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Ian Moore still rocking strong on the road! by: Collin Hudson Ian Moore has been a very well known and respected popular fixture in the music scene since he was a teenager in Austin, Texas where he grew up in the late 1980’s. Later, when he was still coming up in the music world, he was known as the young guitar prodigy that played with a hard driving, bluesy, Jimi Hendrix style of shredding that was winning him ever more praise from both the fans and critics alike. He will be performing live in Oklahoma City at The Blue Note on September 23rd, 2023.Ian was raised in a musical family. His parents had him playing the violin at around seven years old. Then he took up the guitar a few years later. He began playing the local music joints with his very unique folky blues rock guitar stylings and quickly began building his loyal fan base. “When I first started performing live, we played at The Black Cat on 6th Street in Austin for about a year and a half or two years,” he said. “Then we went over to the Steamboat. At that point there wasn't a lot going on there except for some cover bands and a couple of heavy metal bands that played there. There was kind of a weird scene there but we wanted to play there because they had a good sound system. The Black Cat had no PA so nobody even knew if I could sing. I basically just yelled and played the guitar.”  Ian continued to hone his chops all around town wherever he could. Then an opportunity opened up for him to perform with Americana country rocker Joe Ely, as his touring guitarist. One opportunity led to another and opened the door for Moore to tour as a solo artist opening for ZZ Top, Bob Dylan and the Rolling Stones on their respective tours. Next came his chance to sign with Capricorn Records. This relationship produced three albums in three years. He released his debut self-titled album in 1993 which created quite a buzz. Over the next two years more albums came; the Live From Austin EP in 1994 which was recorded at Steamboat on 6th Street, then the now legendary “Modernday Folklore” in 1994. Ian also is an actor. He played the character of Randy Horsefeathers in the 1996 hit movie, “Sling Blade.” So I asked him if more acting is in his future. “Ya, I am one of those opportunistic feeders,” he said. I did “Sling Blade” because those guys are all friends of mine,” he said. “And I don’t think any of those guys, including Billy Bob (Thorton), thought it was going to be a hit.” He continued, “Then when it was hit, I got an agent for a while. But doing what I do, just trying to play music is pretty much a full time thing, and it takes up a lot of my energy.” He continued, “I did a Tedx talk about three years ago and I have done some other very interesting things. But most of the time I’m just curating my career, keeping things going; writing, rehearsing and touring. But I do get to do some cool things from time to time, whenever they just happen.” Ian spoke of the legendary venues that were forced to shut down in Austin in the late 1990’s into the 2000’s when the tech boom went to tech bust. He also spoke of the famous Maxwell’s venue in Hoboken, New Jersey that he played many times before it was shut down in 2013. “It was one of the most important venues in America,” he said. Artists like Bruce Springsteen, REM, Nirvana and The Replacements graced the small stage there, among many others. “These venues just get shut down and close for good,” he said, “then they get unceremoniously torn down when they should be treated more like a church.” I asked Ian about performing in Oklahoma and what the fans are like here. “Well I’ve played Oklahoma I bet a hundred times or more over the years between Oklahoma City and Tulsa,” he said. “When I first played Cain’s Ballroom it was right before Larry Shaeffer sold it. He had a production company called Little Wing because he had done some shows with Jimi Hendrix. We became so tight that he gave me a Uni-Vibe pedal that Jimi Hendrix had given him.” He continued, “I was just 23 or 24 years old, and I had already toured with Joe Ely, so I had done some pretty cool shit by then, and gotten big in some towns,” he said. Ian continued, “But playing Cain’s Ballroom as a solo act at that time was a big step up for me. My first show at Cain’s was absolutely a packed house!” He began getting some regional radio airplay in the 1990’s with some of his songs which helped him grow his fan base in Oklahoma and elsewhere. “For a while there,” he said, “Oklahoma kind of became like North Austin for me.”Ian recently returned to Europe where he is a part of a sister city alliance with Austin and Florence, Italy. He will also step down from his official position as the founder of SMASH which is an acronym for Seattle Musicians Access to Sustainable Healthcare. He also has an amplifier that he designed that is about to launch with Holy Watt Amplifiers of Longview, Texas. He described simply as, “it’s amazing!” If you follow Ian online you will notice he likes to tweak amps to his own personal liking and posts conversations and photos about these with other amplifier aficionados.Ian also mentioned he has several other projects in the works but nothing he is ready to reveal just yet.