From the time she was three Jen Allen knew what she wanted to do…she wanted to play guitar. She grew up in East Tennessee in a theatrical and musical family with a rich heritage going back generations on her mother and father’s side. She began playing at age eight when she bought her first electric guitar from the Sears catalog with allowance money and immediately began teaching herself to play with “official” guitar lessons following at age ten.
Eventually, Jen’s love of playing guitar led her to one of the top music universities in the country, Belmont University in Nashville, TN. While there she cut her teeth as the only female guitar major at the time and earned a degree in Commercial Guitar with a minor in Composition and Arranging.
Having played all styles of music Jen’s roots are tied in classic rock and country, blues and jazz and these different types of music accumulate to where her heart really lies – Rockabilly. It was this love of Rockabilly music that led her to form Jen Allen & The Tennessee Zip. Covering classic Rockabilly artists such as Carl Perkins (aka the Godfather of Rockabilly), Billy Lee Riley and Gene Vincent, she also mixes in songs by such notable artists as The Stray Cats, Brian Setzer, Rev. Horton Heat and Imelda May, along with a few blues tunes mixed in for good measure.
Whether you want to hear the classics or newer Rockabilly, Jen Allen & The Tennessee Zip will have your toes tappin’, your hands clappin’ and your feet dancin’ all night.
