Justin Moore has released over a dozen No. 1 hits on country radio, dropped nearly 10 albums, and has won a handful of awards throughout his music career. But, to him, he hasn’t reached his full potential as a country artist. And, to him, that’s okay.
There was once a time when Moore wanted to be as big a star as George Strait — or even bigger. However, all that changed when he fell in love and began to grow his family.
“I moved to town when I was 18, and I wanted to be George Strait. I wanted to be bigger than anybody, sell more tickets than anybody,” Moore recalled moving to Nashville as a teenager while appearing on an episode of the God’s Country Podcast. “Then I got married, had kids, and my priorities changed.”
In the fall of 2007, Moore tied the knot with his now wife of nearly 20 years, Kate Moore. The married couple are parents to four kids, daughters, Ella Kole, Kennedy Faye, and Rebecca Klein, and a son, Thomas South. With family in the mix, Moore’s priorities shifted, and music was no longer at the top of his mind. “God is number 1 for me, number 2 is my family. It’s more important to me to be a good parent and a good husband than it is to be George Strait,” Moore said of changing direction.
Reassessing his priorities also made Moore look at his lifestyle a little bit differently. And while he hasn’t left country music, he ended up leaving Music City, so that he could raise his kids similarly to how his parents raised him.
“I thought, for me, personally, that would happen back home,” Moore said of his decision to uproot his family to his hometown of Poyen, AR. “I have a lot of great friends here in Nashville. Nashville was good to me. But it just wasn’t home. It just never felt like home. So we moved back home, maybe in 2010, 2011, or something like that… And it’s been great for us. For example, my oldest daughter’s second-grade teacher was my second-grade teacher. That’s just one example of many.”
“I live on the property I grew up on,” he added. “I can hit a pitching wedge to my parent’s house, where I grew up over a pond in a cow pasture.”
For Moore, saying goodbye to Nashville wasn’t difficult because he had always imagined he’d one day return to Poyen. But, in the action of doing so, he had to let go of a few potential career wins.
“[I always wanted to move back home.] So I never bought a house [in Nashville]. I couldn’t make myself do it,” he explained, adding that moving out of the music mecca and pulling back from his artistry “Probably cost me some things in my career — awards, probably tours.”
Moore, who doesn’t attend awards shows anymore, added, “But I don’t give a sh-t to be honest with you because I want my kids, 20 years from now, to go, ‘Dad was here. He was here, and he made us the priority.’”
These days, Moore plays between 75 to 80 shows a year, which may sound like a lot. However, in his early days, he said he would play over 280 shows a year.
“We’ve been off a lot this year,” he said. “I don’t know that we’ve played more than 15 shows this year, so far, but we’re about to get busy again. My wife does not care anything about coming out [to the shows] unless it’s like Chicago or Manhattan,” he added. “She’s like, ‘Where are you going? Nah, I’m good.’ But the kids want to go.”
And while Moore admits that he once wanted to be just like “The King of Country Music,” a part of him is surprised that he has achieved the amount of success he did.
“I don’t know that I saw that happening, as far as the amount of success we’ve had, but for some reason, man, I always thought I would do it,” he said of chasing his dream in his early days. “I don’t know why…but if you told me I would have 20+ top 10 records, and we’ve been doing this for now going on two decades, I don’t know that I would’ve thought that.”
