It was the mid-seventies and many of Allen's friends had purchased their first guitars, but they had no one to provide those sweet low notes. Soon Allen's friend Greg marched him off to the music store, loaned him the money, and bought him his first bass. "It was a red hollow body Epiphone and the strings were about an inch off the fretboard at the seventh fret." Perfect for building up hand strength!
Nobody seemed to care if Allen had learned to play the darn thing yet "just come over and jam". After a couple years of jamming and garage bands, Allen's first real band was Ivory Rose, with a lovely lady named Carla Johnson as lead singer. She would later play with Dan Grise in Visions!.
Through the eighties he played original music with City Knights. "We were going to be big rock stars, but I guess it just wasn't meant to be."
In the early nineties, Allen successfully tried his hand at country music with Silverado. After that it was back to rock 'n roll with Working Dogs, which Allen put together with two other former members of City Knights. After Working Dogs broke up Allen took a break from music, got married and had the first of his two sons. Soon he had the itch for music again and went auditioning. He decided to join Tamarak because they seemed like such a swell bunch of guys and nobody called him "DUDE".