Kip Moore has long been a favourite of UK Country music fans, thanks to his relentless dedication to building a real and lasting fanbase with his fans.
Moore has been touring here for well over a decade, and he's seen his audiences go from a handful of people to packed out arenas. Undoubtedly one of the greatest live performers in modern Country music, Moore will be back for a tour in May and June in support of his recently released 23-track new album ‘Solitary Tracks‘.
Ahead of his return to our shores, I spoke with Kip to find out more about the new record, discuss his passionate advocacy for albums, and to talk about his prowess as a live performer…
How are you?
Good brother, how about you?
Good, thank you. It's been a long time since we've seen each other…
It's been a minute.
I think it's been six years, probably when you came over to do the Room to Spare Acoustic Tour at Cadogan Hall…
Oh wow, geez.
A lot has changed. We hadn't even had the pandemic at that point.
Very true.
Congratulations on the new album ‘Solitary Tracks'. Before we dive into it, I want to thank you for being such an advocate of the album because a lot of artists are throwing out essentially EPs and calling them albums. To have a one hour and twenty-five minute long record from you, with 23 tracks is a real gift. What are albums still so important to you?
When I think about the ways that I discovered music, being a kid, being a teen and being a young adult, it was always the whole album. It was getting a record and laying on my floor and putting a CD in a CD player and just escaping into another world. That's the way that music set me on fire. There's so many records, I even think about discovering Tom Petty' s ‘ Full Moon Fever', and I can't sit here and say that I was just enthralled from the start. We have no patience anymore to like really discover something, but that record ended up being one of my all- time favourite records. I liked it at first, but then the more I listened to it, as a body of work, I was like, ‘Oh my gosh, this is incredible'. I'll never stop doing that. I'm not going to join the singles world and I'm never going to look at music as disposable, even if the rest of the world is at times, because it'll never be disposable to me. It'll never happen with me. I'll always make records.
You left your long-time label home a couple of years back, and you started recording this album as an independent artist. Then you signed with Virgin Music Group and the album has expanded to a 23-track project. How did that happen?
It originally was supposed to be done at ‘Southern Son', so just Side A and B. With Side A and B there's a common thread sonically, guitar tone wise, lyrically, thematically. I was saying something on Side A and B. I finished and I'd just signed with Virgin Records and they were like, ‘well, you' ve got three or four months until you have to turn it in' because the set date for release was always February 28th. I never stopped writing. I write every single morning so in that time I started writing ‘Alley Cat', ‘Love & War' and ‘ Only Me'. My whole disposition and internal feeling from Side A and B was gone at that point. Once I finish something it's like a cathartic thing, I'm done with it so I just kept writing. I just got to a point where I was like, ‘you know what? I've never done anything like this, and let's just record a bunch of these new songs I've written'. It's a little bit of a hodgepodge mix for Side C and D. I just asked the label if I could put all these new tracks on there and they were really, really cool about it. I'd always kind of been strapped in my other deal where I could just do 13 and that was it. I just wanted to give the fans as much music as possible so I just went in and cut a whole ‘nother round.
Your fans get to see all sides of you on this record. Personally, I'm always more drawn to your rockier stuff but with this album I've found myself going back to the ballads such as ‘Forever is a Lie'. It feels like you're being the most vulnerable you've ever been with your songwriting?
You speak specifically of ‘ Forever is a Lie', that's one of my favourites on the record. That was at the very tail end of completing the whole project and I woke up super early on the East Coast. I walked out to this deck that was sitting over the marsh and I saw a pack of white birds all flying in a flock together; that was kind of the spark. I was thinking of specifically somebody that had left this world. My heart and mind was on that and I turned it into a relationship thing. That was one of the fastest songs I've ever written. I wrote that in about 20 minutes. It just fell out of me really, really fast. The chorus fell out within a matter of two or three minutes and then I wrote backwards from there. I just went over to my buddy, Will Lynn, who plays in the band with us, a keys player – he's got a little rickety home studio and I just laid down a guitar vocal of that. Just me playing live. I didn't cut the guitar first and then do the vocal, I just did everything live right there with no click. Then he just put his keys around it right after that. Sometimes I want to use this rocket that I have right here (points to his throat) . I just want to use it like I do in ‘Love & War'. I had to remind myself to hold back and deliver this the way that I was writing it on the porch, where it feels almost like a whisper on the end of the bed. I had to stay in that mindset of how the song originated so we just left it as a guitar vocal and keys.
It's definitely my favourite track on here and possibly one of my favourite tracks that you've done…
Appreciate that. Thank you.
We've been discussing the album amongst the team and ‘Tough Enough' is a collective favourite. It's got a bit of Springsteen in there. Where did that song come from?
I wrote that song back in 2010. It's the only old song on the whole record. It's been like this underground kind of cult (favourite) . The fan base is always chanting for it at shows and holding signs. I've only played it live, maybe two times ever at a show, but those recordings have gone viral amongst the fan base. It's been requested for years, and I tried to track it for the ‘Wild Ones' record, and it just felt too slick. I felt like we lost the essence of what the song was. It wasn't speaking to me, which happens sometimes. I decided this time around, let's try to make it happen again.
Knowing you for all these years, I know how prolific a songwriter you are. How hard was it to get this record down to 23 tracks?
I probably wrote a hundred for this record. It was a lot. There's so many old songs that I want to get to at some point that I've written. ‘Reason to Believe' is still a fan favorite that I've only played acoustically at shows and it's one of my favourite songs I've ever written and I once again tried to record it. I've tried to record it three times. That song is so special to me and it means so much to me, I feel like it has that special juice to it that I'm not going to put it out unless I really capture it. Every time I've tried, for some reason, I can't wrangle it in. ‘Tough Enough' was like that for me. That's always a tough part to do, but you got to cut it off at some point.
I feel like somewhere on your career path, we're going to get a ‘Lost Songs' collection of all of these amazing songs you've just never graced us with yet…
One thousand percent!
I know that the fans would love that and as you say, the minute you sing anything at a show that hasn't been released, people go crazy for it. That must be rewarding for you as an artist and a songwriter that people are taking to these songs that they've only heard maybe once or twice?
Yeah, I think that's what's so special about this fan base. It's interesting because even when I take out openers, the thing that's the most impressive to them is how attentive they are. They bring crazy electricity into a room so I can take them to a 10 whenever I want because they're ready to be in a frenzy, but they're also there for music and to discover music. They're so attentive with the openers and things like that. It's a beautiful situation. It's the perfect storm of what you hope for in an audience when you're the artist.
You're one of those artists that's always experienced best live. I've seen you so many times over the years, and there's no one else doing it like you. There's no wizardry or tricks, it's just your raw talent and the band. That's so incredibly rare in the current climate of music…
Thank you. I appreciate that. We strive so hard to give the fans that, to give them an authentic depiction of us as musician, writers and artists. We rehearse like crazy. Before every show and sound check, we're rehearsing, like we're not just sound checking. We're trying to do a little nugget every single night that's going to be a little different because there's so many people that follow the shows from town to town. I'm always trying to find ways to make the show unique and interesting. When you're not strapped to a computer and a bunch of tracks, the night can change and ebb and flow as it goes. There's so often where I write a tentative set list and it just ends up being something completely different.
You've really built your reputation and your fan base in the UK as a live artist, and that has created such a special relationship with your fans here. I've seen you in tiny venues and arenas, and you blow everybody out of the water – you even did it at C2C when you weren't the headliner. How do you feel about your relationship with your UK fans?
Oh, man. I remember being the opening act at the very first act on C2C back in and I remember finding out that on a couple of different nights, we had sold the most merch and CDs of any of the acts so we knew that something was happening. We were making a connection and we felt it. We felt people outside waiting for us and trying to find out where I was. We were the opening act so I knew that something had translated with those first two records that I put out ‘ Wild Ones' and ‘Up All Night'. That's what we were playing back then. From the jump, I've just been very dedicated to continuing to work that, and it's not easy. It's hard for us to go over there. It's so costly for us to take the whole circus overseas and those first few times you do it, you lose a lot of money. Even when the shows are sold out, you're losing like crazy, but you're just hoping that one day you're going to get above that line and these people are going to keep coming. You have to be dedicated if you see something happening within the crowd and you see that something's there, then you have to roll the dice on yourself and go after it. It's been such a payoff, not in a literal sense of the finance part, but it's been such a payoff seeing what we've built over there through the years and going from these small clubs to arenas. It's an incredible feeling. Now we're just trying to expand further all through Europe.
It doesn't matter how many times you play in the UK, your fans are always asking when you're coming back. The anticipation for your shows in May and June is through the roof. How are you feeling about getting back here and performing again?
I've said it so many times. We have to make ourself take a year off here and there and we're always just a little bit bummed when we know we're not going to get to go overseas. To get to go back again and to have a crowd that wants us to be there, I just hope they continue to want us to be there because we want to be there really bad. I think they feel that from us and we feel that from them and that's why there's this mutual love.
What's the one track on this new record that you think that people should go straight to and listen to if they only listen to the one track?
I would say ‘ Solitary Tracks'. For me I just love everything about that track… the sonic build. It just was one of the first songs I wrote for this record and knew that I was in a record cycle the minute I wrote it. I said, ‘okay, I've got something to say now'. We played it at a live event last night for the first time and the place just came unglued. I think it's a special track.
Kip Moore's new album ‘Solitary Tracks' is available now. You can see him on tour in the UK in May and June. For full dates and more information head over to https://www.kipmoore.net/tour.
