Allen Cuffey a Recording Artist based in Kansas City Missouri, is a graduate of St. Joesph’s College NY, Recording Engineers Institute and is currently pursuing a solo artist career. Beginning with the creation of the regionally successful band “The Crimson 5”, Allen’s early success included working alongside “A” List artists Sister Sledge, The Delfonics, Sly And The Family Stone and Mandrill to name a few and performing with his brother Bill Cuffey. He has also opened concerts for Buddy Miles, Osabisa, Larry Graham & Graham Central Station, BT Express and Kool and the Gang. Allen is a multi-instrumentalist and vocalist, proficient on Drums, Bass, Guitar and Keys.
Allen Cuffey has recently dropped a couple of tracks, namely “Power Of Love” and “Dry Bones”, to get his feet wet on the way towards his own solo recording career. Allen is a gifted musician who has the open mindedness and ability to play any type of music he wishes to. These two songs are heavy on a certain type of rhythmic, funk-rock, kind of sound with some grand retro keyboard sounds and a strong musical crunch to it. That crunch is present to a somewhat higher degree on “Dry Bones”. All that means, is that it has an underlying, retro rhythm and blues grit, with a modern pop-rock sensibility.
On these tracks, Allen Cuffey adopts a tougher and harder rhythm and blues approach, where he gives the pulsating songs a more cutting edge beat while letting his vocals and the keyboards do plenty of the talking. The tracks also feature catchy melodies, as well as slick and dynamic back-up vocals. But it’s difficult to pin down Allen to any one single style. Imagine you had all this talent and were open to all styles: old, new, undiscovered and you wanted to explore every bit of it. That’s Allen Cuffey.
“Power Of Love” and “Dry Bones”, are just two pieces of the Cuffey musical mosaic, and a couple of fine ones at that. In a way Allen Cuffey reminds me of some of my favorite legendary artists. He has an uncannily similar vocal tone and timbre to that of Eric Clapton, while his arrangements have traces of the gritty blues-based rhythms of Robert Cray and those of funk-master George Clinton, together with the pop sensibilities of Hall & Oates. The dynamic range and clarity of these songs give the music a three-dimensional quality to the point where you can pick out individual instruments and the music plays as if you have a wall of sound in front of you like a concert, as opposed to being “trapped” in front of the speakers.
Clearly Allen Cuffey musically, comes from another era. The instrumentation, the musicianship, the arrangements, the melodies and even the production, points to a time when music was ‘made’ differently. This is both his major advantage, as it may well be his sword of Damocles. Meaning musically, Cuffey cannot be faulted and his place among quality artists, delivering real music is beyond discussion. However if his goal is to bust up the charts, Cuffey may find that his sound is not ‘synthetically edgy’ or ‘bombastically arrogant’ enough for the ‘here today, gone tomorrow’ streetwise urban crowd, to complete the task.
However, if you, like me, still ache for those luscious and real, blues, pop, soul, rock, funk, or any-combination-of-them-all songs, that musically sanctified the seventies, eighties and nineties, Allen is sure to have something that will do the trick for your ears. And obviously the whole experience is provided with a sense of confidence and self-satisfaction that will be carrying Allen Cuffey ahead for still a very long time to come. Chances are that he will outlast the current streetwise urban crowd!
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