Justin Moore's "Stray Dog" reflects honest thoughts, gratitude for career longevity

Improbably, a humble small-town Arkansas-living husband, father of four, baseball fanatic and former high-school basketball point guard is also an 11-time Billboard Country Airplay chart-topper.

His seventh studio album, "Stray Dog," out on Friday, May 5, 2023, will be released in 24 hours.

However, instead of coaching his 13-year-old daughter and watching her slug softballs deep into left-field power alleys, Justin Moore's seated on a tour bus (or as he calls it, "a tin can") outside downtown Nashville's Red Door Saloon.

The bus is customized to his liking with animal-print seats, animal bone-styled storage drawer handles, a sawed-off shotgun as an interior front door handle and a University of Arkansas Razorbacks logo on the other side of the bus' front wall.

The bus says more about Moore than he could say in five lifetimes.

Alongside his rustic woodsman and hunting roots in his bus' design offering volumes of thoughts, Moore typically lets his regular touring schedule ("The adrenaline of connecting with a crowd onstage for 90 minutes is the most fun I had since playing sports growing up") and impressively ringing the bell on country radio every 18 months for the past decade speak for him.

He's much more concerned about another issue, though.

"My wife wants me to take out the garbage [more] and I currently have a teenage daughter who I do not get along with," Moore says to The Tennessean.

Balancing the career that's emerged from the expectations he believed possible has perhaps left him staring at his success with a brutally honest, glass-half-empty mindset.

Moore married his wife, Kate, in 2007, the same year he signed with Big Machine Records.

Three years later, he was three No. 1 singles and five million total albums and singles sold into his career.

"My success was never in my vocabulary 16 years ago," the singer-songwriter continues.

"All I ever wanted was to go back home to my grandma's house and over dinner, tell my family and friends that I had a record deal."

His new album addresses how Moore feels after vastly over-shooting his expectations two decades into his career.

Via a press statement, Moore notes that "Stray Dog" as an album title alludes to the battle of falling under the radar of award shows while still being able to sleep nightly -- putting God and family first -- while retaining the support of "kind, gracious and giving pockets" of his career and having pride in that.

On the album's title song (co-written with Paul DiGiovanni, Randy Montana and Jeremy Stover), he sings, "I'm a little more stray dog / A little found, little lost cause / My wins have been hard fought / I don't bark, I just bite / Put my money on the dark horse / Put my faith in the good Lord / Pray to Him I get one more day."

The song's his most autobiographical to date. But, when paired with other album songs like his six-month-old and current top-20 Priscilla Block duet "You, Me, & Whiskey," Riley Green's album collaboration "Everybody Get Along," plus the 50 Cent album title reviving "Get Rich Or Drunk Trying," "Stray Dog" also represents perhaps the best overall material of his career, too.

"I'm different from many guys and gals who do this for a living. I'm just here making albums that reflect what I see when I reluctantly look in the mirror in the morning," he jokes.

Discussing evolving from his 2009 breakout hit "Small Town USA" to sitting in Music City and preparing to headline a concert to punctuate his latest album release causes the mere shred of a veil between the artist and his truths to disappear.

"I'm a regular guy with a cool job and when I get personal [about my life], I make hits."

"I'm proud of my career's longevity. There are so many artists along the journey of my career who aren't making music or on the road anymore," Moore says. "I'm grateful to have the opportunity to still give my fans the good, honest country music that they consistently expect from me."