Allen Stone on the road to even bigger, better things

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Allen Stone

He’s only 24, but singer/songwriter Allen Stone’s voice is decades older. Or seems to be, anyway. And plaudits, not surprisingly, are pouring in from every direction. One especially smitten critic wrote (with comedic intent) that Stone’s vocal chords are “surely forged from a golden harp’s wistful strings, curried in angel’s tears and brushed gently with a flying unicorn’s softest feathers.” According to Seattle’s City Arts magazine, his voice has “a rich caramel tone as full as it is limber, reaching back into the annals of soul’s greatest hitmakers, rippling like Stevie Wonder, swaying like Bill Withers, ascending like Prince.”

With a new album (his third — self-titled) and a recent appearance on Conan O’Brien’s TBS chatfest under his belt, the as-yet-unsigned Stone has left behind cramped coffee houses for 1,000-seat theaters. One of them sold out three weeks in advance. Currently touring the country with his band, the Chewelah, Wash. native is scheduled to appear Jan. 24 and 25 at House of Blues, with Jack’s Mannequin and Jukebox the Ghost. (He’ll return to town for a solo show in early March.)

While piloting his new $40,000+ diesel “sprinter” van toward Bellingham, Washington, the Seattle resident talked about his fast-rising profile, his slapped-together look and his incongruously soulful sound.

Question: You’re getting accolades from all over the place. Far as I can tell, there’s nowhere to go from here but down.

Allen Stone: [Laughs] I hope not. Some of the stuff they say in these [reviews] is kind of ridiculous. I think there’s plenty of room for growth. My passion is playing live. With how over-processed and digital and in-the-box music is nowadays, I love going out and putting on a show that’s really organic, where people will say, “Wow, that’s really coming out of every single one of those players. This sound is being created right now.”

Q. You’ve got something of a weird look [large plastic specs, long blond locks, old-guy sweaters], but you embrace it.

AS: Yeah. It is what it is. I’m a hippie kid from Seattle. I would much prefer people to chat about the songs and the content and the music, but we’re visual creatures. I would imagine that’s probably the first thing I would notice if I was on the other side. It’s like, “Man, this [sound] should not be coming out of this kid.’”And I completely understand it.

Q. Where does your look fall on a spectrum from don’t give a damn to carefully cultivated.

AS: I’m definitely on the backside of don’t give a damn. You know, I shower at least two or three times a week. But there is no method to this madness. Everybody’s like, “Dude, I love this shirt you got on, dog! This thing is dope!” And I’m like, “Bro, I stole this from my roommate three months ago because I didn’t have another one.” I wear the same jeans for three weeks straight.

Q. Are you more persnickety about your music?

AS: Yeah, I’m very anal when it comes to music and not anal when it comes to other portions of my life — like deodorant and toothpaste. [Laughs]

Q. With lots of great singers, you can’t help but hear the pain and experience in their voices. But you don’t have much of either. Where does your mature sound come from?

AS: I really have no idea. I grew up in a wonderful family. My parents are still married, they love me to death and I love them. I haven’t experienced life on the streets and I haven’t been addicted to heroin. Compared to real blues singers, my life has been pretty cookie-cutter.

For me, I think it’s just the emotion I find while playing. I truly believe what I’m singing and it’s the conviction of the song that moves me to sound the way that I do. Nowadays, with all the entertainment that’s thrown at people, we have a very, very keen sense of what’s fake the what’s not. And I think people can read that in a second.