Irene Allen

I first heard Irene Allen when I went to see a production of a play about Zombie clowns. It was a play done in silence with only a musical sound track produced by Irene. She performed the music herself with a band of other musicians that she directed. Before the performance she sang some blues and old time music to get the audience warmed up. That when I knew that she was an incredible performer. She has one of those resonant female voices that can seem to express a whole range of emotion at once. When I asked her to do this project she got all excited. She said she wanted to perform in labyrinth of hand hewn concrete caves that are at the gut of City Museum. I had no problem with that, except that, well, caves are dark, and we were shooting video. We looked around a bit for a place that might have enough light and settled on a large room with a crystal formation in the center of it. There is a colored light that changes gradually over time. I thought it was a nice effect.She sang two songs for me. One My Country is a song about St. Louis living in the city specifically. About how its sort of a wilderness unto itself. The other song, a blues number, is one of those knock you dead pieces that can rattle around in your skull for days if you let it.