Joey Allen has a day job, which is not a big deal if Joey Allen were Joey next door.
He’s a rock star.
Bonafide.
For most of his adult life, he’s played lead guitar with the 1990s glam rock band Warrant, but for the past 19 years, he’s also the guy who manages big league retail and e-commerce accounts for one of America’s top drum manufacturers.
Not that rock star doesn’t pay enough to make ends meet, mind you; Allen says he just has an inner need to always be busy.
When his band pulls in to do the soundcheck at Fox Tucson Theatre before their show on Friday, June 21, Allen will already have worked four or five hours at his day job. Once the sound check is done, he’ll likely put in another hour or so before going on stage.
“The working hard, that’s what everybody does,” he said during a phone call last month to talk about the Fox show, his band’s encore to their Dec. 31 Taco Bell New Year’s Eve Downtown Bowl Bash, presented by Arizona Bowl. “That’s a reasonable, responsible adult.”
Who woulda thought in a million years that members of one of the biggest big hair bands of the ‘90s would transform into “reasonable, responsible” adults.
So responsible, notes Allen, that they no longer drink cases of beer in their dressing room. These days, it’s Perrier water, “a bottle of Advil and Tums,” he said.
But while you can strip away the window dressing and the accoutrements that surrounded them in their rock ‘n’ roll youth, Warrant is still that hard-rocking band that spun gold out of “Cherry Pie” on their way to selling 10 million albums during their 1989-96 heydays.
“We are still having fun,” said Allen, who is an original member along with Jerry Dixon, Steven Sweet and Erik Turner; lead singer Robert Mason joined in 2008, replacing Jani Lane, who died of acute alcohol poisoning in 2011.
The band is bringing its “Let the Good Times Rock Tour” to the Fox with openers Lita Ford and the Gavin Evick Band.
Expect to hear the band’s biggest hits, from the ubiquitous pop-rocker “Cherry Pie” to the driving “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” and “I saw Red,” songs that became MTV gold and Billboard platinum.
Throughout the height of their career, Warrant scored six Top 40 hits and only one, “Heaven” off their 1989 debut album “Dirty Rotten Filthy Stinking Rich,” came close to topping the charts at No. 2.
The band has released nine studio albums, the last one 2017’s “Louder Harder Faster.”
“I imagine we have one more in us if we really dig deep,” Allen said, but with family and life obligations, making a record is not on the top of anyone’s to-do list.
“It’s such a chore getting five guys together and a producer,” Allen, 60, lamented as he waited for his 12-year-old son to get the lunch he had picked up for him that mid-May morning. “We’re older guys now and we look at our return on investment. As much as it’s a passion, it’s also a business to us. ... You weigh the pros and the cons and right now the cons say let’s just tour and have fun.”
When he’s not having fun on stage, he’s calling on his day job clients, none of whom really care that he’s a moonlighting rock star.
“I’m just Joey next door,” he said. “The music, the playing – that’s for me. I do it for the people that want to come and see it. But I’m really that guy: I’m a dad. I’m a husband. I’m a father to my daughter and son. That’s what I love doing more than anything. I just happen to be in a band that had half-a-dozen Top 40 hits. Most of us are still alive and we enjoy our friendships and we enjoy playing the music, and it comes across.”
Friday’s show begins at 7:30 p.m. at Fox Tucson, 17 W. Congress. Tickets ($20-$77.50) are available through foxtucson.com.
Six months after it played the Tucson New Year's Eve Taco Drop event, Warrant is back for a concert with Lita Ford at Fox Tucson Theatre.
