Lost in the Supermarket: Everywhereman

Musician Ian Moore makes his living from coast to coast and right here at home.

At 42 years old, Ian Moore has spent more than half his life on the road, starting as guitarist in country maverick Joe Ely’s touring band, sharing stages with the Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan and ZZ Top. Since 1993, the Vashon Island resident and Austin, Texas, native has been silencing rooms with his own music, an unexpected blend of classic ’60s pop and the classic country of his hometown. With the shaggy haircut and boyish good looks of Jackson Browne and the agitated enthusiasm (and occasional mouthiness) of a musician half his age, Moore can come off as a brash bad boy. But he’s aware of how fortunate he is to call the road his office, a sage perspective that accompanies two decades of professional experience.

“I’m lucky as shit,” he says by phone on the road after a flurry of shows in Austin. “I have a hard-fucking-core cult following. I’m humbled by how much people reach out to help me. And these are adults—not 20-year-old kids—people in their 30s and 40s who drive across states to sell merchandise for me. Willie Nelson just hooked me up with his guy that handles his social media. People will find a way to put art back in their lives.”

Moore is the kind of guy who knows how. Witness his eclectic resume and tastes: He’s enamored equally with Neutral Milk Hotel and Ice Cube, who directed the video for Moore’s song “Harlem.” He played a beleaguered musician in Billy Bob Thornton’s classic movie  and toured this past fall with soft-rocking top-40 star Jason Mraz as hired-gun guitarist. Around the same time, he spent a multi-night stint in New York City backing up Austin psych-savant legend Roky Erickson.

“The last non-music job I had was when I was 17 at a barbecue restaurant,” Moore says a few days before our phone conversation. He’s sitting on the stairs outside a Ballard recording studio where bandmate and business partner Jason Staczek is recording an album of children’s songs designed to combat playground bullying. This endeavor is a product of Madrona Music, Moore and Staczek’s production company, and the latest way Moore has found to supplement his primary source of income: touring a well-worn route of midsize concert venues. While many independent musicians license their recorded output to film, TV shows and commercials, Madrona creates commissioned material specifically for clients.

“Everything I’ve ever done to this point has been ego driven,” he says. “It’s always about my ideas and my vision. So when you do this, you really have to subjugate that. Everything we do is so different. One day we’ll get a call from [a client] who wants something to sound like Mogwai, and the next we’re doing something like this,” he laughs, referring to the children’s songs.

When Moore relocated from Austin to Vashon with his wife and two sons in 1998, he continued the rigorous touring schedule he’d grown accustomed to but found his usual circuits less lucrative. “Those roads are getting narrower and there are more people on the sides of those roads waiting to jump you,” he says, half-joking. When a shifty agent dropped the ball on a tour a few years ago, Moore was left with a mortgage to pay and no gigs in sight.

After a brief and humbling stint on a construction crew, Moore returned to the road. He’s now accompanied by bar-band-with-a-pop-pulse the Lossy Coils, a collection of veteran players that includes multi-instrumentalist Staczek. Even if Madrona Music provides some semblance of financial security, Moore doesn’t plan on giving up life on the road any time soon, despite age or obstacles.

“There’s been a shift—cultural content has become devalued, and some of that is because music is so accessible,” he says. “I think that manifests in a lot of ways. For one, the very nature of buying records is sort of a dying concept.” Which doesn’t stop him from releasing them. His seventh, , is out now via Seattle label Spark & Shine.

“I’m very romantic about music,” Moore says. “I’m definitely not one of those people who have material goals. I’ve made most of my decisions based solely on the fact that I want to be a working musician.” •

Ian Moore and Lossy Coils play the Sunset Tavern on Saturday, April 23.

Hannah Levin is the host of KEXP’s local show, Audioasis, which airs Saturday nights from 6 to 9 p.m.