Justin Moore was in Nashville Wednesday for the Country Music Association Awards.

“It’ll be my first time to go to the show. I’m very, very excited,” he said. “As a kid, I grew up watching this thing every year, and now to be called a peer of these guys is just unbelievable.”

The 25-year-old’s self-titled debut came out in August, and he’s been on the charts with the hits “Small Town USA” and “Backwoods.”

Justin Moore

“Fans, radio and everybody in the industry want to know who folks are as artists, singers and songwriters,” Moore said during a phone interview. “I think it’s important for fans, too, before they pay 15 bucks for a ticket to the show or who own the album to know who you are as a person as well; I think that matters to them, and I think we did a pretty good job on the album as well, putting songs on there where people get to know me, good, bad or ugly.

“ ‘Small Town USA’ is a prime example of that, and I think ‘Backwoods’ just drives that point home even more.”

Moore grew up in Poyen, Ark., population about 300.

“I moved to Nashville seven years ago, and I believe ‘Small Town USA’ was the second song I wrote when I moved,” he recalled. “When the label wanted to put it out as a single, I thought I don’t know if enough different types of people are going to be able to relate to this song; I thought the only people who would relate to it would be people who grew up in a town as tiny as mine.

“Thank goodness I was wrong. It’s been a huge record for us. It’s just unreal to me to say we have a No. 1 record. That record’s changed my year, my career and it’s changed my life.”

Moore will headline a Nov. 20 show at Erie Street Theater, 237 S. Erie St. Tickets are $18 and $15 for the 8 p.m. concert. Rodney Parker and Liberty Beach will open.

The singer-songwriter’s breakthrough came in 2008 with the wisecracking “Back That Thing Up.” Thanks to a contest sponsored by the Valory Music Co., fans voted to include the single on the disc.

“[The contest] came from me going into the label going, ‘This has got to make the record,’ and three days later going, ‘That’s going to make the record,’ bringing in song after song, and they went, ‘Dude, we’re not putting a box set out for your first album.’ So they came up with this promotion, and what we did was put up two songs each week for the last 10 weeks last year, and had the fans vote on what they like best,” Moore said. “And I thought, what’s cooler than allowing the fans to have a hand in making a record, you know, they’re the ones out there spending their hard-earned money on it, may as well give them what they want, and I think they did a great job. I’m very, very proud of it.”

Tags: Justin Moore

This entry was posted on Thursday, November 12th, 2009 at 8:32 pm and is filed under Arts and Life, In Concert.
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