Dallas Moore - Tryin' To Be A Blessing

In this week's episode, we're featuring the second album in as many years for road warrior Dallas Moore: "Tryin' To Be A Blessing" (2019). Moore has been touring the country relentlessly for the last three decades, and even after all that time on the road, it was during a 2018 collaboration with Dean Miller (son of Roger Miller) in which Moore says he finally found the honky tonk sound he'd been looking for. His sound. Our feature album is the second project with Miller, recorded in only two days in a "lightning in a bottle" type situation, as Moore puts it. "Tryin' To Be A Blessing" is refreshingly autobiographical and six of the nine songs come from Moore's own pen. The album is dedicated to his late parents, who were married for over 60 years and passed away within weeks of each other just before the record's conception. "Mama & Daddy" pays homage to his upbringing; "All I Need" has a little Bakersfield-style to it; "Everything But You" chronicles the downsides of life on the road for the hard working Dallas Moore and the title track is a beautifully composed slice of optimism bundled in a rough-hewn country package. It seems to this reviewer that when Johnny Cash sang about "the gravel in ya guts and the spit in ya eye" in "A Boy Named Sue" - that somehow Cash's gravel has ended up in the vocals of the gritty Dallas Moore. And that grit makes for some excellent raw and ready honky tonk listening.