Wayward Q&A: Crackin' Nuts with Terrence Moore of American Catastrophe (+MP3)
There are very, very few local bands that give me goosebumps the way
American Catastrophe does.
SLIMMphoto
Terrence Moore, the soft-spoken AmCat guitarist, backup singer and harmonica and banjo player, is also starting to pick up more solo gigs. I caught up with Moore, who is also a manager at the Apple Store on the Plaza, in front of YJ's in the Crossroads. We discussed technology, urban revitalization and Moore's solo goals.
The Pitch: Where are you from?
Terrence Moore: I grew up in Rolla, Missouri. It's a few hundred miles from here in south central Missouri.
How did you end up in Kansas City?
I've lived all over Missouri. I graduated from high school and then went on to a year of college in St. Louis, I transferred after that to Mizzou. I went to school for five years there. I didn't finish my degree in chemical engineering. I packed up to move to Lawrence, Kansas, with a band called the Blackwater at the time. I lived there for six years, and then I moved to Kansas City. It sucked both Shaun [Hamontree, AmCat frontman] and myself in.
How do you stay up on new music?
I listen to a lot of music. I will occasionally subscribe to some of the music magazines like Magnet, but a lot that is online now. I love Pandora, I love Last.fm, I read a lot of the local press, a lot of reviews from Lawrence.com and The Pitch, but I'm definitely and actively trying to seek out new music through the web mostly nowadays. Technology has been really great. It's not perfect. It's far from perfect. Pandora especially has turned me onto a lot of cool music.
What art, music or culture are you interested in locally?
Anyone that has a new record coming out, I'm always excited for. I can't wait to hear the new In the Pines record. Recently, I edited some music for some friends of mine, Tiffany Sisemore and Jane Gotch, who are dance choreographers and they just did a show down at La Esquina. The Urban Culture Project helped them put it on for a weekend, and it was a big success. It filled the room, and I actually like working with some of the modern dance companies in town. Helping edit music, it's fun. That turns me onto new music, and I'm always thrilled to see how they make people move to that.
What makes Kansas City stand out from other places that you've played?
Kansas City is finally reviving the downtown and I'm spending a lot of time downtown now, hanging out at Czar Bar, Crosstown Station, JP. I like the locally owned businesses here downtown. Every weekend there is something cool going on. I can wander around between the Brick or Crosstown Station or Czar Bar and catch my friends playing. You don't have to drive as far if you live close to downtown, and I've seen that in other cities -- in the downtown where there's places to hang out and it's not chains and it's locally owned. I think Kansas City finally has things back to the urban core. It's important.
What do you have planned for the future?
I'm staying busy. The band is working on new songs in hopes of recording a new album and even an EP as well. By the end of the year, we'd like to have an EP of songs that we've been playing out for the last couple of years and haven't been recorded. The big thing is that we have a record in mind that's kind of based on a narrative short story where each song is a chapter. This is Shaun Hamontree's vision that I'm very excited about. The music is excellent. We've kept all the good music that we've written together. The process takes a long time. I'd say we have a good third to half of the songs finished for the record itself. We're exploring some possibilities to record locally or maybe in Denver.
The solo thing is just something I've started doing again. I did it a few years back when American Catastrophe was starting just because I'd been recording at home. I've always been a songwriter. The lyrics I write and the stories I tell are more personal on a level that doesn't work with the band. I'm a big follower of the singer-songwriter genre and I'm a big fan of the American singer-songwriters, especially the midwestern alt-country stuff. I'm feeling good about it. It's one of the biggest challenges I've ever faced is to get up there by myself and sing as well as play guitar, banjo and harmonica in front of a crowd. Actually the last two summers, I've recorded some music up at UMKC through some friends who were grad students and I have some excellent-sounding recordings that I'm almost done mixing and I plan to put a solo EP -- real basic and raw sounding, just guitar, voice and harmonica -- this summer. That's my plan.
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