By TOM NETHERLAND FOR BRISTOL NOW
Dallas Moore sings like a gnarly Harley-Davidson roars down the road.
Grit and growl will accompany Moore when he makes his debut in the Birthplace of Country Music.
Moore, a throwback to the 1970s outlaw country movement, will appear Saturday, Sept. 10, during the 21st Bristol Rhythm & Roots Reunion.
“This year, the stars finally lined up,” said Moore by phone from his home in Blue Jay, Ohio. “We’re honored to get to play that hallowed event.”
Fiercely independent, Moore has never followed musical trends or the mainstream. His brand of country music hearkens to such long-haired and bearded trendsetters as Willie Nelson, Waylon Jennings and David Allan Coe. They bucked Nashville. Moore’s in the same saddle, kicking to his own tune.
“‘Blue Jean Jesus’ was a real person,” Moore said. “He passed away years ago. He used to hang around in the streets, preaching.” He was a long-haired, wild-looking street corner preacher. Bible in hand, he tried as best he could to spread the gospel as he knew it.
“Everybody in town called him Weird Harold,” Moore said. “The song is 100% true. My friend Jack Schitt, who’s been on ‘Sons of Anarchy,’ played Blue Jean Jesus in the video. We kind of brought him back to life in that song.”
Find the song “Blue Jean Jesus” on Moore’s latest album, “The Rain.” Recorded in Nashville, the record was produced by Dean Miller, son of the late country legend Roger Miller.
“I’ll tell you what, this is the first album I’ve written in two-and-a-half weeks, period,” Moore said. “Like everybody else, we shut down in March 2020. We were in Texas. We came back here (to Ohio). I do a lot of writing on my old Road King, and I had a lot of time to ride that old bike.”
When Moore performs at Rhythm & Roots, he will do so on the Piedmont Stage on Piedmont Avenue. That’s where country music’s hillbilly Shakespeare, Hank Williams, took his widely fabled last ride on the night of Dec. 31, 1952.
“We recorded a live album at Herzog Studio in Cincinnati that we called ‘Hank to Thank,’” Moore said.
The album was released in 2011. Hank Williams recorded at Herzog in 1948 and again in 1949.
“We recorded ‘I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry’ in the same spot where Hank recorded it at Herzog,” Moore said. “It was 61 years to the day since Hank recorded there.”
Though he’s not quite sure what he will sing in Bristol, Moore said to look for his renditions of Hoyt Axton’s “Della and the Dealer” as well as Jimmy Martin’s “Freeborn Man.” Beyond that, it’s anyone’s guess. His longtime fans, most attracted to Moore’s music through word of mouth, know to expect the unexpected.
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