MUSICAL ROOTS
SHAPE MY SOUND
My music didn't begin with me.
It began with the people who taught me how to listen.
My Father–
My dad was a singer-songwriter who wrote with humor, vulnerability, and questions that landed like both teacher and friend.
His songs shaped how I listen, how I write, and how I understand music as connection.
His Hummingbird guitar became the first instrument that called me into my own songwriting. His anthology of songs — a lifetime of humor, heart, wisdom, and wonder — still teaches me.
My mission is to keep his music moving, keep it heard, and let it continue doing what great songs do: reach people.
Music in Nature
One of the most defining moments of my life happened when I was 8 years old at Hog Ranch Radio during the Strawberry Music Festival in Yosemite.
My dad brought me onstage with him.
By then, cancer had paralyzed his vocal cords, so he introduced me in a hoarse, breathy whisper.
Then he picked up his Hummingbird guitar and played.
I sang a kid’s version of his song Beer, rewritten as Root Beer because… kid.
We got a standing ovation.
Looking back, I realize it wasn't because it was polished. The ovation was because two generations were sharing the same moment: one voice fading, one just beginning.
I didn’t know it then,
but that was the day Music revealed herself to me
as friend,
as connection,
as purpose.
I have the recording.
Instruments as Connection
🎸
My dad’s Hummingbird first called me toward songwriting.
Every chord still feels like a conversation.
🎺
My grandfather played by ear.
His trumpet teaches me phrasing, feeling, and the power of breath.
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My uncle taught me there are no mistakes in Banjo Land.
His banjo reminds me to care slower and let joy find its rhythm.
These instruments are conduits to love and
how I keep listening across time.
Music as Connection
My relationship with my dad didn’t end when he died.
It changed shape.
His songs became guides I can return to.
They carry his depth, his timing, his way of seeing the world.
They're full of humor, questions, tenderness, and the kind of permission that helps me keep becoming more myself.
For years, listening was how I stayed close.
Then listening became something I could do with my own hands and voice.
In high school, I recorded myself singing above him on On & On, and brought Love Is For Giving into a new recording with professional musicians.
I'm still learning my way around the Hummingbird guitar he left behind.
And somewhere in the act of keeping his music moving, I began writing songs of my own.
That’s how Allison2020 grew: by staying connected to what was still alive, until that connection began turning into songs of my own.
Music is how connection continues in my heart... through tuning in, playing along, and listening for the next song to arrive.
Music through Time
Jazz was the soundtrack of my childhood.
My grandfather played the trumpet by ear.
The sound of it filled the house
with the scent of my grandmother’s walnut chocolate chip cookies.
Summer. Sound and sweetness sharing the same space.
There was no separation between music and life.
It simply belonged to the journey.
That’s where I learned that music isn’t something you do.
It’s something you live through.
That understanding traveled through my grandfather’s trumpet,
my father’s guitar,
my uncle’s banjo,
and eventually into my own hands and voice.
More than legacy or inheritance, it became my way of listening
to keep love close
even as time changes its form.