Interview
Stage Times
Stage Times: Kip Moore
The country star recalls gigs in restaurant waiting rooms and reveals his favourite show he’s ever played
Country music has its purists and its deriders, and somehow Kip Moore manages to appeal to both. Raised on an eclectic mix of influences, he cut his teeth as a performer in the bar scene of the Southern United States, inspired both by great rockers of the past and country stars of his adolescence. He hit the top of the charts with only his second single, and over a decade later he now prepares to tour his sixth studio album, Solitary Tracks, across the UK.
“I’m ready to get going,” he says. “We did a straight month in Canada, which was our first time playing the new music. There was just so much electricity in the room. There’s always that fear, when you write a record. You’re like, “I have no clue how this is gonna go over,” but it feels special in the room right now.”
Solitary Tracks is characteristically honest, leaning into gritty confessionalism across the huge 23-song track list. Ahead of Moore’s UK dates, we sat down with him to reminisce on some of his most memorable shows so far.
The One That Made You Want To Play Music
I don’t remember any concerts coming through my hometown, or anywhere even close. A lot of cover band music, but Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers wasn’t coming through my hometown. It wasn’t until my late teens, early 20s… I was already playing in the bars every Thursday, Friday night by the time I was 20, and it was sometime around there that I saw a live concert of Springsteen inside the Hard Rock Cafe on the big projector screen. Everybody was going to go upstairs, the group that I was with, to have drinks, and he was doing ‘Thunder Road’ as I walked in. It was so gripping for me that I stayed downstairs for two hours and watched it by myself. I watched the whole show, and I remember I was just so moved. I was already writing a lot of songs, and that’s all I wanted to do – to go off and write songs.
What was the stuff you were listening to that inspired you to write before you’d seen much live music?
My dad was playing a lot of Motown, so I had the influence of Sam Cook, Marvin Gaye, the Temptations, and then he was spinning a lot of Bob Seger, The Little River Band and Jackson Brown. Then I had an older brother that was playing Nirvana, Pearl Jam and Van Halen. Then I had another brother that was spinning Bon Jovi records, and then I had a best friend who, because of his dad, was playing Tom Petty and Bruce Springsteen records. So I had this eclectic mix of all of this rock and roll. Then I discovered country when I was about 16. That’s all I listened to then. I started discovering tons of Willie Nelson records and a lot of Brooks & Dunn and Travis Tritt… I just had this hodgepodge of musical influences.
The First
The first live gig that I played was a place called the Mellow Mushroom in Georgia.
That’s a great name for a venue.
Yeah, the Mellow Mushroom. I would play there almost every weekend. I played there so much. I’ve got fond memories of those times.
The Smallest
In Omaha, Nebraska. I did a radio show – I’ll never forget it – inside a waiting room at the LongHorn Steakhouse. The room was maybe 10 feet wide at the most, 20 or 30 feet long. It’s a tiny room. I had about 15 people in there, and it was during regular business eating hours, and I didn’t even have a microphone, so I was trying to sing over a restaurant on a Friday night during prime hours for these 15 people, and every 10 to 15 seconds, you hear the intercom saying, “Taylor, party of seven. Taylor, party of seven”. It was the most bizarre gig of my life. I’m glad that I’m not playing anymore LongHorn waiting rooms.
The Biggest
The biggest headlining show that I’ve done was the Pretoria [Loftus Versfeld] football stadium in South Africa. So around 30,000 people. Euphoria. I have a really special fanbase in South Africa.
The Best
That’s really tough. There’s been so many good ones. I always bring up Belfast, Ireland – just such a special audience for me. This year, I did a gig in Milwaukee, Wisconsin that eased up the top of the list. It’s right there, kind of rivaling the Belfast gif. So anybody from Milwaukee that sees this: they made it, top of the list. A crowd can be really wild and fun, and it doesn’t make it the best, but they were so locked in. We all knew that we were a part of something special in the room, and that’s what you felt and what you knew.
How rare is that feeling?
I feel joy in the crowd a lot, but for it to be the perfect storm of rambunctiousness with that locked in spiritual thing happening… that’s rare. I feel like it happens, for sure, but it is not a nightly occurrence by any means.
The Worst
I don’t know if I should say it, but yes, I’ve definitely had a worse gig that I try to block out of my memory bank. It was a corporate gig – I only do maybe one or two private corporate shows a year, and they’re always fairly tough, because they’re not necessarily your fan base to begin with. But this one in particular was the most despondent bunch that I think I’ve ever encountered. It was a buzzsaw of stoicness. When you’re doing the kind of show that we do, which is a very high octane show… yeah, it was a tough one.
The Weirdest
I played a river float, many years ago. People that had been floating the river all day convened to this stage after boozing since 10 o’clock in the morning. It was like playing a show for the Night Of The Walking Dead. You’ve never seen a crowd that inebriated in your life, to the point where I counted five different people that were literally asleep laying on the subs, which is where all the bass comes out of. We didn’t go on stage till 11 o’clock, and they’d been drinking in the sun since 10am and it was just, it was a perfect storm of, “This is going to be a really rough night.” Everyone had that 1000 yard stare. You know that guy that’s trying to talk to you in the bar, and he’s got this stare where he’s looking through you? Well, I had a whole sea of people doing that.
