Call Upon The Author

Jon Allen, a guy who goes relatively undetected but a guy who puts too much work in for it to be deserved. Hopefully, with the release of his album Dead Man’s Suit and his impending tour of Europe it’s something that is about to change. He’s a great live performer, fantastic at keeping his audience entertained, but what is he like without the guitar and microphone to hide behind?

Well, after overcoming the first obstacle, a precarious looking, swimming pool type ladder attached to the stage, it was time to find out.

Upstairs in a common room area he sat down looking quite open and inviting; if a bit weary of the tape recorder. The rest of the Jon Allen band were in the next room, door open revealing that they were just having a few pre-gig beers. They all seemed to get along quite well with one another, so it was no surprise when they sometimes chipped in with their very own answers.

Can you describe your music in three words?
His answer was preceded by much umming and ahhing. “In three words? Err, folk, rock, blues,” again he ums and ahs, unsure of what to say. “Folk, rock, melodic. I don’t know. Melodic, folk, rock. That’ll do,” he concludes laughing.

Okay, can you do the same for yourself?
“Simon, how would you describe me in three words?” They start joking around, throwing an odd mix of words about. “Singer/songwriter surely,” he said with a grin. “Err, Scatty? Come on guys say something nice about me.” Another round of random words ensues until someone calls him miserable and Simon stands up to defend him saying he’s generous.

“Do you think? Or are you just trying to butter me up? I don’t know, you say something about me, you’ve met me now. You can find the other two words.”…Bugger.

Well, you’re quite funny.
“Funny, okay, you’re just flattering me, she’s flattering me.”

You seem quite confident as well.
“Err, it’s all bluster, it’s all bluster. Okay, next.”

Phew, okay, so after growing up in Totnes, did London come as a culture shock?
He paused slightly, thinking carefully before speaking. Just as long as he answered it himself he could have all the time he wanted to think. “Not really. I mean Totnes is full of the kind of people that actually live in London anyway. London is just a total melting pot of loads of different people. I went to Liverpool and went to university there first and then came down, so I was fairly prepared for the experience of London.”

Did you always know you were going to be a musician?
This time he had no problem answering, he jumped into it straight away with a childish exuberance, confident in his retelling.
“I had a few other things I thought I’d want to do. I wanted to be a tennis player when I was about, eleven, I thought I could have been a contender, you know, left handed and all that,” he said, pretending to swing a tennis racket. “Yeah, so then I thought maybe I’d be a coach or something because I wasn’t that good. I had a few things I wanted to do. When I first moved to London I used to go out to dinner to this place and I saw a lorry, when I was probably less than ten, and the driver had this little curtain and stuff in the lorry. He obviously slept in there and that looked good. I wanted to be a lorry driver for a while. There were a few other ideas that were floating about before music.”

What put a stop to the lorry driver idea?
“I don’t know, the romance sort of drifted away as I grew a little bit older and realised the reality of that kind of life. The romance of the curtain and having everything nice in the cab just gave way to reality.”

What made you pick up a guitar and learn to play?
“If the truth be told, Back To The Future. I loved the movie and was kind of obsessed with it when I was a little kid. I had a body warmer, I had a skateboard and I had a little Sony walkman. There’s that scene where Marty plays Johnny B. Goode at the end, so that was kind of like a ‘wow, yeah that’s cool’ rock ‘n’ roll thing.
“Basically the inner desire to show off probably just came through and eventually it found its manifestation in being a musician.”

Finally, about halfway through he seems to have forgotten all about the being recorded and he’s no longer thinking so hard about his answers. He goes on to talk about supporting KT Tunstall, describing the tour as energetic where stuff just happened making it a good thing to do. When asked what KT Tunstall herself was like, he replied with a wry smile, a laugh and joked, perhaps predictably that she was a “Bitch, a complete bitch.”

Jon has, relatively recently released his debut album Dead Man’s Suit, which he has been promoting with this tour. The most recent single released from it has even made it into the chart, all be it the chart in Holland but you have to start somewhere right? “We’re actually doing better [in Holland] than anywhere else. That’s going to be exciting to see how hysterical everybody is for Jon Allen,” he says in regard to his European tour.

Needless to say Jon is quite an intriguing man, he doesn’t react to things like people would expect. For instance he likens the process of making his album to “the worst kind of labour” and claims that with its release he now suffers from something akin to post-natal depression, but he still brings copies of it along to the gig to sell, belying a sense of pride that must be there. “I’m so jaded and bitter now that I can’t feel those kinds of emotions,” he laughs, modestly reluctant to say anymore about the album. “It’s all too late for me. Nothing matters anymore.”

Of course, with the reviews he has gotten from both Q magazine and Clash, he should be proud. Was he surprised by the reaction, well he jokes about it, undermining the album’s success. “Not after we gave them that money in those unmarked suitcases,” he pauses for a while, thinking seriously about the question. “It goes down well with some people; it goes down badly with others.

“It’s great when somebody says something nice about you, but equally I try not to let it mean too much to me because then I’d be wounded by criticism.”

He chats for a little while longer; he’s not due on stage for another couple of hours, but of course hunger quite often gets the better of people and this was no exception. Jon Allen, a modest and polite man, who is also rather helpful, since he did point out another way downstairs without having to tackle that ladder again.