Justin Moore photo by Kristin Barlowe, courtesy of The Valory Music Co.
By Bob Doerschuk
© 2009 CMA Close Up® News Service / Country Music Association®, Inc.
If you can make your past come alive through music, then you’ve got a gift that will serve you well. In this department, Justin Moore is amply blessed.
Case in point: Though written by Randy Houser and Jeremy Stover, Moore’s first single, “Back That Thing Up,” conjures how life must have felt back on the Arkansas farm where he was raised. Kids grew up there hunting, fishing, milking the cows and working the land — the kind of routine that feeds the good-natured, double-entendre swagger in this tale of a country boy as he introduces a city lass to the wonders of rural recreation.
In addition to driving a Bush Hog and excelling at sports, Moore spent a lot of time singing, whether in the church choir or onstage with his uncle’s Southern rock band. His passion for music catapulted him right out of Poyen High School, shortly after graduation, to Nashville. For several years he divided his time between the two locales, writing for Keith Stegall’s Big Picture Music, playing shows for friends and family back home and eventually cutting his self-titled debut album for The Valory Music Co., with Stover producing. And on these 10 tracks, nine of them bearing his credit as co-writer, including his Top 25 second single, the wistful hometown hymn “Small Town USA,” which he wrote with Stover and Brian Maher, Moore makes his world feel like you’d grown up there too.
IN HIS OWN WORDS Q&A
DREAM DUET PARTNER
“Ronnie Dunn.”
TITLE OF YOUR AUTOBIOGRAPHY
“How I Got This Way.”
LUCKY CHARM
“A necklace with a cross my wife gave me.”
GREATEST PERFORMANCE TO DATE
“My debut on the Grand Ole Opry.”
SOMETHING WE’D NEVER GUESS ABOUT YOU
“I’m a good cook.”
SONG YOU SING IN THE SHOWER
“It’s the only time I don’t sing.”
MUSICAL HERO
“Dwight Yoakam.”
SONG YOU’D SECRETLY LIKE TO COVER
“’Bad Company’ by Bad Company.”
CD IN YOUR STEREO
“Travis Tritt’s Greatest Hits.”
PET PEEVE
“Slow-driving people in the fast lane.”
SONG YOU WISH YOU’D WRITTEN
“’Believe’ by Brooks & Dunn.”
PHRASE YOU FIND YOURSELF SAYING OVER AND OVER
“’I’m sorry’ to my wife.”
MOMENT IN YOUR LIFE YOU’D LIKE TO RELIVE
“Hunting with my late uncle.”
FIRST GIG
“Hot Springs, Ark. I don’t want to brag, but I got a standing ovation. The audience was pretty much all my family though.”
On the Web: www.MooreJustinMusic.com
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