Justin Moore is a man who has always done things his own way. You don’t get 11 number ones spread over six albums any other way. New album ‘Stray Dogs’ is another slice of classic Moore, full of unapologetic anthems, guitar grit and melodies popping off all over the place. We were thrilled to talk to him all about it and his wider career in general in one of our favourite interviews in a while.
Justin, it’s an absolute pleasure to speak to you today, thank you for giving up your time.
Likewise, thank you too. I appreciate it.
‘Stray Dog’ is another great album, what a run you’ve been on since the debut in 2009. How do you feel like you’ve grown and changed as an artist in that time?
The more and more you do something the goal has to be to get better and if you’re not you are probably doing the wrong thing! (laughing) I think the more you do this as an artist you learn who you are and what you want to say. I had an idea back in the day as to what I wanted to say and since then I’ve become a husband and a father of four and anytime you change as a person you also change as a songwriter too, as life happens to you.
Hopefully, I’ve matured a little over the years as a person and an artist. You learn different techniques in the studio too in terms of being able to craft a song better and even ‘sell’ it better in terms of the delivery.
I’ve always admired how you’ve always done things your on way and on your own terms. I’d love to have been in the room when you told the record label you were leaving Nashville and moving to Arkansas, which was a gutsy move all those years ago.
(laughing) Well, I didn’t really ever tell them! I did mention that I was thinking about it a few years prior to me doing it and they didn’t really like the idea so I didn’t bring it up again but I was on the phone with my manager one day, a couple of albums into our career and we had been fortunate enough to have some success, and he goes ‘You’re a grown man, dude, you can live where you wanna live!’ So I moved home and it wasn’t until 2-3 years after that the label president, Scott Borchetta, who I have a great relationship with, called me and we were talking about the single I had out at the time and he asks, ‘Oh, by the way, how long have you been living in Arkansas?’ (laughing) It was my goal to prove to them that I could do my job just as well from Arkansas as I could from Nashville.
I wanted to move back around family and it was healthy for my wife and I and the kids and the label understands that.
The consistency in your career has been great. Your 11 number ones have been spread across all your albums rather than just coming in a glut at the beginning or from just one or two of your six albums.
That’s the first time someone has said that to me in that way before, it’s cool to think about it that way. Radio has been really good to me throughout my career. I signed my record deal in 2007 and the first single was late ’07 but it didn’t do very well but ever since then they’ve been fantastic to me.
We’ve made and developed really great relationships with radio. Even when TV hasn’t been that great to me, radio has always been consistent and supportive. It’s one of the main lifebloods of our industry and we’ve been blessed to have had good relationships with them from the start, which is important.
Of your 11 number ones, do you have a favourite or is that like asking you to choose between your kids?
That’s tough! They’ve all been really important at the time we had them them, right? I look at a song like ‘Til My Last Day’, for example. We were coming off of a miss at the time and then that song struggled for a long time but the label managed to get that to number one and that kinda elevated us in terms of our profile. ‘If Heaven Wasn’t So Far Away’ was big because it built upon the success of our first album at a time when we might have been a little concerned about the sophomore jinx, right? (laughing) It’s still a big song for us today too.
It’s not just the number ones that are important though. We did a remake of Motley Crue’s ‘Home Sweet Home’, which was a miss, although I am still proud of that record, which I thought was a really well done record. We still play the song to close our live set to this day. The Crue guys were fantastic to me, all of them were in the video and so we swung for the fence on that but kinda hit it onto the warning track, so to speak! But even a song like ‘Home Sweet Home’, which wasn’t a commercial success, still played its part in building our career because that’s an important live song these days for us.
I guess I wouldn’t be here today without ‘Small Town USA’ and I didn’t think that song was a hit. I thought the label was nuts for wanting to put that song out so thank god I was wrong! (laughing)
Once you had written the song, ‘Stray Dogs’ was that always going to be the title of the new album or did you experiment with other titles too?
That was the first one I thought of really. I thought it was a neat way of describing who I am. I didn’t come up with the song title, my producer did and then the song kinda became biographical. You’ve already pointed out that I’ve done things a little differently in my career and maybe it’s cost me some things like awards and whatever, but I’m happy as a person and my family is happy. I’ve never been one to run with the pack, or do things just because everybody else is doing something so I thought ‘Stray Dog’ was a cool description and it made sense for the album.
‘Everybody Get Along’ might well have been a good title too, considering the state of things in America right now!
(laughing) No kidding, right?
How much of himself did Riley Green get to put into the lyrics of that song or was his part already written by you, David and Jeremy?
We had already written the song but what Riley added in the studio was great, I have a ton of respect for him, not only as an artist but as a person too. We’ve become pretty good buddies over the years. What was cool about that track was that with technology being what it is these days there are not a lot of times when you do a duet in the same room anymore. Priscilla Block, and I, for example, weren’t in the same room when we did our parts for ‘You, Me and Whiskey’ but Riley and I did.
Some of the nuances in the song and some of the ad-libs at the end when we do the “Waylon’ thing happened purely because we were in the same room at the same time and it makes the song even more special. We got some things down that we wouldn’t have got if we had recorded our parts separately.
‘That Wasn’t Jack’ has to be one of your most catchiest songs in a while, maybe since ‘Why We Drink’?
That song was the first song I’ve ever wrote over zoom when the world shut down in the pandemic. It was the weirdest thing ever, not something I’d, obviously, ever done before. I loved the idea – I don’t remember whether it was David Lee Murphy who sent it to me or my producer, Jeremy Stover: I thought it was a great hook but that song always takes me back to that moment in time and how unusual the process was.
I don’t know that I’ve written much on zoom since. Maybe 1 or 2. It’s funny because ‘Stray Dogs’ came out about a month or so ago and I’ve already got my next album written and ready to go! I’m really excited about that and we wrote that all in person, in rooms together.
You co-wrote 7 of the 8 songs on ‘Stray Dogs’. Was that a conscious decision to get back to being more involved in the process after only writing 2 on ‘Straight Outta the Country’?
If you look at my body of work, I’ve probably written 80 to 90% of all the songs in my career. ‘Straight Outta the Country’ was kinda a different deal where I didn’t write as many songs, which was a bit of a departure for me. Neither was a conscious decision either way, you know? I didn’t decide not to write many songs for ‘Straight Outta the Country’ or that I wanted to write more for ‘Stray Dogs’, it just happened as it happened and I always say the best songs win out at the time. I might not have been as creative over the pandemic as other artists I guess…………
Having four kids on your hands at home might have had something to do with that?
…..(laughing) Yeah, right?! We didn’t know if we were ever going to go back out on the road ever again for a while back there so I think that effected my creativity a little. ‘Stray Dogs’ is a lot more like what I’ve done throughout my entire career in terms of writing and style.
The Christmas picture of you and your family on social media was lovely I thought. What do your kids think about what their dad does for a living?
(laughing) I think my older two are embarrassed by it, for the most part! ‘Dad, why does everybody always come up and talk to you, it’s embarrassing!’ right? They don’t ever want to go to my shows, they want to go to other people’s shows like Taylor Swift, they couldn’t care less about my shows.
The younger two? My youngest daughter will be 9 in July and she knows what I do but I don’t think she knows the extent or the magnitude of what I do and my youngest boy is 5 and he doesn’t have a clue! (laughing) He knows Dad sings and that’s about it!
Arkansas has produced some great Country musicians. If you had to choose a Mount Rushmore of the four best Arkansas Country musicians who would make the list?
We’re not an overly populated state, you know? The list is pretty strong though. Johnny Cash is where you gotta start, right? Glenn Campbell has got to be there too. Arkansas and Mississippi both claim Conway Twitty but he’s ours for sure. The last spot is tough. You got Al Green, who wasn’t a Country singer but still was so good, Joe Nichols? Probably for me, personally, I would put Tracy Lawrence on there as there as the fourth. It’s a tough choice.
I’ve just played a show alongside Ashley McBryde who is also from Arkansas, she’s such a great artist, super-talented and lovely too. Shay Mooney, from Dan + Shay is from here, he’s a great singer and those guys are having a great run right now.
Each year when the C2C festival speculation begins over here in the UK as to who might be playing at the festival at the O2 arena in London each March there are three names that constantly come up as being the most asked for. Jake Owen, Chris Janson and yourself.
Wow! That’s amazing. I appreciate you telling me that, Wow! We were putting something together back in 2019 to come over that way and then COVID hit and we haven’t yet gone back to planning that but hopefully that opportunity will come soon. I would love to bring my family over to Europe and see the fans. We’ve only been out of the country to Mexico and Canada so far and that’s on me, I need to do a better job of being more diligent to make that happen.
Now you are label mates, Big Machine can fund a double-header tour with Chris Janson!
(laughing) There you go, I like the idea very much. I’m in! (laughing)
Check out Justin Moore’s new album, ‘Stray Dogs’ from all the usual shops and streaming services right now.
