ON THE RISE
Rich Allen has a song about that. “Innocent Kiss” tells the story to a country beat with slide guitar blended with some rock licks.
I never felt love coming on like this
Never fell in with an innocent kiss
“The story line and the music just hit me all at the same time,” he said, and that’s the way songwriting works for him.
In fact, despite the relish he obviously takes in his playing and singing, despite his excellent guitar work and his great musical voice, songwriting rather than the stage is the focus of his career goal in music. His ambition is to get signed to a contract as a writer rather than as a performer.
“When I write, I feel the music and the lyrics at the same time, including the bridge or the structure — the production of the song itself. I just hear it in my head and transfer it to paper. ”
“Innocent Kiss,” he said, was about a 15-20-minute write, and he remembers when and where: Las Vegas.
“What if that person that I met at the coffee shop, was who I was meant to be with, and I didn’t get her number? Or I was in a relationship that could have been a lot more? I just thought that would be a cool little story. So, I got my guitar and penned that song.”
From the chorus:
This may be my one last chance
This could be the girl for a true romance
This could be the girl I’m looking for
Rich Allen Stacy got his first guitar when he was 2, put into his hands by his father, taught himself to play it and has been playing music ever since.
“I was self-taught, refined it through the years, was a songwriter but a musician my whole life.”
His early influences were artists like Johnny Cash, George Jones, Glen Campbell, Elvis, Buck Owens. His father also enrolled him as a child in the Columbia Record Club, with a new vinyl album every month.
“I was under 10, and I couldn’t wait to get the next album. I would sing to it, learn to play those songs on the guitar,” he said.
“I had a really fun ride with a lot of different genres. The diversity of my music comes out in my songwriting. You’re going to hear a little bit of everything. To me, music is an emotion, and my songs are a compilation of all music influences I’ve been exposed to my entire life.”
But when he started writing music, it was country, “and I haven’t changed.” The diversity of musical styles you can hear in the songs he has put out so far is why he calls his genre, for want of a better name, new country.
“More balance in my life created an opportunity to do what I love — write music!”
He wants to get his music out there, would love to have artists pick it up and record it.
“I do what I do because I think my songs have merit. I tell stories in all my songs. They’re easy to follow, and I want to put them in the hands of an artist who picks them up and puts them on an album. That would be really cool!”
Make sure to stay connected to Rich Allen on all platforms for new music, videos, and social posts.
ON THE RISE
Blossoms caught up with NME to discuss competing with The Beatles and Johnny Marr for this week’s Number One album. With ‘Songs From The Wedding Cake’ in the running, the band also explained why making things themselves remains such an important part of their work as AI becomes more common.
The Stockport group put out their sixth album last Friday, October 2. By the midweek update, it was sitting at Number Two, between The Beatles’ expanded edition of ‘Rubber Soul’ and Johnny Marr’s latest solo album, ‘The Age Of Everything’.
“It’s mad, to be honest,” singer Tom Ogden said to NME about the chart race. “Liverpool on one side, Manchester on the other and Stockport in the middle. If you’d told us this 10 years ago, when we were releasing our debut, I wouldn’t have believed you. But I mean, we’re in good company aren’t we?”
Discussing the stories behind the album, Ogden described ‘Songs From The Wedding Cake’ as “about being married and all the everyday stuff that comes with it”. He married Katie Donovan, the sister of Blossoms drummer Joe, in 2021. Married life has since given him a new appreciation for what he describes as “the extraordinary ordinary”.
“Saying the wrong thing in an argument, losing your wife’s no claims bonus, crying at the Kardashians, it’s all in there,” he explained. “The album is named after Stockport Town Hall, which everyone round where we live calls the Wedding Cake, and it’s where I got married, so it couldn’t be much closer to home.
“The last album [‘Gary’, 2024] had a song about a stolen fibreglass gorilla, which everyone loved, and that gave us the confidence to bring the same playfulness to this one, just with more personal subject matter this time.”
Alongside tracks that came out of writing sessions with Declan McKenna in a hot tub, the album reflects the band’s desire to stay involved in every part of the creative process.
“It started with the recording,” Ogden explained. “We made the album with Shawn Lee, playing live straight to tape, and once you’ve done it that way you can’t really go and fake everything else. We sat down as a band and picked the colour palette, and everything visual followed from that. We had body scans taken of ourselves and cake toppers of the five of us 3D printed, put them on a real cake and photographed it. I’ve directed and edited the videos, and the sets are all built by hand, no green screen. For the pop-up shop on launch weekend, a local artist hand-painted the album cover for the sign outside.
“It’s more work, but you end up with a world that’s yours, and I think people can tell when a band’s had its hands on everything.”
With AI tools and digital effects becoming increasingly widespread, that approach feels particularly relevant. For Blossoms, though, the motivation is simple: “the fun is in the making”.
“Tape doesn’t let you cheat and neither does a real cake,” Ogden said. “If a set’s a bit wonky, it’s because one of us or our mates built it. I think the more stuff gets generated, the more people want to know a human being actually did it. We’ve been in this band together for over 10 years, five lads from Stockport, and that isn’t something you can ‘prompt’.”
Maya Jama also appeared in the video for the album’s first single, ‘Meet Me In Love’. Her appearance came shortly before the UK launch of Celebrity Traitors, where she took on the role of a traitor alongside a cast that included Richard E Grant and James Acaster.
“She was brilliant,” Ogden recalled of working with Jama. “We’d met her at the MTV EMAs in Manchester a couple of years ago, so we took a chance and sent her a DM …and she said yes. Next thing she’s in a theatre in Cheadle miming my vocals while a load of people dressed as me serenade her. She got the idea straight away and was a proper laugh about it.”
The conversation then turned to whether he thought Jama could take home the win on Celebrity Traitors.
Ogden joked: “As for Traitors, she spent a whole day pretending to sing my song and I almost believed her, so I’d say she’s got every chance.”
Fans can listen to ‘Songs From The Wedding Cake’ now. In November, Blossoms head out on a UK arena tour with The Royston Club. Tickets and further details are available here.
Before the tour begins, the group is also scheduled to appear on SNL UK on Saturday, October 24.
