His parents wanted him to finish his education and his father felt that Allan had yet to develop his own distinctive style.

"[5] After graduating from La Serna High School in Whittier, California, Allan continued to play in the bars with his band, the Honky Tonk Wranglers.

Doing so would have required him to stop playing some of the older country music, such as covers of George Jones songs, so Allan refused.

Allan kindly let them use his stage for the event, giving the new act the opening performance slot that night.

[5] This independent funding allowed Allan to go to Nashville to record some of the songs that were on that early demo tape with Byron Hill as producer.

[11] On September 11, 1995, they worked at Javelina Studios for a couple of days on the four songs that Hill immediately showed to labels.

[11] The meeting was to arrange two showcases in Los Angeles to put Allan on stage at two of the radio station's regular nights at a local club.

Hill arranged for staffers at the Nashville office of Decca Records to attend the first showcase held on November 1, 1995.

[11] Decca staffer Mark Wright and Byron Hill co-produced Allan's first three albums for Decca beginning sessions on March 11, 1996, for Used Heart for Sale, then It Would Be You, both of which yielded top five singles, and later Smoke Rings in the Dark (which also included Tony Brown as a co-producer).

[11] Then Allan and Hill got a personal call from Harry Connick, Jr., the writer of the song, thanking them for the recording, during which he added a few of his New Orleans Jazz style "very cool man!"

Its first single, "Her Man" (previously recorded by Waylon Jennings) gave Allan his first Top 10 country hit on the U.S.

Although he has been writing songs since his teen years,[5] the singer has not really hesitated to bump his work from his albums in favor of those written by other songwriters that he respects.

Even though that song was a hidden acoustic track, radio stations started giving it some heavy airplay.

[5] "No Judgement Day" tells the story of a restaurant owner from a small town in Texas, where ex co-workers killed him in search of money, for drugs and alcohol.

"[12] In early-1999, Decca Records folded, and when Allan moved to the parent label, MCA Nashville, the It Would Be You album was left in limbo.

He also delved into the acting world in the TV mini-series Shake, Rattle, & Roll, in which he would play the lead role of Eddie Cochran.

He followed that role with a part in the CBS TV series Pensacola: Wings of Gold, but describes his acting experience as "tedious.

"[13] The new album avoided the "devil-may-care brashness" of the first two, instead presenting a tone balanced between youthful optimism and "the knowledge that some of life's experiences exact a high toll.

Allan initially put his career on hold, but soon returned to music to deal with the loss of his wife.

[18] It was subsequently certified gold by the RIAA as of December 20, 2006, and contained the Top 10 singles "Best I Ever Had" (written by Vertical Horizon's Matt Scannell) and "Life Ain't Always Beautiful," co-written by country singer Cyndi Thomson (under the name Cyndi Goodman).

One of these, titled "A Feelin' Like That", was co-written by David Lee Murphy and Ira Dean (the latter a former member of Trick Pony); the single peaked at No.

Serving as its lead-off single was the song "Watching Airplanes," which spent more than thirty weeks on the country charts, where it reached a peak of No.

The song's music video was filmed during live concerts, including one at the Red Rocks Amphitheatre in Morrison, Colorado.

Following this song is third single "She's So California," which Allan co-wrote with Jaime Hanna (of Hanna-McEuen) and Jon Randall, and it peaked at No.

This song was slated to serve as the lead single to his upcoming tenth studio album, entitled Hard Way.

[25] In 2003, Allan told CMT that he believed Republican candidate Arnold Schwarzenegger would be the best governor because he is not driven by money.

"[4] The New York Times describes his music as "elegant, often deadpan songs [that] tend toward manly understatement.