Traditional country singer Joel Allcorn was born in 1980. To date he has released three albums and has just releases an EP titled STATE OF HEARTBREAK after a break of 6 years. His debut album was titled 50 YEARS TOO LATE which, in some ways, sums up his ethos. However he, as with any independent artist performing today, has to work within the realities of the current state of music industry. Lonesome Highway recently had the opportunity to ask Allcorn some questions about his life and times.
Can you tell me about your background growing up in Columbus, Georgia, What were your earliest memories?
Mostly just things around the house with my grandparents to be honest. There wasn’t (and still isn’t) much that goes on in Columbus. It’s a big city, the second biggest in Georgia actually, but also a very remote city since there is no interstate that passes through. Some people have called it the worlds largest cul-de-sac and that’s a pretty good way to think of it. You don’t really go there unless you have a specific reason to do so, there isn’t much to do or see.
Was your mother being a Hank Williams Sr. fan something that have left an indelible mark on your consciousness. When did that translate into action and making your own music?
I wouldn’t really say she was a big Hank Williams Sr. fan, she grew up listening to mostly rock and southern rock like KISS and Lynyrd Skynyrd and stuff like that. I think she was just more of a casual Hank Williams fan and for some reason bought a greatest hits CD of his one day and it happened to end up that I was the one listening to it all the time. I first learned to play guitar in a general music class in elementary school and that Christmas my grandmother got me a Harmony guitar from Sears. It sat in my closet for a couple of years until I got that Hank Williams CD and it inspired me to actually want to learn to play and sing and write.
I doubt that hardcore country was the choice of many of your contemporaries when you were growing up. Was it hard to resist following what the majority were listening to?
No, not at all. I’ve never been one to follow the crowd or get into things that happened to be in fashion at the time. I’ve always sort of done my own thing and been sort of an outsider when it comes to stuff like that. I’m still that way today!
Did you have any musical interest outside of traditional country at the time and who in that genre of honky tonk etc were your major influences?
I guess my musical journey began with Jerry Lee Lewis when the Great Balls of Fire movie came out in 1989. Shortly after that I was listening to a lot of Garth Brooks and Alan Jackson, and then a few years later I discovered Hank Williams and that was around the same time bands like BR5-49 and Wayne Hancock were coming out. So as far as country music goes, that was sort of the way it went. But I was also into the alternative rock stuff that was coming out of Seattle in the early 90’s. So really those three genres were my primary influences when I was just getting into any music in general.
You recorded your debut album independently and released it in 2006. It was aptly titled 50 YEARS TOO LATE. You co-produced it in a number of studios between Columbus and Nashville with a group of like minded individuals so was that a difficult thing to do back then and how hard was it to find the right players to achieve what you wanted?
No, I didn’t know what I was doing back then so I’m sure that made it easier! Ignorance is bliss, right? It actually just came together on it’s own time. Some of the tracks were laid down in a local demo studio, then a guy who owned a local club decided to build a legitimate studio and we moved the work to his place. The studio was under construction at the time so we sort of had to work around the construction schedule and had to deal with people learning the equipment and things like that. Then I took it to Nashville to finish up tracking and to mix it. It was about a two year process all said. Some of the musicians we’re guys in my band at the time and they had been playing those songs on the road and the only Nashville studio guys I used on that record we’re for lead parts; Johnny Hiland on guitar, Donnie Herron on fiddle and Andy Gibson on steel.
Three years later you put out the follow up album ALL ALONE AGAIN. That album was special in that you got to work with Hank Williams’ steel player Don Helms. What do you rememberer of those sessions and the reaction to the album on its release?
Working with Don on the road and in the studio will always be the highlight of my career for me. It’s hard to explain what it was like to be on stage and hearing him playing behind me. It was a surreal experience to turn around and watch him play a lead on that same steel guitar he played with Hank Williams and to think how often Hank turned around on stage and did the same thing. When I hear one of my songs that he played on it is still kind of hard to believe I got to record with him and that that same steel guitar that is on Ernest Tubb, Hank Williams, Johnny Cash and Patsy Cline recordings is on a few of mine as well. After the session I took him back home and paid him and thanked him for the session. He wouldn’t accept the money and told me it felt good to finally play on something again where he felt like he belonged. I’ll never get a compliment any better than that.
Around that time you were pretty much out of step (if you were ever in it) with mainstream country radio and the prevailing idea of what constituted country music. Were they difficult times?
No, I’ve never paid much attention to what was going on in the mainstream. I know that the kind of music I write and record will never be accepted as mainstream country so I just don’t worry about all that stuff. Years ago I went and saw Hank Jr. in concert and he said something that totally changed the way I look at doing music as a career. He said “I play when I want to, where I want to and with who I want to!” I was blown away by that and it totally changed my perception. Music is supposed to be fun and it is a career you can really do whatever you want in, so why not do it that way? It should never feel like you’re punching a clock or in a competition. I just do the parts of it I enjoy and let other people who are chasing fame or fortune worry about all the other stuff. I am in my own little world most of the time.
It was a number of years later (2014) when you put out your next album NOTHING LEFT TO PROVE. This time as streaming was the way that a lot of music was being released you decide to try that instead of producing a physical album. Did this work for you or did it prove a difficult way to sell you album?
At that time I sort of already knew I was going to stop touring and doing music full time. Booking shows was getting consistently more and more difficult and without shows to sell the CD at, I didn’t see much of a need to invest in buying 1000+ copies of something I really had no way to sell other than on the internet. So it was released strictly as a digital album because the writing was on the wall as far as that was becoming the primary way people were going to be hearing new music. But now that I am back as a full time musician again we may finally put it out on CD and or Vinyl if there’s enough interest in it.
Were you gigging around the release of these albums and why did you decide to leave that gap between the second and third albums?
Mostly due to money. Records are pretty expensive to make and promote so it’s quite an investment and I’m not independently wealthy so I always have to go to friends and fans to fund my records. I’ve never had a record label or a big investor behind what I was doing, just some really good, generous fans that believed in what I was doing and wanted to help me get my music out there. We’ve never been able to afford a real PR campaign or anything for my records, we just kind of send them out there and whatever happens happens. But I’ve been making records for almost 15 years now and people are still buying and playing them, so I see that as a validation that people genuinely like the records I’ve made and that their success is not due to hiring a good publicist or any other means of manufacturing excitement or interest.
Following on from that why have you now decided to release the STATE OF HEARTBREAK EP?
State of Heartbreak was a song I wrote while I was recording NOTHING LEFT TO PROVE. I was playing the song live and knew it would be a good one that people would like and I was kind of bummed out that I wasn’t going to be able to record it. So I always knew that if I ever did make another record, State Of Heartbreak would be the single and/or title track. But the whole thing came about because a friend of mine turned me on to Patreon (www.pateron.com) and how it worked as far as fans supporting artists to “create” directly. So I started thinking about how that platform could work for a musician and basically came up with the concept that it makes your fan base your record label. In the past, labels would green light budgets for albums based on how many they expected an artist to sell. So in my case, my fanbase will decide how much new music is released. I have it set up so once we reach certain goals, we will do one, two or three EP’s per year as well as vinyl releases. It really just cuts out the middleman and allows me to have that direct relationship with my fans and allows them to play a direct role in my career. I think it’s better that way.
When play was it with band or solo and was that down to the economics of touring?
The industry has changed so much since I first began my career. I sort of got started right at the tail end of a time when it was standard for everyone to tour with a full band and I did that for the first part of my touring career when we mostly played the southeast. I had a five piece band with steel guitar, lead guitar, upright bass and drums. After my first record came out and I started touring nationally in the US, we dropped the steel player due to playing a lot of door deals and to travel lighter and just make it easier as far as finding a place to stay and everything along those lines. I toured like that up until the 2009 economic crash. The price of gasoline shot up and the clubs started paying even less, so that really put a hurting on any national and regional touring. From 2010-2015 I mostly played regional shows and only went outside of the southeast a hand full of times. Then I took a few years off from playing music all together and returned in 2019 to find that most places only want two or three piece bands now and they’re paying about the same as they did in 2010. So yeah, the show you see on the road for any band is usually a result of the economics on the time.
Obviously the Covid -19 situation has added whole new layer to the difficulties and revenue possibilities of all performers with big and small. How have you personally been effected?
It really hasn’t altered much of what Im doing right now. Most of what I do is based online with YouTube, Facebook and Patreon so I’m still able to do all those things as I was before all this happened. If anything, it helped me because it had a whole lot of people spending more time online. As of right now the only shows I’ve been doing have been duo gigs with my guitar player mostly in GA and AL and those have of course not been happening, but other than that it’s pretty much been the same old, same old for me.
You, in the main, write all your own material where do you draw inspiration from to do that?
I try to write from a place of emotion as opposed to telling a story or trying to write deep, complex, thought provoking songs. I’ll leave that to other people. I like to write a song that people can connect with through things they have experienced in life. Pain, love, loss, death, all that sort of stuff and I just write about things I’ve been through, felt or saw happen to people and it’s gotten me this far so I don’t reckon I’ll mess with that formula too much in the future.
Right now there seems to be a growing number or artist going back to a more traditional sound. How hopeful is that, overall, in such a tight-knit scene?
I think there are a lot of bands out there that are called country, but in truth they are acoustic rock bands with a fiddle or steel put in the mix so they can call it country or Americana. I don’t think there are that many people out there that are really doing genuine country music that would have been welcome on the radio or the jukeboxes back in the 50’s and that’s sort of what I use to decide what is or isn’t country music. Of course it’s all subjective and everyone has their own thoughts and opinions on the subject, but that’s how I look at it. If I couldn’t imagine Hank Williams, Ernest Tubb, Merle Haggard or guys like that singing it, then it’s probably not country music.
Do you plan to release a full album in the near future?
The plan is to do two EP’s per year that will be released in limited quantity on CD. Then, those two albums will be combined and released as a full length LP on vinyl. But I will continue released two EP’s per year and then release only singles to streaming services.
What has been the best thing about playing, producing and writing your music?
So many things. I’ve been to so many places and met so many people I never would have if it wasn’t for the music. I’ve worked with and recorded with a lot of the people that played on the records I’ve listened to my whole life. It has really been an honour. I enjoy recording more than any other part of it so producing is something I’ve really grown to love and it’s something I get really deep into the zone with when I’m in the studio. As far as writing goes, I think it’s the best therapy there is to write down your heartache and pain and put it on a record and have other people connect and identify with it. When I started out that was the one goal I had as a writer, to just help someone else get through something the way people like Hank Williams helped me. I hope I’ve been able to do that.
You gave testimony in 2007, you appeared before theUnited States House Committee on Small Business as a record label owner and a performer. What were the effects of that appearance long term to were there any benefits?
It helped a lot of independent radio broadcasters to keep doing what they were doing and you have to remember, this happened back in 2007 before there was any streaming or iTunes or anything of that nature. Back then, internet radio was really the only way people could discover independent artists music outside of the few terrestrial radio stations that would play it. Today, it wouldn’t be as big of a deal because you have Spotify and all these things, but it was something I was happy to do and something I am proud to have been a part of. It’s not every day a hillbilly singer gets to testify before members of the United States Congress!
Looking back on you career would you have done anything different?
I wouldn’t have done anything different, only smarter. I really didn’t have anyone around me that knew how to go about putting a career together, I just had to learn and figure it all out on my own. I was fortunate enough to be around people that knew things and offered their advice, some of it was good, some of it was bad, but that’s just how it goes. I am very satisfied with what I’ve done in my career and that that’s how I was able to step away from it for a few years and try something else for a while. If I had to walk away from it again, I wouldn’t have any regrets or feel like I missed out on anything. I’ve been very fortunate to do a lot of the things I have had the opportunity to do.
What other possible upcoming plans are there for Joey Allcorn?
You never know, but that’s what makes it interesting! I don’t have anything specific planned other than to continue recording albums and releasing them as previously mentioned.
Finally are they any artists out there right now who have impressed you?
I’ve been a huge fan of Hot Club of Cowtown for many years. I think they’re phenomenal musicians and entertainers. We got to open for them for the first time last year and they were very kind and friendly people as well. I’ve always been a fan of Dale Watson and Wayne Hancock, they have been in regular rotation for me for many years now and I always listen to their new records. But as far as “newer” artists, I’d have to say Pokey LaFarge. I haven’t met him, but I enjoy his music a lot and I like how most of it harkens back to a 1930’s sort of style, the type of stuff from Jimmie Rodgers’ era. Another one is Jason James from down in Houston, TX. I really like his songwriting and voice. I’ve gotten to know him recently as he is part of our “Live from the Lost Highway” deal on Facebook.
INTERVIEW BY STEPHEN RAPID