Allison Weiss

Los Angeles-based singer/songwriter Allison Weiss began playing music as a teenager in her hometown of Flowery Branch, Georgia. Inspired by pop-punk music and the emotional tumult of young relationships, she began writing folk-inspired pop-punk songs of her own, adopting a D.I.Y. ethic that would stay with her throughout her career. Her first EP, An Eight-Song Tribute to Feeling Bad and Feeling Better, appeared in 2007, followed by a full-length concert album, Live at Sidewalk NYC, a year later. In late 2009, after two more EPs, the savvy Weiss turned to the newly launched Kickstarter crowd-funding platform to try raising the money for her first studio LP, ...Was Right All Along. Her well-executed campaign allowed her to reach her funding goal within the first day and triple it just days later. The Kickstarter success led to some high-exposure press, with The New York Times and Wired magazine essentially labeling her as a sort of poster child for the new era of Internet promotion. Weiss capitalized on the attention with countless tours, interviews, and even a panelist slot at the industry's SXSW conference in Austin. She busied herself over the next two years releasing more EPs and a single, focusing on her songwriting and touring. In 2011 she launched a second Kickstarter campaign, this time reaching a much larger goal with relative ease. Through crowd-funding, she was able to record her second studio album, Say What You Mean, as well as a companion acoustic record called Sideways Sessions. In 2013 Weiss signed with No Sleep Records, which released both albums later that year.