Allison Barkley grew up in Stratford, Ontario, Canada, just a few doors from the Stratford Shakespearean Festival, where she spent many imaginative days. In her early twenties she migrated west to Victoria, British Columbia, where she resided for a few years before packing and moving up north to the Yukon, where she lived as a pioneer woman and taught art classes at an elementary school on reserve in Lower Post, BC. After a few years in the Yukon, she travelled Canada for about a year, before slowly making her way back west.
Allison has been a figure painter for ten years and has shown her work in galleries in Victoria and Vancouver. She is also a short film-maker and has done several small projects, mainly in the north.
Now residing on the Sunshine Coast, she has started recording the music she's written over the past eight years with an amazing producer/musician, and now good friend, Andy Amanovich at Oceanview Studios and will soon be releasing her first CD.
Allison has numerous musical influences, some of which are, Bob Dylan, Paul Chambers, John Coltrane, Thelonious Monk, Miles Davis, Elvis Costello, Johnny Cash, Emmylou Harris, Joni Mitchell, The Band, Memphis Minnie, Woody Guthrie, Leadbelly, Nick Cave, Traveling Wilburys, The Clash, The Dead Kennedys, The Grateful Dead, The Smiths, Portishead, Bjork, the Pixies, Tom Waits, Lucinda Williams, Leonard Cohen, The Pogues, Radiohead, Ricky Lee Jones, The Pretenders, and many musicians from the deep south.Allison started playing guitar later in life, at age 31, in 1999. She has been writing poetry her whole life and is inspired by literature and anyone doing something creative. She is an avid short film maker and oil painter, influenced strongly by the expressionists of the second world war. She is also co-owner of Raindogmedia.com....a web design business.
Please visit http://www.allisonbarkley.com for artwork, newsletters and more music.
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