Americana Roots: Nathan Moore

Americana Roots highlights the freshest and most original Americana and bluegrass from across the pond in the US. It covers everything from brand-new, just out of the box bands, to cult favourites, to established acts who have yet to reach the UK’s shores. Nathan Moore is a  prolific poet, wordsmith, and powerful songwriter whose storyteller’s eye reflects the time and turmoil in our everyday lives.

Name: Nathan Moore.

For Fans Of: Tom Waits, Todd Snider, Ramblin’ Jack Elliot.

Hometown: Staunton, Virginia, USA.

Website: https://nathansland.com/

Discography:  ‘Single Wide’ (1999), ‘Percy Boyd’s Lost Tracks’ (2002), ‘Live at the Blackfriars Playhouse’ (2002), ‘Sad Songs Make Me Happy’ (2002), ‘Other Wise Blue Skies’ (2003), ‘Cans ‘n’ Can’ts’ (2003), ‘In His Own Worlds’ (2007), ‘You Yeah Smokin’ Hot’ (2008), ‘Folk Singer’ (EP) (2009), ‘Dear Puppeteer’ (2011), ‘Hippy Fiasco Rides Again’ (2013), ‘Dandelion Killers’ (2014), ‘Enough About Me’ (2015), ‘Goodbye America’ (2016), ‘The Whole Other’ (2017)

Background:  Singer/ Songwriter Nathan Moore draws a deep and instant connection to the great folk-singers from the past with his sharp, introspective lyrics, but he says he actually feels a deeper kinship to the poets he admired growing up.  He is a word man, no doubt about it.  As with those folk-singers and poets before him, Moore sings about the human experience.  And no matter whether it is his hard-boiled scathing look at our current economic situation, troubled political atmosphere, or a simple love song, Moore delivers his message with poetic words, told with an old-school troubadour’s soul.  It is a process that he finds inescapable, but at the same time defining who he is, “Being a songwriter is not something you do for a few minutes a day.  It is the way you see the world constantly.  My eyes and ears are noticing the way people say something.  It is the process through which I see the world and process the world.  Even when I sleep it is just the way I dream.”

Over his lengthy career, the winner of the prestigious Telluride Troubadour Award in 2009 writes music that reflects a deep attention to the world delivered with words that weld a mighty power.  Moore is a man constantly in motion, and has been so since first starting out in 1993 with his first band, ThaMuseMeant, who released seven albums between 1995 and 2006.  Never one to sit still, Moore, in addition to his prolific solo work  has also logged time with Surprise Me Mr. Davis, a super-group collaboration with Marco Benevento and Brad Barr, Marc Friedman, and Andrew Barr from The Slip.

Moore has a timeless sound that falls easily into place next to those hollowed names that came before him – Seeger, Havens, and Dylan.  For Moore that place in the history of wordsmiths is important, “When I read Rimbaud or Bukowski, or listen to Woody Guthrie or Hank Williams, I see them all in this long continuum of art and craft that has been going on since we first came up with language and I have always felt an intense relationship and lineage to that history.”

What He Does Live: