I recently had a chance to sit down with Seth Moore a singer/songwriter out of Murfreesboro. We talked about life on tour, the music industry and some of his favorite local bands.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xt-0WVDreA8

Any horror stories from when you first started playing shows?

When I was on tour with Spoken Nerd years ago, we went to this place called the Lava Lounge in Chicago. It was a Drum and Bass club and they were having a Hip Hop night. I had brought a microphone and a stand but their mixer didn’t have an input for an XLR jack because it was a wireless setup. So in the middle of a Hip Hop night where I was already kind of out of place, playing my weird country/folky songs I was making at the time, I had Nerd hold the microphone for me the whole show. It was horrible!

What do you think about Napster changing the music game? In a fantasy world would you change what happened?

Well, it’s a mixed bag. On the one hand it took the power out of the hands of big corporate groups that were profiting and leaving a lot of people on the wayside. At the same time, now it’s really hard for anybody to make a living as a musician in America. I couldn’t say that I would just do away with it because a lot more people get to hear more music as a result of it. More artists are getting their work out there. They’re just not getting paid for it.

Many musicians from around the country move to middle TN. Do you think there’s something special about the area that helps people become better singer/songwriters?

Middle Tennessee does have a lot of music going on. It’s home to Nashville which is like the third largest music industry in the United States and has some of the largest music publishers in the world. For me personally though, I think that creativity is bred in places with a lot of diversity. Tennessee has little pockets of diversity. Murfreesboro is a little pocket of diversity because it has MTSU which attracts college students from all walks of life and from all over. That’s really good. That’s where I have gotten a lot of inspiration, from all the house shows and all of the young bands that have cropped up. I wouldn’t say it’s the best place to go for music but I also wouldn’t say it’s the worst place. I think any place can be a good place to make music if you really want it to be. You just make it that way.

So, nothing special about it then.

(Breaks out laughing) It’s got some good points, I don’t know.

Who are some of your favorite local artists in the area right now?

Out of Nashville I really enjoy Bad Friend. Caitlin Rose is doing some good stuff. By Lightning. My old buddy Spoken Nerd just put out a good record. There’s a band called Natural Child that had a record I really liked not too long ago. I’m on the House Pride label out of Murfreesboro that’s like a collective more or less. It has Mr. Nasty, Henry Daggs, A Day In The Life of a Daily, and a bunch of other guys. A lot of cross pollination going on there.