As outlaw country singer-songwriter Dallas Moore snakes around the country playing shows before his Monday night gig in Sunset Beach, Sol Records has been dropping singles off his new album Tryin’ to be a Blessing.
The latest released track is already familiar to your ears. It’s a cover of Creedence Clearwater Revival’s “Lodi.”
“We had only recently started playing ‘Lodi’ in our live sets in the last year or so,” Moore explains. “We had just begun playing shows in Bakersfield and Sacramento and would always pass the Lodi exit while we were traveling between the two and one night I just kinda went into an impromptu version of it. We definitely developed a heavy Bakersfield influence with it as our arrangement evolved. I’ve always loved the lyrics and melody to this Fogerty/CCR classic and it felt like a perfect fit for this album. Even though I didn’t write this one I have damn sure lived it.”
Check it out:
“Lodi” followed the release of the single “Everything But You,” which is about Moore’s troubles living and playing on the road while his wife and 2-year old daughter are back home.
“[This] was the last song I wrote for this album,” Moore says. “I played a grueling 337 shows last year and was constantly criss crossing the USA making all the gigs then hauling ass back to my girls who were home at our TEXAHIO Ranch in Southern Ohio. Everything was really taking off with the Mr. Honky Tonk album that we were touring in support of at the time and I felt like I had everything I’ve ever wanted and worked so hard for. Everything but my wife and daughter that is.”
Here is the video for “Everything But You”:
Just like on 2018’s Mr. Honky Tonk, Tryin’ to be a Blessing was produced by fellow country singer-songwriter Dean Miller, son of the legendary Roger Miller (“King of the Road”). The album features a guest appearance by Nashville Honky Tonk singer Tommy Ash on the song “Lovin’ on Backstreets.”
Moore and Miller convened at Nashville’s OmniSound Studios where the producer assembled a group of top Music City musicians, including pedal steel great Steve Hinson, guitarist Guthrie Trapp, drummer Mark Beckett, keyboardist Gordon Mote and fiddler Jenee Fleanor. The session players joined Moore’s own bandmates guitarist Chuck “Lucky Chucky” Morpurgo and harmonica player Mike Owens.
Dallas Moore plays with Sarah Gayle Meech and Rob Leines at the Echo, 1822 W. Sunset Blvd., Los Angeles; eventbrite.com. Sun., 8 p.m. $12; then Moore is at Mother’s Tavern, 16701 Pacific Coast Hwy., Sunset Beach, (562)-592-2111; motherstavernsunsetbeach.com. Mon., 7 p.m. Call for cover charge. 21+.
OC Weekly Editor-in-Chief Matt Coker has been engaging, enraging and entertaining readers of newspapers, magazines and websites for decades. He spent the first 13 years of his career in journalism at daily newspapers before “graduating” to OC Weekly in 1995 as the alternative newsweekly’s first calendar editor.