John Allred back in the music biz

UVU Alumnus John Allred visited his hometown of Provo, Utah Feb. 4 for the tour of his new extended play album, Brave New World.

“ I’ve grown up here, within these walls, musically, for the last 13 years,” said Allred, speaking about his performance at the Velour Music Gallery. I’ve had the pleasure of playing at a lot of places in Utah County, but no place has ever felt like home like this one.”

His new seven-song EP, released Feb. 3, has hit number four on the singer/songwriter list on iTunes.

“It put me just behind Ed Sheeran and John Mayer, so I was feeling pretty good about that,” Allred said.

This is the second EP he has released under the stage name “ Allred” along with two other albums under the name John Allred. Unknown to most people — especially his fan base— the concert on Saturday was quite special to Allred. Between song performances, he opened-up to the audience and said that he almost decided to give up the music career six months prior. Allred asked if any in attendance had followed his career since he first began performing nearly 15 years ago. The cheers from the crowd began to grow louder as he went down from the years to show the growth of his fan base over the years.

Looking back on those years, he reflected on his days of discovering his style and what he wanted to produce as a musician.

“There was a phase where I wore extremely low V-necks, and I’m sorry if anyone here saw me then,” he said.

After having little success with his first EP, Allred returned to school to study music. “I got very experimental then,” he said. “I tried to get emotional with my music, and it never went anywhere. I learned that I just needed to be me and that’s what I did on this last album.”

He was nervous to begin working on a new album and was considering walking away from the music career. He said he had had a conversation with Velour owner Corey Fox during the past summer in which Fox told him he wasn’t going to quit writing and performing music and he would be out performing again in six months.

Saturday’s concert was six months to the day; it was Allred’s first concert performance since that conversation. Allred said he put his whole heart and soul into Brave New World and he hopes anyone who listens to it will feel it.