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Bob Dylan said it best: He who is not busy being born is busy dying. Singer, songwriter and guitarist Ian Moore lives and creates by that precept. And his new album on Justice Records, To Be Loved, vividly displays the artistic benefits of doing so.
It’s a way of living that has led Moore from emerging as, at first glance, a teenage guitar prodigy in the early 1990s in his hometown of Austin, Texas to fruition as a full-blooded musical artist, now based in Seattle. His rich and keenly intelligent compositions invoke critics’ comparisons to some of the most respected names in both classic and contemporary rock’n’roll music. Such musical auteurs as The Beatles, Brian Wilson and Big Star on the one hand, and master singer-songwriters such as Richard Thompson, Nick Drake, Leonard Cohen and both Tim and Jeff Buckley on the other hand. Not to mention such diverse creative talents as Wilco, The Flaming Lips, Neutral Milk Hotel and even being hailed as a “Roy Orbison for the 21st Century.”
Calculate a central point among all of the above -- but first also throw in early Moore favorites like Stevie Wonder, Curtis Mayfield and Sly & The Family Stone as well as The Rolling Stones — and you find an artist who may be hard to pin down to a certain genre or style. But who cares? There’s a satisfaction in listening to how Moore absorbs the spectrum of music that he loves and finds inspiring and then follows his muse to places that awe, delight and touch those key, deep places within the human soul. As Harp magazine observes of Moore, “Since the early ‘90s the native Texan has refused corporate molding in favor of freedom and the artistic rewards are staggering.”
It may have been Moore’s guitar talents that first won him attention. But as Tucson Weekly recently noted, “His recent albums have positioned him as one of the most soulful singer-songwriters around, and one of the most diverse.” Or as Seattle’s influential weekly The Stranger said not long ago, “Your new favorite artist has arrived.” Similar praise greeted Moore on his national debut nearly 15 years ago because, for Moore, the path and process to where he is going has always been his focus, and it has consistently made arriving at each destination that much sweeter.
To Be Loved, Moore’s new release on the Justice Records label, follows on the heels of 2004’s Luminaria, hailed by All Music Guide as his “best album by some distance.” To Be Loved travels even further along Moore’s musical journey into the mystical realm of what No Depression describes as his “lush pop and soul tapestries.”
It’s an album that can truly be described as timeless, mixing in an almost yin/yang fashion both contemporary and classic sonic experimentalism and musical eclecticism alongside the finest flavors from the rock and pop lexicon. Something of a song cycle, it lyrically visits those places where love finds us and takes us, as well as where it is lost and found. Atop a rock solid foundation of gifted song craftsmanship and eloquent, emotive lyricism, Moore fashions a panorama of musical moods and soundscapes ranging from spectral beauty to almost punk-ish rock energy, touching on and even mixing together many places in between.
To Be Loved both catches the ear at first listen — witness the infectious chorus of “30 Days,” the propulsive rocking on “Killing Joke,” and the mesmeric rock/soul groove at the heart of “Civil Light” — and then reveals more of its deep riches and delicious intricacies with each successive spin.
The traditional palette of rock instrumentation is used to maximum effect (and without even one extended solo, it is a tour de force guitar album in its spectrum of of six-string parts and sounds played by Moore and his Seattle friends Paul Hiraga and Johnny Sangster) while everything from the theremin to vibes to the human whistle as well as horns and strings are also part of piquantly blended musical mosaic. It proves Moore’s budding mastery as a producer and arranger while offering the best expression yet of his singing, songwriting and guitar playing gifts. At the same time as it transcends the strictures of genre and style, To Be Loved falls squarely along the line of brilliant progressive pop-rock albums that runs from Rubber Soul through Big Star’s Sister Lovers on to recent releases by latter-day icons Wilco.
To Be Loved is the second studio album (of six overall) that Moore has produced himself. To with, it’s an even fuller flourishing of the musical artistry that has earned him high praise from the very first, but never more so (yet) than it did on Luminaria. “The burden of the contemporary singer/ songwriter is in formulating a sound that is completely unique. With Luminaria, Ian Moore accomplishes just that,” noted Billboard. The Portland Mercury heralded it as “a majestic record, as heartfelt and poignant as it is well executed,” while The Stranger hailed the disc as a “highly successful… intricately layered, soulful pop record.”
No Depression credits Moore’s emergence as a “genre-spanning stylist” to “reinventing himself — organically, with no hint of cynical calculation.” To get the full picture of Moore’s story and identity, put the accent firmly on the notion of organic growth. Even though his first work may seem to differ from what he creates today, a closer examination reveals that the artist that he is now has been at work all along.
As can be said of many talents, Ian Moore grew up immersed in music, and even more so than most. But the more salient point is that a continuing growth and immersion in music of all sorts and styles is his life story. Although it was his prodigious guitar skills that brought him initial national attention, Moore’s first instrument was the violin at the age of six. At the same time, he was not only surrounded by the best popular and roots music on record at home but also accompanied his music loving parents out to shows as the fertile Austin music scene was blossoming. He can be spied as a youngster on the cover art of Jerry Jeff Walker’s pivotal live recording, ¡Viva Terlingua!, and grew up — or in his case maybe better, began musically growing — in such legendary music clubs as the Armadillo World Headquarters, Soap Creek Saloon and Antone’s Nightclub, where all the colors (pardon the pun) of his genre-defying
style were to be heard, often by artists whose own sound and approach transcended musical categorization.
“I was a record collector when I was a kid and had tons and tons of 45s and lots of early soul and rock’n’roll records,” Moore explains. His hometown steeped Moore in such diverse local favorites as Doug Sahm, Roky Erickson & The 13th Floor Elevators, the frequently visiting Meters and Neville Brothers as well as Austin’s rocking The LeRoi Brothers and Tailgators and even The Butthole Surfers among countless others across the spectrum of popular music. So when Moore emerged at age 16 into Austin’s clubs as a performer and bandleader himself just a few years after taking up the guitar, it was only natural — and yes, fitting — that he was seen as something of a prodigy.
Preternaturally mature might be a better way to put it, as revealed by what followed as well as a retrospective look and listen. The “hotshot six-stringer from Austin” tag that first identified him was all but inescapable. Guitar icons Stevie Ray and Jimmie Vaughan were not just artists he had heard many times — along with a host of other players both locally as well as on record and touring through town — but Moore also watched them develop as they informed his musical development at the same time.
He rubbed shoulders in the clubs from a young age and later on stage with such other emergent Austin guitar-playing talents as Will and Charlie Sexton and Doyle Bramhall II, all of whom were also first heralded as Austin guitar slingers but later came to be known as gifted singers, writers and more, just like Moore.
“When I first went on the road, the only touchstone anyone outside of Austin had for what I was into was Stevie Ray Vaughan,” Moore recalls. “And I love Stevie — that guy was amazing and couldn’t be anything other than a major influence given how much I’d seen him even before the rest of the world learned about him. Charlie and Doyle and I have all since talked about the comparison and how we all got really annoyed at the time, even though we all knew better than anyone what an honor it was. But we were all about more than just Stevie and the guitar, and he was also about more than just the guitar too.
“I was always more about the singers and songwriters,” Moore explains. “Even as a huge Hendrix fan when I was young, what impressed me on hearing his albums was that he was a great songwriter, stylist and arranger.”
From Moore’s earliest shows in Austin, what also won him attention — in a city where mere guitar wizards are a dime a dozen — was an intriguingly firm and well-formed craftsmanship as a writer and his strong and fluent voice that also rang with a broad musical grounding. Or what The Washington Post more recently identified as “his sophisticated songcraft and soulful, sometimes soaring tenor.”
A stint playing lead guitar on tour with Joe Ely chummed up even more media and record label interest in Moore outside of the buzz he had stoked in Austin. On his self-titled 1993 debut album, Moore’s guitar gifts were integrated into songs that drew their lexicon and grooves from the soul and R&B music that he was weaned on. His determination to not be boxed into the dictates of the music industry or short and limiting marketing tags rather than where his muse led him, resulted in Moore signing a deal and then parting ways with EMI Records before he released his first record under the influential and recently revived Capricorn Records independent label imprint. He also began flexing his broad-based musical and cultural interests in a video clip for the song “Harlem” directed by Ice Cube and filmed in the South Central ghetto of Los Angeles.
Those early career days were heady times for Moore — reams of media notice and arena gigs opening for The Rolling Stones and ZZ Top — and after a Live From Austin EP, he clearly signaled that genuine musical artistry was his mission with 1995’s Modernday Folklore. To wit, esteemed critic, curator and art historian Dave Hickey (who it should be noted was an Austin music scene denizen in his college years) anointed the album as one of the best moments of 1996 in contemporary art in the respected journal Art America.
Moore also spent part of that same year on tour (and sitting in) with Bob Dylan as well as appearing as an actor in Billy Bob Thornton’s acclaimed film Sling Blade. “It was a really cool time and I started thinking outside the bounds of what Austin was, which at that point had largely defined my music,” Moore recalls.
He also broke free from any perceived notions and boundaries by moving from Austin to Vashon Island, Washington, near Seattle, where he lives with his wife and children. “Moving up to Seattle was really interesting and cool as well as scary. I was like, okay, I’m going to take the biggest crutch that I have — I was an Austin celebrity; every piece of press that people wrote about me said ‘Austin, Texas guitar player’ — and toss it aside.”
The release of Ian Moore’s Got The Green Grass in 1999 on his own Hablador Records underscored his musical independence in both his creativity and career. With each successive release — 2000’s And All The Colors… (Koch International), the live Via Satellite on Hablador the following year and Luminaria (Yep Roc Records) — Moore’s devotion to genuine musical artistry flourished into highly satisfying and often stunning results.
It’s not just following his muse and aspiring to the highest creative standards set by others that was instilled in Moore all but from birth, but also a sense of artistic fluidity. “One of the things I always loved about the Beatles is that they were incredibly varied and their albums were all over the place. That to me is what great pop music is about,” Moore explains. “I want my records to be all over the place. I think that is far more interesting and honest and more in line with being a human being.
“I always like that in other artists: When you take something for granted about someone and they destroy the very core of what you thought they were about with something equally fascinating and appealing,” Moore observes. “You’ve got to try it from a different angle. You’ve got to see where you can go and switch stuff up. For me that’s really the joy of it all.”
On To Be Loved, Moore doesn’t just continue to create outside the box — or any boxes, really — but also delved inside the boxes of musical recording to better understand and achieve his artistic goals and spark further creative and intellectual growth. Much of the album was recorded at his home studio, equipped with outboard gear like microphones, preamps and compressors that he built himself. “It’s been really inspiring to me because it’s like getting behind the Wizard of Oz’s curtain and understanding the process better and the physics of sound. I really got into it on this record. A lot of this record to me is exploring the sonic aspects of recording and how to make these different sounds that I have always loved.”
At the same time, there’s an additional payback to learning electronics and engineering by doing it. “The nature of something like electronics or anything else that challenges your mind is that it develops your brain in a way that stimulates different neural pathways. It basically reroutes your brain. It’s harder when you get older, but you can do it. That’s basically what my plan was and I feel like it’s happening.”
Then again, it’s been happening for Moore all along. He enjoys a strong following as a live performer, touring both with his band Action Company and smaller configurations thereof. He continues to find sustenance in the music that he knows, discovers and also is around him: for instance, touring with another once young soul rebel Paul Weller and keeping his six-string gun for hire with punk turned roots music insurgent Jon Langford — both, like Moore, are artists marked by wide-ranging and fluid creativity.
“To me, it’s all about the journey,” Moore concludes. “Yeah, I go through a lot of changes. But I think that if I keep doing this and keep changing all the time, hopefully I will enjoy a fan base that will be upset if I don’t change.” Because he who is not busy… you get the point, right?
-Rob Patterson
Caroline
Ian Moore Lyrics
Jump to: Overall Meaning ↴ Line by Line Meaning ↴
From thick and broken clouds
And washed out all the names
Of tired little towns
Summer's gone away
Just the California coast
Hey, I don't mind
But I cannot be still
It's coursing through my veins
Songs that never live
The songs that stay the same
And it turned around at you
And they knocked you off your feet
Yeah, the world was on your back
And you wouldn't carry that weight
Oh, and Caroline, you should
Have captured their hearts
While you still could
But you threw it away
Did you really think
That you'd live forever, Caroline?
And one by one they fell
Barely clinging to their names
Oh, technology overflowing
Flowing from their brains
Nobody knew the words
Nobody knew to sing
And nobody had the time
To talk about it anyway
Oh, and Caroline, you should
Have captured their hearts
While you still could
But you threw it away
Did you really think
That you'd live forever, Caroline?
And they all just sold you down the line
And you're looking for forgiveness
Every time you shut your eyes
Oh, but you're faded
And old and they'll never tell you
Oh, and Caroline, you should
Have captured their hearts
While you still could
But you threw it away
Did you really think
That you'd live forever?
Caroline, you should
Have captured their hearts
While you still could
But you threw it away
Did you really think
That you'd live forever?
Caroline, Caroline, Caroline
You should just throw it away
Did you really think
That you'd live forever?
Forever, forever
The song "Caroline" by Ian Moore is a poignant reflection on the passage of time, the fleeting nature of fame and the importance of grabbing the opportunities that life presents. The songwriter paints a vivid picture of a once-promising star who failed to seize her chance and now watches as her dreams crumble around her. The first verse sets the stage, as Moore describes how the rains have come and washed away the names of small towns, symbolizing the impermanence of life. The singer of the song, however, is not content to sit still; she is driven by a restless creativity that manifests itself in the form of songs "that never live," haunting melodies that never quite find their audience. The chorus is a direct address to Caroline, urging her to take control of her own destiny and make her mark while she can. The refrain of the song - "Did you really think that you'd live forever?" - serves as a reminder of the transience of life and the importance of seizing opportunities when they arise.
The second verse of the song presents a bleak portrait of a society that has lost its connection to the music and culture of the past. The people are overwhelmed by technology and lack the time or inclination to appreciate the beauty of art or music. Once again, Caroline is called upon to embody the best of humanity and capture the hearts of the people with her music. The final verse is a final plea for Caroline to take control of her life and make the most of the time she has left. The haunting melody that runs through the song underscores the sense of melancholy and loss that permeates the lyrics.
Overall, "Caroline" is a song that speaks to the human condition and the struggle to find meaning and purpose in life. It is a reminder that we are all mortal and that the decisions we make today will shape our future. The song is a call to action, urging us to make the most of our time on this planet and leave our mark on the world.
Line by Line Meaning
And then the rains they came
Heavy rains fall from a sky full of clouds
From thick and broken clouds
The clouds are dense and irregularly shaped
And washed out all the names
The rain erases the names of places
Of tired little towns
The towns are small and weary
Summer's gone away
The season of summer has ended
Just the California coast
Only the coastal region of California remains
Hey, I don't mind
The singer is not bothered by this
I never saw around much anyway
The artist did not often travel around
But I cannot be still
The artist is unable to remain motionless
It's coursing through my veins
A strong feeling is moving through the artist's body
Songs that never live
Songs that are not enduring or memorable
The songs that stay the same
Songs that do not change or grow over time
And it turned around at you
Something unexpected happened to you
And they knocked you off your feet
The event was powerful and surprising
Yeah, the world was on your back
You carried the weight of the world on your shoulders
And you wouldn't carry that weight
You refused to bear that burden any longer
Oh, and Caroline, you should
The artist is addressing someone named Caroline
Have captured their hearts
You should have won people over with your charm or talent
While you still could
Before it was too late
But you threw it away
You squandered your opportunity
Did you really think
The artist is questioning Caroline's actions
That you'd live forever, Caroline?
The artist doubts that Caroline will be remembered forever
And one by one they fell
People began to lose their way
Barely clinging to their names
They struggled to hold on to their sense of self
Oh, technology overflowing
Technology is abundant and overwhelming
Flowing from their brains
Technology is a product of their minds
Nobody knew the words
No one understood what was happening
Nobody knew to sing
No one knew how to express their feelings
And nobody had the time
People were too busy to discuss their problems
To talk about it anyway
It was difficult to bring up these issues
And they all just sold you down the line
People betrayed you for their own gain
And you're looking for forgiveness
You want to be pardoned for your mistakes
Every time you shut your eyes
You are constantly reminded of your regrets
Oh, but you're faded
You are past your prime
And old and they'll never tell you
People will not be honest with you about your abilities
You should just throw it away
You should give up on your dreams
Did you really think
The singer is still questioning Caroline's choices
That you'd live forever?
The singer doubts that Caroline will be remembered forever
Forever, forever
A repetition of the idea with emphasis
Lyrics © O/B/O APRA AMCOS
Written by: M. LEONTOVICH, PETER J. WILHOUSKY
Lyrics Licensed & Provided by LyricFind
13RoxyD
beautiful!!!! thank you! wish more people were aware of him and all his genius!!!
hippydippy
simply beautiful.
bwt167
Nothing like a Guild guitar - Nice one Ian.
CELL PHONE
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Lawrence D
Was there at this taping...great show
Amy Berry
Me as well. Kinda changed my life, to be honest.❤
texasredneckhippy
i came to all your shows at the Iron Horse Saloon, we miss you in texas!!