Upcoming Event

Just Added Saturday Dec. 14 7:30 pm at Collage in San Pedro
For advance tickets https://www.zeffy.com/en-US/ticketing/collage-a-place-for-art-and-culture-3

Latest News

James Preston Allen featured on the Howard Scott show in November 2024. Scott was the lead guitarist of WAR and has called James "one of the best musical storytellers of this time."

Listen to the Show and Interview HERE (James Interview at 10:57 on recording)

NEW RELEASE!

Together We All Rise

This is the album debut of James’ 5th album of all original songs and ballads. The stories are authentic, playful and exquisite. James’ refreshing creativity, vulnerability and ability to perform wholeheartedly shows his resilience and toughness. He has been called an American Griot and the bard of the San Pedro Harbor. His 50 years of songwriting is only amplified by his years as a journalist telling different kinds of stories and speaking truth to power. Order it online today at https://www.randomlengthsnews.com/product/together-we-all-rise

comes with CD and lyric book

Contact the artist for performances and interviews by email at James@jamesprestonallen.com

Before the Ghosts & the Rains– The Early Years

The year was 1973 when I first landed in the port town of San Pedro by the Los Angeles Harbor. It seemed like a foreign city in a land distant from both LA and most of the rest of California. The streets and buildings were from a different era, the mix of Italian, Croatian, Spanish, Filipino and Norwegian languages gave it an air of distance along with the foods and working-class demeanor. There was a rough authenticity to this place that made it so much different than any other seaside town in Southern California.

Yet underneath all of this were untold stories, places to be discovered and secrets to be revealed– it’s taken me decades to fully understand this place and even still there’s some things that are buried here that may never be known. Unearthing these songs from my early years was like an archeological dig into my own state of mind that at times challenged me and confronted me with lost memories and loves. And this is just a few of the many songs, poems or sketches that could have been songs that made it onto this album.

James Preston Allen, 2023

Special thanks for inspiration – Kristina Kurzawa, Suzanne Walsh and all of my friends who helped me grow through this project.

For more information on booking, CD sales see https://www.randomlengthsnews.com/product/beyond-the-ghosts-rains

Comes with CD and lyric book

Or contact Beacon Light Press POBox 731, San Pedro, CA 90733

Apparitions-Ghosts on Pacific Avenue

There’s a kind of hardcore authenticity found here that is quite unlike what one finds in the rest of Los Angeles– a tenacity, a guts if-you-can-make-it here attitude. You find it in the faces of the old immigrant women, the hard luck cases drinking at a diminishing number of dive bars, the homeless people sleeping on the cracked sidewalks next to the telephone poles pounded with rusted nails that once held signs for lost dogs, garage sales and Bandera concerts at Dancing Waters. These are a testament to an authenticity that is deeply embedded in this place along the avenue known as South Pacific where the low riders still cruise Friday nights in souped up Chevy’s, the gang wanna-bes run and the walking wounded of civilization mingle with hardy working class.
comes with double CD and lyric book

These are a few of their stories.