By Alan Sculley
Saturday, Oct. 29 at 8 p.m. — RUTLAND—Kip Moore was ready to release a new studio album he’d completed during the pandemic in September of last year. But then those plans went up in smoke — literally.
“We wanted to put it out in September, but because the vinyl factory burned down in Nashville, that’s why we postponed it because our fans love the vinyl so much,” Moore said in an August phone interview.
Instead, a different studio album will be released early next year that includes some of the songs that were on the album he shelved. But fans haven’t been left emptyhanded in the interim, as he’s been releasing a series of stand-alone singles.
Don’t miss Kip Moore, the critically acclaimed country singer/songwriter at the Paramount this Saturday, Oct. 29.
“We’re putting out songs all the way till November, individual songs. Then we’re going to put out a record next year,” Moore said. “But right now, we’re just putting out music for the fans.”
The singles began arriving last fall with “Good Life,” a tune that adds a bit of funk to its rootsy rocking sound. Then in January, Moore released a new version of “Crazy One More Time,” an album track from his debut disc “Up All Night” that had become a fan favorite over the past decade. Now he’s released the chunky rocker, “Fire On Wheels” (complete with a video that finds Moore dancing like no one’s watching in a bowling alley).
“The song is just a celebration of life between us and the fans,” Moore said. “That’s the whole point of it.”
In fact, Moore has opened some of his recent concerts with “Fire On Wheels” — also the name of his current tour which stops at the Paramount Theatre in Rutland this Saturday, Oct. 29. The show typically runs 2 1/2 hours or longer.
“It’s a fan base that loves to go deep into the album cuts. So I try to switch it up from night to night,” Moore said. “Like last night we were in Calgary and I’ve never played ‘Blonde’ live since it came out (on the 2017 album ‘Slowheart’). And the crowd kept chanting for it so we went for it. It was one of those things where we weren’t really ready to play it, but we still went for it. It’s fun keeping each other musically on our toes like that. It was a blast. The fans loved it. I think that’s what the fan base knows is there’s no telling what you’re going to get at one of our shows because we’re not strapped. We’re not strapped to a computer. We are a 100 percent live band. Everything’s live. You’ve still got amps. You’ve got all of that feeling of what an old rock and roll show was.”
Moore feels the authenticity and unpredictable nature of the live show are key reasons he’s been able to build an uncommonly loyal fan base that feels very connected to Moore and his entire catalog of music.
The 42-year-old native of Tifton, Georgia has also had a few hits at country radio, beginning with “Somethin’ ‘Bout a Truck,” a chart-topping track from “Up All Night.” A second single from that album, “Beer Money,” went top 5 on Billboard magazine’s Country Airplay chart. Since then, Moore has had three more top 10 singles – “Hey Pretty Girl” from his second album, “Wild Ones,” and “More Girls Like You” and “Last Shot” from “Slowheart.” Another song, “She’s Mine” from Moore’s most recent album, 2020’s “Wild World,” was a slow burning success. It only cracked the top 20, but still went gold.
Moore has had radio success despite crafting a sound that hasn’t always aligned with country music trends.
“I just do what I do and I don’t really worry about any of the genres or lines,” Moore said. “I just write music.”
And Moore wrote a lot of music as he waited out the pandemic by enjoying some of his favorite outdoor activities.
“I went and surfed and rock climbed and kept myself steady outdoors,” Moore said. “I tried to stay away from all of the madness and the noise and the conflict and the constant arguing. I didn’t bother myself with any of that. I tried to stay present in the thing that I was doing.”
“I wrote probably two or three whole bodies of work during the pandemic,” Moore said. “I mean, I wrote probably 75 songs.”
Moore has continued to write as he toured this summer and fall said the new album, which is almost finished, evolved some from the album he had intended to release last year.
“There are definitely elements that changed,” he said. “I was definitely in a specific headspace for a lot of that lockdown. It has shifted into more of a joyous spirit since coming out of it. I think there was a whole lot of reflecting on the things that are important in my life and what I need to give water to that I’ve been neglecting to give water to during that lockdown. And I think that coming out of it, it’s like I said that ‘Fire On Wheels’ is this big celebration of life with us and the fans, where I don’t think I was ready to be in that headspace during the lockdown.”
Moore didn’t offer many specifics about individual songs, but he did say, “This is definitely a personal record. They’re all kind of personal to me. I feel that ‘Wild World’ was super personal, with (the song) ‘Pay It Hard,’ that’s about as personal as I can get. But I’m attached to all of them. But we definitely stretched again, searching for sounds that we haven’t done yet, but still were cohesive with what I’ve done throughout my whole career.”
