McCoy Moore may be new to most people, but he’s about to take the country music world by storm! Growing up, the 23-year-old rising country artist was raised in Lakeland, Florida. He spent the majority of his education homeschooled, which allowed him to take vocal lessons early on. But it was a chance encounter with Luke Combs that truly found him catching the music bug.
In an interview with Music Mayhem, Moore opened up about that defining moment, saying, “I went home that night, and that was the night that I picked up the guitar for the first time and learned a G chord.”
Moore’s mother was the one who bought the tickets to the Luke Combs’ concert, in addition to a meet-and-greet. After meeting Combs face to face, Moore had no idea that what would happen next would change his life.

Combs, who was at the time opening up for Brantley Gilbert and Tyler Farr and celebrating his first No. 1 hit, “Hurricane” from his debut album This One’s For You, treated fans to his set-list, and then took a second to shine the light on Moore because he realized the young, budding artist reminded him of himself.
“He walked off-stage, and he brought out his [This One’s For You] CD and was like, you know, ‘I was in my meet and greet earlier, and I met this kid. I remember how it was when I was starting out, and I just saw a lot of myself in him,” Moore recalled of his exchange with Combs. “He points at the camera. I was behind an iPhone 8, so I’m videoing this whole thing. And he points at [my] camera phone.”
Not long after that, Moore was ushered to the stage, where Combs handed him the CD, and also told him to “Keep chasing your dreams, buddy.”
“I looked at the CD, and it said, ‘I went to Target and bought this with my own money today,’ and it had the date on it, and he signed it. And at this point, dude, I’m a basket case, just losing it,” Moore recalled of the defining moment.
But the excitement didn’t stop there. Moore says his mother somehow got the two of them backstage. And, with Combs assistance, they headed to the tour bus, where they became real-life friends.
“We went to the back of the bus, literally sat there for like an hour and a half, and he told me everything about his life from start to however old he was then. And I told him everything about me, and we just got to know each other,” Moore recalled fondly. “At the end of it, he’s like, ‘Man, I really want to keep up with you. Here’s my number.’ And he gave me his number that night and then gave me a bunch of cool stuff. I still have it all. It’s in Florida, somewhere in a drawer.”

Moore says the interaction he had with Combs provided him with a pivotal moment, where “I went home and that was the night that I was like, ‘I’m going to learn how to do this…. I’m going to suck so bad at this until I don’t suck anymore.”
And the best part is, Moore and Combs still continue to check in with each other to this day. But that’s not the only sign that Moore has received to chase his dream of pursuing a career in country music. While honing his craft in The Sunshine State, he says he met Josh Phillips, one of the writers of Cody Johnson’s chart-topping hit, “Dirt Cheap.”
“We actually met while playing Call of Duty, believe it or not,” Moore laughed, before sharing that he began making trips to Nashville to get into the prestigious songwriting circles and meet with some of the most elite tunesmiths. “He was super generous… I would just make trips up [to Nashville] every month or so, crash on couches, write terrible songs, and just do my best, really.”
Moore, who has written well over 140 songs thus far, officially made the move to Nashville, Tennessee, in 2020 at 19 years old. He captured his decision to pack up his bags, with a photo uploaded to Instagram.
He wrote, “Well, today is a bittersweet one. Leaving all you’ve ever known to chase a dream is a scary thing, but you’ll never know until you try. Thank y’all for giving me this opportunity. Love you always Lakeland, see ya soon Nashville.”
“I knew very shortly after I got [to Nashville] that I made the right decision because I knew that the friends that I had in Florida — that were my real friends and my true buddies — they were going to talk to me and stick around, and we’d be able to pick up where we left off when I moved,” Moore shared.
And, while some might consider his choice to be somewhat of a quick decision, Moore received yet another sign that he was doing the right thing. In fact, he was surprised by an out-of-the-blue message containing encouraging words from country star Jake Owen, who also has a management office and label in Nashville called Good Company Entertainment Records.
“I’m looking at my phone and I get a DM from Jake, and it’s like, ‘Hey man, what’s your number?’ And so I sent him my number and dude, two seconds flat. I’m sitting there, and my phone is on my center console, and it just rings, and it says Jake Owen. And my mom’s like, ‘What?’ And so I pick up the phone, and I’m like, ‘Hello?’ He’s like, ‘Hey, is this McCoy?’ And I’m like, ‘Yeah.’ And he goes, ‘Man, I’ve been following you for a while, and I just want to let you know, this is going to be the best decision of your life. You need to be here,”’ Moore explained. “He had no reason to do that. I mean, I really did not have anything going [and] I was just trying to figure it out.”
“I don’t know how these things have happened to me like that. It’s crazy, honestly,” Moore, who also once crossed paths with Alan Jackson on Lake Burton in Georgia, shares. “It’s like a once in a lifetime opportunity.”

Despite receiving unexpected support from some of country music’s biggest stars, Moore faced a few challenges during his time in Music City. Not only was he not old enough to perform or let alone be in bars to network with other artists and musicians upon making his move, but he ended up moving to Nashville during the 2020 world health crisis.
“In two weeks I packed all my stuff up, my whole 19 years of living in Florida in my truck and a trailer, and me and my mom drove up here,” he explains. “I got here in July of 2020 in the heart of COVID-19. I was 19, so I couldn’t go out with everybody, to do the whole thing. So I didn’t have any way to meet people unless it was like I go, and I play around and then I leave. That’s it. So I did that for a little while.”
Moore, who has performed at iconic Nashville songwriting locations, including the Bluebird Café, The Listening Room Café, as well as took the stage as part of a Whiskey Jam lineup, strengthened his songwriting arm, and ended up releasing songs independently, landing cuts on projects for artists like Shane Profitt and Bryce Mauldin for songs, “I Am Who I Am” and “Life’s A Beach” and “I Need You.”
“About a year into me being in town, Jake [Owen] actually called me, and he was like, ‘Hey, man, come to the office,’” Moore shares.
Through Owen and a friend named Autumn Ledgin, Moore got connected with an industry professional named Travis Gordon. He says the two of them built a solid business relationship, adding that “We went around to almost everybody in town, especially him. He was throwing my name around in rooms that he probably didn’t need to, probably didn’t have to.”
In the summer of 2023, Moore signed to SMACKSONGS, in partnership with Gordon’s Worktape Music for publishing. Since then, he has seen his career change swiftly.
“I saw my calendar shift from like, ‘Okay, I don’t have to book this anymore. They strategically put me in rooms with this person that has written with this person a lot. So they’ll put me with these two guys that know each other really well and get each other in a room. And it’s just stuff like that,” Moore, who credits Tim McGraw, Alan Jackson, Keith Whitley, George Strait and Kenny Chesney as his biggest influences, with Chesney being his primary inspiration as he loves his “coastal” sound.
He then detailed how some of his songwriting experiences in Music City have become full-circle moments as he is writing with tunesmiths who have written the soundtrack to his childhood.
“I wrote with Scooter Caruso the other day, and we were talking about, he wrote a song called ‘Anything but Mine’ for Kenny Chesney, which is wild, [and] I remember being six years old, waking up with the video of that playing on CMT. I can still picture it, and it’s like I make it a point to tell those people, thank you, [and] I met a bunch of people that I’ve looked up to since moving to Nashville and getting in these writer’s rounds,” he explained.
He continued, “Oh, I also wrote with Casey Beathard the other day, and ‘No Shoes, No Shirt, No Problem,’ was like, I had the little shell necklace [and] I had the whole nine yards when I was a kid. That was my thing. And it was just like, ‘Dude, if I could tell 6-year-old McCoy that he would be doing this right now, I mean, you just can’t make it up. It’s like, golly. It’s wild.”
Now, managed by Tracker at TRACK MGMT (Manager of HARDY, Jake Worthington and more), Moore is ready to step out of the songwriter role and enter into the singer/songwriter spotlight as an artist, preparing for the release of his debut single, “Something To You,” which will appear on his yet-to-be announced debut project.
“I’m going to keep writing songs. I’ve made it very clear to everybody that I am not… yes, I am an artist, but at the core like I care about songs over everything and songs come first in my mind,” Moore added. ”So I’ve made it a point to continue to fill up my schedule with writes as much as I can and do that.”
While he hasn’t yet dropped his debut single (readers can look for that story in the coming days), McCoy Moore is primed to make waves on country radio with his charisma, southern charm, and vocals reminscent of Blake Shelton.
The rising country star, who has an exclusive booking and artist development deal with The Neal Agency, says that looking ahead toward the future, he hopes to one day make his Grand Ole Opry debut and has plans to embark on a tour and hit the festival circuit this summer.
“So I’m going to hit the road as much as I possibly can, as much as they’ll let me, and we talked about the Opry, that would be something that I would absolutely love to do. I’m looking so forward to the festivals this summer and just meeting people and hearing stories and meeting the people in these tiny towns all across the U.S. and the world, really,” he said. ”But I genuinely, I think that I feed off of interaction with people. And that is the thing that I look forward to the most is just hitting the road and meeting people all across everywhere, really. But yeah, those are my goals. Just keep writing songs that mean something and meet everybody I can’t.”

McCoy Moore’s debut single, “Something To You,” arrives on Friday, February 7. To keep up with Moore, follow him on Facebook, Instagram and TikTok.