Ohioan by way of Texas bringing road show back for Columbus visit
Dallas Moore took life easier in 2019, saying that he “actually slowed down.”
Well, sort of. Because to Moore, slowing down means performing a mere 315 shows. In 2018, he did 337.
His 2020 marathon starts at Woodlands Tavern on Friday. He performs a couple of shows a year there, nearly always with The Hellroys.
“It’s always a good time when we come to town and team up with our buddies,” Moore said.
These days, Moore ricochets between his home in the community of Blue Jay, Ohio, northwest of Cincinnati, and the outskirts of San Antonio.
“One of my songs, ‘Texohio,’ talks about that,” he said.
Moore grew up in the Cincinnati suburb of Norwood, with parents who had moved there from Kentucky, but he always held Texas dear.
“It almost seemed like this mythical place. Then, 11 or 12 years ago, we started playing music down there for the first time.”
Moore and his band are down in Texas at least once a month, for anywhere from three to 15 days.
That created some problems of its own.
“It cost us so much to buy hotel rooms for the entire band when we were doing so many gigs down there,” he said.
Luckily, Moore's best friend, Mike Kelly, provided a solution.
“He was kind enough to open up his home, which we refer to as the Honky Tonk Hacienda,” Moore said.
Being in Texas also has allowed for extra opportunities.
“We started playing on the West Coast, and it’s a lot easier to get there from Texas,” he noted.
Moore got started on the guitar when he was in high school, saying “I learned three chords, started writing songs, and I was booking gigs.”
After high school, he got a scholarship to Northern Kentucky University to
Performing Friday at Woodlands Tavern: Dallas Moore
study jazz and classical guitar.
“The interesting thing that I took away from it was the similarities in different styles of music,” he said. “In the day, I was studying Bach and Beethoven, and at night, I’d have my gigs in honky tonks.”
Although Moore started out playing outlaw country music, his sound has been evolving. Changes in his life brought about changes in
his music, most of which he writes himself. He and his wife had a daughter, who is now 2, and then both of his parents became ill and died within six weeks of each other.
“The writing that I did was reflective of that,” he said.
The result was his latest album, “Tryin' to Be a Blessing,” which includes tributes to family life as well as to his parents.
“I have a song called ‘Mama & Daddy,’ which is a true story about my mom and dad, that I had written years ago, but I wanted to bring it back because I knew after they passed away that I wanted to dedicate this album to them.”
The album also includes several covers, among which is Hoyt Axton’s “Della and the Dealer.”
“I’ve loved that song ever since I was a little kid,” Moore said. “We did our own version of it in the studio, and it was recorded in one take. We had a funk groove, almost like Jerry Reed meets Waylon Jennings.”
They also covered the Creedence Clearwater Revival song “Lodi.”
“We were making a lot of trips back and forth between Bakersfield and Sacramento. We would pass the Lodi exit, and the song would pop into my head. It’s not a song that I wrote, but I feel like I’ve lived that song a million times over and probably many more to come.”