Kip Moore

“I’ve always felt different, like when other people see blue, I see red,” says singer/songwriter Kip Moore, explaining the thoughtful headspace behind his fourth studio album Wild World. But in times like these – when there’s no denying the world is indeed a wild one – it seems like, perhaps, Moore was right all along.

A revelatory collection written as Moore traveled the globe like a self-described lone wolf, it aims to make sense of a world battling nothing short of an identity crisis. Maui, Costa Rica, Australia, Scotland and beyond became the setting for Moore’s searching, and slowly, through isolation and nature, a simple peace emerged. It wasn’t the first time this blue-collar poet looked within for inspiration, but it’s become the clearest expression of the wisdom he found. And his timing couldn’t be better.

“Music is the one thing where I really try to unveil where I’m at mentally, where my soul is,” the MCA Nashville troubadour explains. “As you get older, you start thinking about bigger concepts and where you fit in the grand scheme of this whole thing, and I’ve always lived my life simple. But the more I’ve lived, the more I understand that all this stuff we crave and seek, I see how much of life is smoke and mirrors. When I strip it down to the bare essentials, that’s when I’m the most happy.”

This hasn’t always been Moore’s approach. He splashed into the mainstream with the double-Platinum “Somethin’ ‘Bout a Truck” in 2012, then followed up with three more best selling #1s (“Hey Pretty Girl,” “Beer Money” and “More Girls Like You”), a trio of ambitious, critically acclaimed albums and two gritty EPs. He toured the world headlining his own shows, earning acclaim and a fierce following as an all-in performer in each setting. But the Georgia native also found another side to success – the long stretches away, physical and emotional fatigue and the never-ending stress of staying “relevant.”

If he’s honest, Moore knows he succumbed to that pressure – it’s the beating pulse of modern life, after all. But Wild World finds him learning to leave it behind, and open his heart to a new future.

“I don’t think you ever find the true purpose of life, but I’m always searching for that peace and joy of what God means to me and the whole spectrum of where my place is,” he says. “I think with this record, you really get a birds eye view of that.”

Host or Publisher Sweetland Amphitheatre