Allen Stone is fresh out of the hot tub and his evening couldn’t get any better. Lounging on his porch overlooking Spokane, it’s been a hot day and the countryside is lush and green.
Though he’s eight-and-a-half thousand miles away, it’s easy to tell from Stone’s voice that he’s like a sunflower – carefree and radiant with a whole lot of love to give to the world.
“It’s absurd, how privileged the world we live in today is,” Stone says. “After I’m through chatting to you, I’m going to push buttons on which type of food I want, and it’s going to be delivered straight to my door.”
2018 has been a big year for Stone, having already dropped two tracks, ‘Brown Eyed Lover’ and ‘Warriors’, which forms the first taste of the new album he’ll be releasing in early 2019. After writing ‘Warriors’, Stone got the opportunity to play it at the opening ceremony of the Special Olympics, which celebrated 50 years in 2018.
“They wanted to know if we had any material that we wanted to play and I said to them, ‘I’ve got the perfect song.’ Slowly but surely we were able to add more and more elements to our performance. They were like, ‘Hey, what do you think about having a choir?’ and they came back and said ‘What about a 2000-piece choir?’ I thought ‘Even better, this is great.’
“Then, they came back and said ‘What if we used the Seattle Seahawks drum line?’ They kept adding all these incredible pieces to the performance and it couldn’t have been more perfect. I came away from that event on fire. I’ve never felt better playing music in my life,” Stone says.
Music has always been a big part of Stone’s life, and from listening to his music you can tell that soul greats such as Marvin Gaye and Stevie Wonder have had a big impact on shaping his honey-like vocal delivery. Beginning to collect classic records in his teenage years, it was the 1973 album Innervisions by Stevie Wonder that was a turning point for Stone.
“You’d have to have little to no heartbeat for that record not to hit you somehow. At the age I was when that record came along, I was graduating high school and there are so many incredible songs on that record. Stevie played most of the instruments and I don’t know exactly how old Stevie was when he recorded it, but I think we were around the same age. That record and Songs in the Key of Life, were two hugely influential albums for me.”
Stone is getting married in September and to coincide, he’s hitting the road. As you’d think, Stone is very excited to get back Down Under – not once, but twice – when he returns to play Bluesfest 2019. “I’ve never seen Ray LaMontagne and he’s one of my favourite singers ever, so I’d say he’s at the top of the list of people I need to see.
“Whenever there’s an offer from Bluesfest, I always take it. There are incredible festivals all over the world and yes their lineups kill, but Bluesfest is always set apart for the calibre of musicians who actually play real live music,” Stone says.
