Welcome to my blog. It will be filled with some fun guitar content and some of my personal life experiences that I will share. Feel free to interact by commenting and letting me know you’re out there.
Thank you so much for taking the time to visit.
Instrumental Christmas Music
I love Christmas music, and that’s why I’ve done a lot of releases through the years. Not only is it nostalgic and beautiful to me, but it’s also a way for me to support my career during a time when normal streams decrease.
I’ve created a few holiday music playlists that include the music that I’ve worked on over the years. I hope that you’ll enjoy them.
Guitar Songs
Guitar Songs is my latest album of beautiful instrumental guitar music. You can stream it anywhere and enjoy it often. It took over a year to produce, as I was releasing these tunes as singles through out the year. Some of these are improvised, and others have stories and inspiration behind the tune. I hope you find each and every one of these relaxing and enjoyable to listen to over and over.
Tennessee Made
I just got out of the studio where I was recording a song that I wrote called Tennessee Made. It will be an Allen & Bright release in a few weeks and a nice guitar version on April 4th, 2025. It was inspired by the state of Tennessee, its beauty, and things I have experienced with my friends and family. I’ve been calling Tennessee home now since the year 2000. It has made me who I am, it has brought me a family and a musical lifestyle and career that I once dreamed about and longed for.
I titled it Tennessee Made all because of that. Yes yes, we enjoy many many things that are made right here in Tennessee. Jack Daniels, country music, Christian music, blues, and countless other kinds of music, we have some of the world’s best barbecue, Goo-goo clusters, and friggin Dolly Parton, and not to mention the beautiful waterfalls and country! All right here in the good ole state of Tennessee
To record this, I even used a handmade guitar made right down the street from me in Murfreesboro, Tennessee. They’re called Gallagher guitars. I borrowed a really beautiful one to satisfy the this recording! Avery laid a beautiful fiddle arrangement over the top of the guitar parts.
The song is reminiscent one of the Tennessee state songs, The Tennessee Waltz and I hope in some way that I can get this song added to the list of Tennessee state songs one day! Perhaps I shall write a letter to the Governor, Bill Lee. I do have some lyrics started on this tune and it would be a dream come true to sit with the great Dolly Parton and complete the tune with lyrics.
I hope to see people using it in their social posts where music can be included. It would also be amazing to see it used in advertising campaigns for TN products and businesses. The possibilities are endless and I’m proud to have written such a beautiful tune dedicated to the state that made me who I am.
Thank You for Listening on Pandora
Lance Allen here. I just wanted to say thank you for listening and enjoying my music on Pandora radio. If you're a fan, follower, and listener to my music, please leave a comment below and let me know where you're from and what your favorite tracks of mine are.
I’ve been so thankful to Pandora radio ever since I sent my music into their system in 2007, shortly after my 2nd album (Naturally) was released.
Click the image below and enjoy my whole catalog of releases, including collaborations and a few piano versions of my music.
Natasha Guitars discount
This is a quick post to let people of the world know that I’m a fan of the Natasha Guitar brand. They are beautifully crafted guitars. Check them out here at their website and if you are inspired to purchase a Natasha Guitar, please use my coupon code “guitarlancer” for a nice 10% discount and it lets them know that I’m referring guitar sales their way.
Here are a few videos and shorts of me playing Natasha guitars.
Piano Music as a guitarist??
Some of you may have noticed that I have in the last year released some piano music under the moniker, Raúl Pierre. I’ve also been fortunate enough to release a few piano tracks with Canadian musician, Jesse Brown, as well as my buddy, Judson Hurd, under the music name, Kundera.
The goal of me (the guitarist) making piano music is to reach an audience that doesn’t typically listen to guitar music. Piano has a much larger following than guitar and it was my idea to do this in 2017 when I saw the success of pianists on streaming platforms such as Spotify and especially Pandora.
My first stab at it was with a sweet lady named, Marlowe Carruth, who enjoyed my music and I was able to get her to collaborate with me and release some of my guitar originals as piano releases. Marlowe made beautiful arrangements of Just Thoughts, Fingernail Moon, Raining Slowly, Melody Maker, and Rest Your Way Home. You can find these easily on Spotify in this playlist of all my piano releases.
Writing music with Judson has been really enjoyable and he managed to create some great releases for us, based on my music. We’ve done 11 releases under the name Kundera, and some guitar/piano collaborations under his artist name, Judson Hurd. Some of them are named after my guitar releases, others are original to our writing. Sometimes I would just record a snippet of something on guitar and send it to him, he would send back a beautiful track. One of those I enjoy is called, Between Bookends. It’s mysterious and a curious piece of music.
Raúl Pierre has been a nice experiment with a young pianist named, Ryan Jones. We met for coffee once and hit it off. We came up with the artist name as we reminisced about our high school foreign language class names. I was Pierre and he was Raúl.
He’s a hungry session musician and we’ve released a good handful of my songs on piano. We tried releasing them under different titles to possibly gain the attention of music editors and programmers.
If you’re familiar with my music, I’ve created a little side-by-side here so you can hear where the tunes came from. The titles are also derived from the originals. My next play is to release the music under the same titles. We have plenty of music coming out and we’re both hoping that editorial people at Spotify will take notice and start to include this music on their coveted piano playlists
Raul Pierre Lance Allen
Day of all Time Landon Boy
In Life Sometimes in Life
Light Through the Trees One Day
Pensamiento Just Thoughts
Sailing on Calm Waters Sail On
Slow Rain Raining Slowly
This is a Song Song for Lucas
Stay tuned with artist Raul Pierre and you will see more piano releases there. Our next releases will come out as a collaboration between Lance Allen and Raul Pierre to take advantage of the many listeners I already have under the Lance Allen brand.
Butterfly Dance
Imagine with me for a moment as I reflect on my own experience in life, growing up with dreams and aspirations of being successful with a guitar.
I was merely a young butterfly, not knowing my direction and I hadn’t fully developed my colors. Still relatively new to guitar, a church friend introduced me to the music of guitarist, Phil Keaggy. At the time, I was all about fast riffs and Stevie Ray Vaughn and whatever blues licks I could get my hands under. I had never really listened to “pretty music” and the discovery of Phil’s album, “Beyond Nature “ was quite influential to me. I quickly bought a handful of his CDs via a magazine cd sales catalog and couldn’t wait to dig in. After diving into Phil’s music I discovered how prolific he was and the man could play blues and rock riffs as good as all the greats!
My first year of college was at Eastern Kentucky University and I lived in the nearby town of Winchester. It was close enough for me to make the commute to my classes and the local campus coffee shop, where I discovered a newfound love of coffee and conversations. Eastern Kentucky is full of hills, winding rivers, cliffs, and nature that is quite inspirational and serene. You tend to discover this beauty when you drive the backroads and find new ways of getting to places. Route 388 was no exception, as it followed Otter Creek, a serene creek that would sometimes flood and would be rushing water through its own holler. There were homes and trailers that sat up on stilts, much like homes near the ocean, so that they would avoid flood damage during torrential downpours. This was my daily drive to school and on this commute, I listened, nonstop. I honestly could not wait to start my drive in the mornings and plug the old, square Sony Discman into the lighter socket of my mom’s Pontiac grand prix. It was so back-in-the-day, that we had to order a unique cassette converter that would allow the Discman to be played on the car’s speakers. I would actually drive slowly so that the cd wouldn’t skip and I could enjoy the new discovery of this beautiful Beyond Nature album. I never imagined that I would one day call Phil a friend and collaborator.
Now, I have three releases with Phil. My first release I got to collaborate with Phil on was my tune, Blue Ireland. It’s a track you can find on my Melody Maker album. I was so excited that he agreed to put some parts on there. When he sent me an mp3 mix of his parts, I almost cried, because this dream of working with him was becoming a reality. The next collaboration with Phil came years later. It was with my duo, Allen & Bright, where we created a beautiful instrumental version of the Beatles classic, Let It Be. He played a very tasteful electric guitar on this release.
Now we have this new tune, Butterfly Dance, that we created together in his studio basement. It only took a few hours of time together to create this upbeat musical adventure. When we were listening to this final track, I was thinking of a scene of nature and bees and butterflies flying around in a prairie of colorful flowers. Thus the title, Butterfly Dance.
I hope you enjoy this music and to Phil, thank you for dancing with me! (musically speaking, that is!)
Discharge Music - Never Heard of this before!
Recently I was contacted by a man who worked for Akron Children’s Hospital in Akron, Ohio. He found me on youtube because I had played a beautiful rendition of the classic tune, You Are My Sunshine.
He and the hospital staff wanted a 15-second recorded version of this tune that could be played for babies and their parents as they are discharged from the NICU. The nurse would easily punch in a number on the phone system, and my gentle guitar song would commence, soothing and encouraging the families as they leave for home with their newborns.
After some discussion, we decided on choosing a public-domain song for this purpose. They chose Brahm’s Lullaby and they loved what I provided for them. I made a very sweet, upper register steel string guitar recording of the famous lullaby.
What a nice send-off.
If there are any children’s hospitals out there that would like to hire me to do this, please get in touch.
guitarlancer@hotmail.com
Ezra's Muse
I have a new release out and it’s called Ezra’s Muse. I’d like to think and hope that I’m an inspiration to my children. The teenager would disagree, but he’s a teenager so I’ll forgive him for that now. However, my 8yr old son has the heart of a child and really loves art. So much so that if you were to ask him what he’s going to do when he grows up, he will tell you he wants to create art. In fact, he has a piece of art in the Frist Art Museum here in Nashville, TN for a short period. He did a portrait of his school principal. It was 1 of 9 pieces of art chosen out of the whole school to be featured at the museum. Way to go kiddo!
I named this song after him and I hope you enjoy this pretty little melody.
For those of you who have purchased tablature, I’ll be working on this one and please check back on my tablature page.
Every Day I Do - New Guitar release!
My new song this week is called, Every Day I Do. It’s a vow renewal song that I’ve penned for my wife of 20 years. October is our anniversary, but I decided to go on and release an instrumental version of this tune for people to enjoy.
I’d like to thank my music comrade, Avery Bright for producing/recording these instrumental guitar releases that I have coming out over the next few months. He’s great to work with and very creative. We work really well together on all the music we do! Eventually, you will hear versions of these tunes with strings added, so stay tuned to Allen & Bright and my future announcements.
If you are a guitarist and enjoy learning music, please consider supporting me by buying the tablature and learning it.
Here are some links for you to find the tune. I really do appreciate you listening!
Enya X4 Pro Acoustic Guitar
Recently, I was asked to use a neat guitar in some of my videos, lessons, and shorts. I’ve had a lot of fun with this guitar and thought I’d show it off here on my blog.
Hope you enjoy this post.
From Amazon.
About this item
♫ CARBON FIBER GUITAR: As a substitute for tonewood, carbon fiber has the resembling tonal traits. The top of X4 Pro is made of a carbon fiber composite material with a purity of 95%, maximally transferring the string vibration energy into great acoustics performance, loud and balanced. You wouldn't believe how massive the low-end is when you hold it in your arms and strum a big open E major chord.
♫ STABLE AND RELIABLE: Unlike wood, carbon fiber never warps, cracks, or scratches, staying consistent across different temperature and humidity conditions. Take it on travels from Hawaii to Alaska and everywhere in between. It stays the same, sounds the same.
♫ ACOUSTICPLUS PICKUP: The patented AcousticPlus Pickup system works for both acoustic guitars and acoustic-electric hybrid guitars. It gets you reverb, chorus, and delay, with no effects pedals needed. Simply turning it on, you get more sonic possibilities. We hope that this feature would ignite the sparkle of your musical creative process. Take your playing to wherever that extra reverb, chorus, and delay would guide you to. Enjoy！
♫ ELEVATED NECK: A disclaimer first: we mean to build it that way. It DOESN'T mean the guitar breaks. This elevated neck design releases the pressure to the top created by the fretboard from the 14th fret and up. The vibration of the top is drastically enhanced, providing better tonal response and dynamic range. The lows go lower. The highs go higher.
♫ WHAT YOU GET: Each X4 Pro guitar was packaged with a deluxe hard-shell case, and leather strap.30-day return & refund and one-year US warranty.
Beautiful new release, One Day
Hello listeners and followers of my guitar journey! Today I’d like to let you know about. my newest release called “One Day”
You may be familiar with the saying, “one day…”
“One day, I’ll marry so and so”
“One day, I’ll paint that room”
“One day, when I make a million bucks!” hahaha!
We all have dreams and aspirations that start out with a one-day perspective. I believe it’s mentally healthy to have those kinds of thoughts. One of the most important things we can do is taking action toward those “one day” ideas
When I was younger I wanted to “One day make a living by playing guitar” I kid you not, but I actually wanted to be in the band, Metalica! I had no idea about taking action, but I attempted to get a job at the local music store when I first started working, just so I could be around it all. Inside I must have known what “taking action” would do for me. I eventually moved to middle TN and the Nashville area to pursue such a dream. I did what I could to be involved in the guitar world and it worked out and continues to do so. It was all because I took action and made efforts toward the dream. Trust me, there are days when it’s hard, but I try every day to push forward to the next musical thing in my career.
I hope you enjoy the tune that I’ve written for you and if you have those “one day” aspirations, I encourage you to take action toward the dream.
Cover of Katy Perry's Unconditionally
2020 shut many people down and many of us had to do what we could from home and manage to survive the covid pandemic. I did my best teaching guitar online and doing videos, making tablatures, and working many jigsaw puzzles with my kids.
During the summer, a lady from Italy reached out to me about the possibility of collaborating in some way. I believe we originally got in touch via LinkedIn. haha! Her name is Samantha Emme. We did a few youtube cover song videos listed below and they turned out nice. Hope you check them out.
This year we put together an official release of a Katy Perry song called Unconditionally. It turned out really nice. I think it was really cool to have met someone from way across the earth and work on a piece of music together. My friend Alberto Lombardi mixed and mastered and Nathan McFarland recorded my guitar parts.
Here are the places you can hear our release.
Mary Did You Know by Allen & Bright
I just released a beautiful version of Mark Lowry and Buddy Greene’s, Mary Did You Know, with my violin slingin’ music partner, Avery. Hope you give it a listen and include it in your holiday music listening playlists. Don’t forget that we have 2 full-length Christmas albums
Below are some links to help you find the tune. I’ve also created an instrumental Christmas music playlist for all our releases. I would appreciate you following and listening to it.
Hope everyone that celebrates Christmas and the holidays has a great time this year.
I’d also like to thank Spotify and Spotify for artists editorial team for curating this release to three editorial playlists this year
! We are grateful for the support.
Summer's Lament - New Release by Lance Allen
The summer has come and gone, leaves are already turning. and winter is near. That means I have new a song (written as summer’s end) reflecting on the sadness of summer leaving us behind. It will come again and I always enjoy the warmth as so many do.
Summer’s Lament was created in Avery’s beautiful studio he calls, The Beach. We wrote the tune together in just minutes and even have a more orchestrated version of it coming out soon, most likely after the holidays.
Please give it a listen and add to your daily instrumental music intake, trust me, it’s really good for you.
Also, if you’re a guitar player and would like to learn it, I have a tablature notation available for $5. That always supports my coffee plans and goals.
Photo by Twila Allen in Costa Rica Villa Caletas Hotel.
Allen & Bright - Spaces EP
Hey all! Lance here to let you know about my new release with my duo Allen & Bright. That’s me, Lance Allen, and my violin/engineering partner Avery Bright.
We’re very proud of this EP and hope you get a listen. I’ve provided links below, so you don’t have to go searching.
New Releases - Sojourned and Wandering
Hey there everyone! I’m happy to let you know about some new releases that I have done in the past couple of weeks!
Sojourned is a tune that I came up with while working with my music partner, Avery Bright. We actually have an EP of this song coming out first week of October with beautiful strings added to it. I really enjoyed the challenge of this tune which is mostly in 5/4 time signature. Hope you enjoy it as well!
Wandering is a collaboration with my guitar composing comrade from Norway, Tommy Berre.
It’s another beautiful and peaceful guitar song.
If you missed it, please check out the post about my dad’s guitar.
I’m really proud to have it and make music with it on occasion.
My Father’s Guitar
Some of us have that one guitar passed down from our fathers. It may not be such a valuable instrument, yet it sometimes gets a rare exhibition. It offers a family heritage of music playing and brings genuine memories to mind. So here it is, a story of one of my dad's old guitars.
In the year 2020, this particular guitar turned 50 years old. The brand is a Grade no 2 García by the company Antigua Casa Sherry-Brener Ltd. of Madrid. It was assembled in Japan with its various guitar components from all over the world as you can see written on the inner label. Photos by the lovely Twila Allen. The top is Spanish pine, back and sides are maple, and the neck is cedar with a granadillo fingerboard. I had to replace the tuners as they had become worn and unusable. Nothing too fancy really, but still an instrument with a little bit of mojo and family history.
I cannot say for certain, but I know my dad acquired this guitar prior to being drafted to Vietnam. He wasn't good about sharing details about his life during that time, but I do know that this guitar traveled with him to Germany, where he served in the army for some duration of the war. At some point during his stay, possibly near his departure from the base where he was stationed, this guitar was stolen. When he made it back to Fort Campbell Kentucky, the guitar also ended up back in his hands. I cannot imagine what it was like to get something back as easily as it was stolen! The locked guitar case was torn open and the guitar headstock was pulled out of the case as if they were trying to remove it from the top part of the case, which makes no sense and is somewhat impossible. It had some pretty good scuffs on the neck and the thief tried to remove it unsuccessfully. Perhaps he was caught in the act by somebody and gave up quickly on what he was trying to do. Nevertheless, this guitar ended up with my father and hung in his bedroom for many years. It ended up with me years later.
My parents divorced when I was young, and I visited my dad on the weekends. I can vividly remember this guitar hanging on the smoke-stained wall by a single nail. A golden string was tied through the slotted headstock of the guitar and wrapped around the nail that housed it in place. Little did the guitar know that it would one day be picked up by his son and remarkable music would be made on it.
I learned general classical guitar on this instrument with its thick 2-inch wide neck and black-diamond nylon guitar strings. I also used it to replicate the sound of Eric Clapton’s, Tears in Heaven, when it was released. Later in high school, I remember learning to finger-pick The Beatle’s song, Yesterday, on this guitar. I remember playing it much faster than it needed to be, as to impress the people I played for. The guitar turned out to be a good guitar for me to play and learn on.
Fast Forward to 2017.
2017 was a pivotable year for me when my music started to take off on streaming services. I had some success with Pandora radio and had just gotten my music on a Spotify Editorial playlist called Peaceful Guitar. Getting on to Peaceful Guitar playlist was a huge thing for me! I would compare it to having a hit song but in a niche instrumental genre. People were streaming my tune, Rest Your Way Home (a song I dedicated to my father) over 3000 times daily! It was incredible! At one point, I had over 1 million monthly listeners! Never in my life did I think that many people would listen to my music!
I wanted to replicate that success. Noticing that most of the songs on the playlist were done with a nylon string guitar reminded me that I had one that I hadn’t played in years! It was my dad’s guitar, hiding in a closet of my new house that we had gotten in 2016.
I grabbed the guitar and set up a makeshift studio in my living room. It was a one microphone set-up and I used Garageband (a general recording software on my MacBook Pro) to record.
I had this little idea that was very moody and captivating. It reminded me of a Spanish-style song you might hear at some sort of dinner round table or perhaps at a memorial of a famous soldier who has passed. I honestly had no idea, so I hit record and played this idea one time through. I listened back and wasn’t bothered by the slight noise of my refrigerator in the background. I covered it up with some simple reverb and compression. It was raining out that day, so I took my dad’s guitar and laid it out in the grass. While it collected some raindrops, I took a photo with my iPhone. I decided to name the song I had just recorded, Raining Slowly. I used a photo editing app to put the text on the photo and I exported and uploaded everything to a music distributor called DistroKid. It was a Tuesday and I did not set it to have a release date. I woke up on Thursday morning to see my song on Spotify, getting 3000+ streams on its first day. I found the good news that it was placed on the coveted Peaceful Guitar playlist! There it remained on the playlist all the way to 2020 just before Covid slowed everything down. All of my songs were removed at that time, but it didn’t hurt as I had found many fans that continued listening to my music and the sting of losing my playlist placement wasn’t as bad as it could have been early on.
You see, maybe my dad’s guitar has some special magic in it. Even though he passed in 2010, his spirit remains in me, and quite possibly in this brown guitar, which now hangs on my wall by the same golden string.
This is my dad, Dan Allen, holding the guitar. circa. 1977ish
This is a photo of Randall Meade sitting next to my dad’s old guitar. Randall was my first guitar teacher other than my dad who also showed me things here and there.
Lonely Dreaming
New Release!
Just wanted to let you know about my brand new release called Lonely Dreaming. I imagined myself sitting by the waterfront of a beautiful crisp and clean lake at the edge of a Swiss mountain. Sounds like a great place to take a nap and dream away. I hope this tune can send your imagination on a journey.
I appreciate your listening and support by adding to your own music playlists. If you use Pandora, make sure you give it a thumbs up as it will deliver my song to more people. If you're a guitar player, you can buy the tablature off of my tablature space here on my website. I will provide you the link right here so you don't have to go searching for it.
Most Interesting Gig
Over the years I’ve played many gigs. They have ranged from simple coffee shop performances to opening for my guitar hero, Tommy Emmanuel, in front of over 1000 people. Let me tell you, THAT was exhilarating and exciting! I’ve played at farmers’ markets, weddings, commercial trade shows, wine tastings, local art shows, bars, restaurants, and the list goes on.
On occasions, while being interviewed for podcasts/radio shows, I’ve been asked what the most interesting gig I’ve ever performed at was. I always know exactly what to say!
The most interesting gig I have done thus far is playing guitar and impersonating TV cartoon character, Hank Hill, at a National Propane and Gas trade show! If you do not know about Hank HIll, look up the show, King of The Hill. It was a very witty show about a somewhat typical family living in Texas. Hank was a very proud employee and sold “propane, and propane accessories”
A professional in the industry thought it might be clever to have someone playing guitar and welcoming people using the character voice Hank Hill, in an effort to attract potential customers to his product. He found me while searching Hank HIll impersonators, and came across me also playing guitar and was sold on the idea. I honestly do not think it worked, but I got paid and it was kind of fun. I even got interviewed on camera by a NPAG trade magazine. Not sure they ever used the content, but still had the opportunity to do something different. One guy even told me to forget about Hank, and just play guitar. HAHA, So I mostly played guitar.
Now! Let’s hear it!
This is a snippet from the show King of the Kill. It did not originally have any dialog, so I imagined what Hank must have been thinking, and did the voice-over as Hank’s inner conscious.
If you want to hear Hank’s voice, listen to the creator, Mike Judge, here in this mashup of Hank’s propane quotes. I think I do a pretty good job at the voice and people who know about King of the Hill always get a kick out of me talking and imitating Hank.