters, so for a venue like Toad’s Place to have stuck around as long as it has is incredible. Funny enough, for the last 12 or so years, the majority of my touring crew has been from New Haven. One of my first tour managers is from New Haven, and there’s this crew of all these wonderful fellas who happen to be from there and they cut their teeth at Toad’s Place or College Street Music Hall.
To a degree, it’s kind of a homecoming to come back to Toad’s Place. I’ve done plenty of tour rehearsals there and it’s a fun, iconic venue where you wonder what the walls would say if they could talk.
RD: Toad’s Place is a cool spot, I’ve been there numerous times and the history of the venue really is amazing. You said earlier that you’ve been working on a new record, and you have between 17 and 20 tracks at your disposal, so do you plan on eventually making a double album with all these songs, or will it be like what you mentioned before with whittling them down to something more concise?
AS: The plan is to release it next year. We don’t have a set release date yet, but we got a lot of great songs for it and I think anytime you release a full album, you just want to make sure you’re serving the audience for the next cycle of your career. You also want to make sure that what you put on the record can be enjoyed by people in their numerous ways of digesting music. That’s also important, and you want to make sure the music you’re putting out is exciting for those who are listening. I’m not 100% on where the track listing will land, that is still yet to be seen, and I’m still in the middle of deciding which songs will be used.