Jake Allen - Affirmation Day (2020)

Jake Allen is certainly comfortable at home near Gaylord, and is, at heart, a Michigander.

But his just-released new album "Affirmation Day" is a product and even a chronicle of his journey to becoming a man of the world.

The shimmering, sonically textured 12-song set was inspired by the 31-year-old multi-instrumentalist, songwriter and bandleader's travels around the planet, mostly as an ambassador for his sponsor, Takamine Guitars. He wrote the songs while hunkered down in at the Uzupio Art Incubator in Vilnius, Lithuania, bringing them back to Michigan to record.

It's a significant step in what's already been an ambitious career and adds to the template Allen has been following throughout.

"It's kind of this little diamond that came out of all this experience I've had over the last two years of traveling around and having all these new relationships — kind of seeing the world through a bigger lens, you could say," Allen explains by phone from his home. "There were a lot of new experiences that came into this — on the technical side of recording, too. There was a lot of experimentation, trying new recording techniques — the nerdy end of it.

"I feel like every record I make is going to be my most ambitious — so far. I always aim to make the best album I've ever made. I don't think I'll ever feel differently."

Allen certainly has a wealth of experience that's taken him to this point. Raised in Grayling, both of his parents are musicians (his mother moved into real estate) and Allen started playing when he was young. "My dad had a home studio when I was a kid," he recalls, "so I was messing around with synthesizers and recording my own little 'albums' when I was 5 years old. I was always attracted to that world by default."

Allen began studying piano and keyboards, then moved to drums and, as a teenager, guitar, particularly enamored by the acoustic finger-picking virtuosity of Michael Hedges and others. He started writing during his teens as well, and his first album, released when he was 18 convinced his reluctant mother to give her blessing to his career path.

Allen has been on the road since he was 19, as a member of the Cookies, leading his Jake Allen Band and on his own, using samplers and looping machines to enhance his performances. He was also an adjunct member of the Accidentals from Traverse City during the campaign for their 2017 major label debut "Odyssey."

"That was a real learning experience, seeing how they did things," Allen says. "I tried to start implementing some of the things they were doing in my career, really learning about team-building and the importance of having the right team to help take me further."

Having Takamine in his squad was certainly impactful. The company sent Allen to Europe, Russia, China and Japan for clinics and performances during 2018, and at the end of that he joined a coalition of visual artists called Take Me to the River during its annual gathering, this time in Lithuania. "I fell in love with the place," Allen says. "It reminded me a lot of Michigan. The coast of the Baltic Sea there has all these dunes, which looked strangely similar to the West Coast of Michigan."

Through contacts he made on that trip Allen was invited to return and spend time at the Uzupio Art Incubator, where he spent a month focusing on his craft as well as exploring the area with his neighbor, a visual artist from the country of Georgia. It was, Allen says, the first time he'd ever "set aside a chunk of time, a really focused block of time, to just dive into strictly writing. It made for a different experience.

"I wasn't a recluse," Allen adds. "I like to get out when I'm in weird places and absorb the city and the people and the nightlife and stuff like that. And it's a pretty rowdy city. They like to have fun. And I was trying to harness my exotic location to benefit my writing."

Allen wrote the songs for "Affirmation Day" on acoustic guitar, but returning home to Michigan and working in Gaylord and Grand Rapids, he began to ornament and arrange them. Allen, as usual, played most of the instruments himself but brought in a violinist and saxophonist, as well as fretless bass guitarist Michael Manning, whose work adds to the fluid ambience of the album.

"It kind of started with the foundation I left off of on the last album (2018's 'Deviant Motions')," explains Allen, who funded "Affirmation Day" via a crowd-sourced Indiegogo fundraising campaign. "There was kind of an over-arching goal to really make it centered on the acoustic side of what I do. When I'm introduced to people it's mostly through solo acoustic shows, with the looping and finger-style stuff and harnessing the instrument to make it feel like a one-man band.

"That’s been my calling card for the last couple of years, so I tried to honor that on this album. There's a lot of studio nerd stuff that took the songs to a new level with the production, but the cool thing is I feel like these songs can stand on their own played just on acoustic guitar."

The current pandemic situation does present the usually roadworthy Allen with unique challenges as "Affirmation Day" comes out. He's released one video so far, for the track "Rising Tide," with another for "Rising Tide" slated to premiere soon. He's just shot another clip for "More Than Meets the Eye," while a stop-motion video is being done by an Egyptian animator for the song "Two Faced."

Allen has also done some streaming performances on Facebook as well as an online guitar giveaway with Takamine, and he's confident that all of this — as well as a robust media push — maintain interest and awareness until he can be back on live stages again.

"The cool thing about being an artist is we're naturally adaptive to situations," Allen says. "It's kind of part of the tool kit. You learn how to navigate really weird circumstances. This is definitely a big one, but I think artists are embracing it in a way that's empowering them rather than stunting their growth. It's been that way for me, and hopefully I'm finding ways to reach people and get their attention for this (album) and whatever else I'm doing."