From tour bus to tiny desk: How this Bobcat is making music a career

As music industry experts, insiders and alumni descend on Athens for the 2026 Music Industry Summit, we celebrate the annual event with a special edition of our Ask the Experts podcast. This time, we let our producer Alex Karan, a music production and recording industry (MPRI) major, and an aspiring musician himself, take the mic. 

Henry Allen, BSC ’18, is an MPRI grad and musician who recently played a set with the band Ollella for the iconic Tiny Desk Concert series on NPR. Allen is currently playing drums for Ollella, and Alex was eager to hear about his experience as a professional musician. 

Henry toured for a time with CAAMP, whose members he met at OHIO. Alex asked about about life on an international tour.

“We were playing really big shows all of a sudden,” Henry says. “So that took some getting used to. But once I kind of acclimated, I was just a blast.”

Alex also wanted to know what Henry did to prepare for a successful career while he was a student.

“Where OU really helped me was exposing me to all the different people that were interested in the same things I was and giving me opportunities to network with people like that,” Henry explains. “I did meet a ton of people who ended up shaping how the next five, six, seven years of my life would turn out.”

Finally, Alex needed to know about Henry’s experience playing drums with Ollella, an indie artist Henry met after relocating to Seattle a few years ago. To say playing the Tiny Desk was exciting might be an understatement.

“I definitely blacked out from the adrenaline,” he jokes. “I was pretty terrified that once it dropped, I was going to find out I counted off every song 20 bpm too fast.”

Spoiler alert: He didn’t. You can listen to the rest of the story now.