Soulful chanteuse Janet Allen started singing before she could spell "USDA" -- before she could walk, even -- and she's always been happy to share her talent with family and friends. Christian music was her favorite right from the start. Age 13 saw her first formal performance, singing in a church choir, and you'll still find her there of a Sunday morning. Or at least you will be until someone on the board of elders stumbles across this blog and find out about her rock and soul alter-ego. (Don't Google me, bro!)
But on with the story. With Janet's teen years came voice lessons in high school, which led naturally enough to a music major in college, and then of course to -- wait a minute -- "a job at USDA?" Yes, folks, it was then that the still, small voice of
Practicality (a concept one or two of us in the band have heard stories about) that cleared its throat, says Janet, and subtly suggested that "it might be better to work at a reasonably stable job with retirement than possibly bus tables on Broadway til age 50, still trying to 'make it big.' " Yeah, well you can take the singer out of the pipeline to fame, but you can't take the pipes out of this singer. Or something like that. And so say we all, right?
Since college, Allen has kept her chops up as a nights-and-weekends warrior. For a while she was vocalist with a top-40 cover band, but soon she and her husband, Ralph, split off from the group to make their own duo act,
2-4-U. It's a partnership that has worked out well both for the music and for the parties involved. Janet and Ralph play a range of rock, swing, hymns, country music, and jazz standards, performing mostly for private parties: anniversaries, birthdays, fraternal organizations, second (and occasionally first!) weddings. They've slowed down their performance schedule a bit lately so they can concentrate on their latest hit -- one-year-old son Conner, whom some of you met at ACE this June in Traverse City.
But not even
a dozen babies could keep Janet from any true rocker's dream gig: a once-a-year engagement belting out the classics with the all-star international line-up of the
ACE X-Tension Chords! She's been a regular with the band, adding her own vocal
je ne sais quoi since Quebec City. We may have been playing with smoke and mirrors at Traverse City this year, but Janet Allen's voice is the real thing all the way through. Truly smokin'!
After 2010's mournful "Year without the X-Tension Chords" at the ACE Conference in St. Louis, maybe you wondered whether they were gone forever.
