THE RIZE: How did you get started in the music and entertainment industry?
ALLON: I had my first studio internship at 17 and that consisted of making coffee, cleaning bathroom, running for donuts. All those stories you hear about interns, I did. After 2 and ½ yrs, I worked my way up to assistant engineer which is basically setting up the sessions. Then moved up to mixing engineer, did some mixes for mercury records back in the day. Engineering was great but I realized being a recording engineer, everyone was doing it. It wasn’t for me, so I decided to become a musician. Had a couple of bands in NYC. NYC is great because you can gig every night, Great place to hone your skills and learn what kind of musician you want to be. Did all of that then, got a production deal in Nashville. My sister and I decided to have a little project called Ultimate Ending. We were big grunge fans in our teens. She was a tool fan, I was bush, silver chair, gin blossoms, that was me, all that melodic stuff. We got the production deal in Nashville, went down, recorded some songs, nothing really came of it, but we got the production deal so that was nice.
After that, 2005-2006, did my band Delivery here in Moncton and that was a heavy alternative rock band. That’s basically my whole run and that’s not even counting my stint with A&R, Indie Labels etc. It’s been quite the journey, it started off just basically interning up till what I’m doing now.
THE RIZE: What other producers, songwriters or artists are you inspired by?
ALLON: For producers, I think I’ll go back to old school to Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis with Janet Jackson to Quincy Jones with Michael Jackson. Those guys are iconic because of what they had to work with and the fact that they didn’t have auto tune, pitch correction or all the toys that us producers take for granted now. You really had to have talent. It was a one shot deal. I remember my dad saying that he was taught back in his day, you never practice on records. Back then, two inch tape was running you $450 a roll for 3 minutes of tape. You couldn’t afford to go into a recording studio and make mistake after mistake. You had to have talent and know what you wanted before you hit that tape.
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