[Cover photo credit to Stephen Albanese]
Colorado musician Jace Allen has recently released his debut album, Taking Sides. The LP embraces multiple genres including Rock, Funk, Soul, Country and Pop and its overall theme focuses on multiple perspectives of conflict and resolution. In addition to the album release, Allen has shared the track and video, “Hail Federate,” with all proceeds benefiting families impacted by the war in Ukraine via 1kproject.org.
Taking Sides features a variety of collaborators including Payge Turner (The Voice, Season 19) and David Cremin, as well as featured players such as Divinity Roxx (Beyoncé), Dave Immerman (Avril Lavigne), JUNO (Bruno Mars, Camilla Cabello), Akie Bermiss (Lake Street Dive), Brad Hargreaves (Third Eye Blind), and more.
Allen comments:
This album is the culmination of my first year of going back to music full time. I chose not to edit and wrote whatever came to me. In the end, multiple genres came out of my brain, but ironically the songs all tied together lyrically. ‘Taking Sides’ is more than just the title track, as it’s a description. Each of the songs all talk about some sort of conflict and I think the album, as a whole, is a conflict between my different modes of songwriting. Perhaps the audience will tell me what genre they think I should focus on.
“Hail Federate” benefits The 1K Project, a volunteer-based organization that connects sponsors worldwide to families impacted by the war in Ukraine and the song itself was written in response to Russia’s attempted takeover of Ukraine and the imagery that occured to Allen as Ukrainians were forced to take up arms to defend their families.
Also appearing on the LP is the collaboration with Payge Turner, “Underwater” which benefitted The Clean Slate Initiative, a non-profit that raises money for social justice reform and clears the records of those formerly in the prison system, who commit to staying crime-free.
