In 1996, Moorer was asked to perform on an Austin City Limits memorial show for singer-songwriter Walter Hyatt, who had been a friend of Moorer and Primm. (Hyatt’s “Tell Me Baby” is the lone cover on Alabama Song.) The following year she made her first recorded appearance, singing harmony throughout Lonesome Bob’s Things Fall Apart album for Checkered Past Records. Playing Emmylou to Bob’s Gram, Moorer added the proper amount of sweet sadness to some already bleak tunes such as “Waltzing On The Titanic”, “Different Shades Of Gray” and especially the duet “The Plans We Made”, which eerily recounts a man’s slaying of his wife.
A little later, a mutual friend introduced Moorer to producer-guitarist Kenny Greenberg (Ashley Cleveland, Joan Baez); before long he was helping Moorer and Primm produce demos. Agent Bobby Cudd at Monterey Artists took her to MCA Nashville president Tony Brown. As Moorer explains, “We started having talks, and they were eying me, trying to figure me out. They finally said, ‘Shit, here’s the money; go do your thing.'”
Thus did Moorer gain what many major-label artists sacrifice: artistic freedom. “Tony [Brown] is an angel because he totally let me do what I wanted to do. He let me cut my own songs. That is a huge thing because most people’s first records [in Nashville] aren’t made up of their own songs. He believed in me from the start.”
But Brown had a bonus for Moorer. When he signed her, he also forwarded several of her songs to Robert Redford’s camp, who were searching for a showcase number for The Horse Whisperer. After considering “Call My Name”, they opted for “A Soft Place To Fall”. Moorer was flown out to Montana to perform the tune for the film, putting her in the odd position of appearing in a major movie months before the release of her debut album.
However, rubbing elbows with the honchos of Music City and Hollywood haven’t altered her prime directive: to get the music right on Alabama Song. “I think we represented the songs,” she says. “That’s something that’s important to me, and it’s important to all three of us [Primm and Greenberg] — representing the songs the best way we could, and getting good sounds and good vocals. You know, putting ’em down and letting ’em breathe. Letting ’em be lean and mean, letting the songs stand up. We listened to old Merle Haggard records, which are some of the most sparse things in the world. And old Emmylou — I love that stuff!
“For me to sing something, I think it has to…mean something,” Moorer insists. “If it’s all [just about] the hook, then forget it! What’s the point? I can’t really relate to that. So I guess that’s where Butch and I come from when we write.
“Talking about songwriting is a strange thing. It’s like acting out a painting. They’re all about me; they’re all about something else too. They come out of the thin air. The whole writing process is new to me. I’ve been singing since I was three years old; I’ve been writing for four years.”
Despite the fact that being on a Nashville major label means she’ll be up against slick productions by the likes of Shania Twain and Faith Hill, Moorer downplays the importance of commercial thinking. “If you think about that stuff, it can tend to worry you. But I seriously try not to,” she says. “I think if you go about making records to just get played on the radio, it’s just fundamentally wrong. I wouldn’t even know how to begin to do that, because that to me would be just kind of…not real. At the risk of sounding like I don’t care about that stuff — and that’s not true, ’cause I do, and I want to be successful — I think success is something different for everybody. Some people would consider 35 #1 hits success. For me, success at this point in my life is doing something that means something to me, and something that’s true and comes from somewhere that has a spirit about it.
“I think a lot of times Nashville gets slagged for being totally about commerce, and that’s not always the case. There are plenty of people here that care just as much about the music as the people in Austin do. You’ve got Lonesome Bob, you’ve got Tim Carroll. You’ve got Duane Jarvis, Lucinda, Steve Earle, Buddy Miller, Julie Miller — there’s a ton of great stuff coming out of this town.”
So is Moorer carrying the banner for the country underground? “There’s something about that whole indie spirit that I relate to,” she allows. “I don’t know, I don’t lump myself in with anybody. I think I’m just as mainstream as anything. I don’t think I’m alternative country; I don’t think I’m new country; I don’t think I’m contemporary country; I don’t know what it is. To me it’s just country music, and whatever anybody wants to call it, I don’t care. I’m a country singer; I couldn’t change it if I tried.”
Regardless of categories, Moorer is already becoming a player in the high-stakes country game. During the recording of Alabama Song, Trisha Yearwood heard Moorer’s R&B-tinged “Bring Me All Your Loving” (which didn’t end up on Moorer’s album) and made it a highlight of her new release Where Your Road Leads. “We were so proud of that,” says Moorer, “because Trisha is known for her taste in songs. I wasn’t sure it would fit on our record, because we were going for a more traditional sound.”
At this point, Moorer has everything working. She’s got the big label. She got’s enough great songs to give some away. Hell, she’s even got Robert Redford’s phone number. “I feel great,” she says unnecessarily. “I feel very proud of my record. Not because I think it’s great, but because it’s a true representation of what I like and the writing that I’ve done and the people I’ve done it with. It’s honest. I’m just happy that I get to do this as long as it lasts. I’m just going to try and enjoy it.”
