CLEVELAND, Ohio — Justin Moore grew up in an Arkansas town that to this day has slightly more than 300 people within its “city” limits.
You never understood the phrase “everybody knows everybody” and — more important — all your “bidnes” — until you’ve lived it in a town like that. Even so, it wasn’t something Moore was willing to give up.
“When I moved to Nashville, I was 18 years old,” said the country singer-songwriter who headlines a show at Cleveland State University’s Wolstein Center on Saturday, Feb. 29. “It was never my intention to stay away from home. I was a homebody, and I enjoyed where I grew up.”
For the record, Moore was calling from that same tiny town of Poyen, Arkansas, where he and his wife, Kate, live and are raising their family of three girls and a boy.
“My goal was to have some success, but once I had a family, I wanted to raise them around their grandparents and hang around my buddies from home,” said Moore. So when the first daughter, Ella, was born 10 years ago, seven years into his career, the family picked up stakes and headed back to Poyen.
“We moved back to Arkansas where I’m from, and the kids go to school where I went to school,” he said. “When my oldest daughter was in first grade, she had MY first-grade teacher as her teacher.”
Uh-oh. This is where that “everybody knows everybody” can get dangerous. What about dad’s misdeeds as a youngster? This is a guy, after all, who wrote songs called “Why We Drink,” “You Look Like I Need a Drink” and “I Could Kick Your Ass” alongside softer tunes “Bait a Hook,” “If Heaven Wasn’t So Far Away” and “Small Town USA.”
“Thing is, I didn’t become a punk until I became an adult,” said a laughing Moore, noting that he wasn’t worried about any youthful indiscretions that might come back to haunt him. “I was a good kid and a good student.”
And clearly, he was also fairly confident. You don’t leave a town like Poyen for the big city, for THE Music City, when you’re just out of high school unless you believe it’s going to work out.
“I really didn’t have [a Plan B],” said Moore. “Looking back on it, it was kind of scary to think about it, but I always felt like if I had a Plan B, that meant I was OK with Plan A failing. I just always had this sense about me that it was going to work out.
“It was probably just stupidity and being green as a blade of grass,” he said with a chuckle. “When you’re 18 or 19 years old, you think ‘I’ve got my whole life in front of me. And the other thing that helped in that department is that my parents were really supportive of me.”
How supportive?
“I came home two weeks after starting college and told them I’m going to quit college and be a country music star, and my parents said ‘Go do it while you’re young,’ ” he said.
It’s not like he just picked up a guitar and headed east to Nashville. While he was still in high school, Moore played and sang in his uncle’s Southern rock band, a vibe that permeates his own music, although he does trend a little more to the traditional country sound.
That means Moore paid a lot of dues, playing what musicians call “the animal circuit” — Moose, Elks and Lions lodges, as well as VFW and American Legion halls.
“The animal circuit is necessary to become a good player,” said Moore. “You’ve got to pay your dues. This is not something you can learn in a textbook.
“What we do for a living, you absolutely have to have experience to be the best you can be,” he said.
And it’s an ongoing process, too, even if he’s playing arenas and amphitheaters now, and Moore acknowledges that. It’s all part of the growth process, as a person and as an artist.
“When you’re young and green, you don’t know a whole lot about life, don’t know who you are as a person,” he said.
“I thought I wanted to sell more tickets than George Strait and more albums than Garth Brooks,” Moore said. “Now, after becoming a parent and having done this successfully for 12 or 13 years, I’m just trying to be the best version of myself that I can be.”
Just a good ol’ boy from tiny Poyen, Arkansas. Population: 290.
PREVIEW
Justin Moore
When: 7 p.m. Saturday, Feb. 29.
Where: Cleveland State University’s Wolstein Center, 2000 Prospect Ave., Cleveland.
Opener: Tracy Lawrence.
Tickets: $39.50 to $59.50, plus fees, at the box office, wolsteincenter.com and csutickets.evenue.net, and by phone at 888-324-5849.
Also by Chuck Yarborough:
Rock Hall Foundation adds 5 board members, including Pharrell Williams
Tri-C JazzFest reveals lineup for 2020 incarnation
Rolling Stones FirstEnergy Stadium gig points to a resurgence in Cleveland’s musical prominence