Allison Moorer

“When you start thinking about what’s commercial, you’re already dead,” Moorer told POLLSTAR from her home in Nashville. “We just tried to make something that we liked on this record and I feel like if you’re in country music, you need to do country music. If you want to do pop music, go be in pop music.”

Not that Moorer doesn’t understand the current Nashville pop music phenomenon. “People wanted to take country to a bigger audience and that’s fine,” she said. “But I think we need to respect what makes country music unique. Country music is not pop music. Not everybody is going to like country music.”

Moorer isn’t rebelling against the music coming out of Nashville. She thinks everybody should do what they want. She simply stands up for what she thinks is right for her. That conviction makes her and her music something to be respected.

The strikingly beautiful 26-year-old singer grew up in Alabama surrounded by a family of traditional country music fans. After graduating from the University of South Alabama, she moved to Nashville to live with her sister, Shelby Lynne, who was then a rising star. Moorer worked with Lynne as a backup vocalist. Looking at her sister’s experience fighting for stardom, Moorer didn’t think she wanted to push herself beyond backup singing.

“I saw her go through a lot of things that I wasn’t so sure I wanted for myself,” Moorer said. It wasn’t until she met her husband and songwriting partner, Butch Primm, that she seriously considered going solo.

“He introduced me to music that I didn’t necessarily know about from people who aren’t necessarily in the mainstream who do their own music and don’t have to have their lives be 24-7 all about the music business,” she said. “Not that that’s a bad thing, but I think seeing [my sister] go through a lot of things made me sort of gun shy.”

Eventually, Moorer figured out that her music career would be what she made it. “It’s all in how you take it. Once you start taking yourself seriously, you’re in trouble, so I try real hard not to do that.”

With the help of Monterey Artists agent Bobby Cudd, Moorer got her own music career rolling. Cudd first saw her sing at a tribute for the late Walter Hyatt. He was intrigued — so much so that he brought her to the attention of MCA Nashville President Tony Brown. About a year later, Moorer had a record deal.

She went into the deal with an album’s worth of songs she co-wrote. In fact, she had a hand in all but one song on her record. “I’ve got no pressure from the record company to go look for songs or anything,” Moorer said. “Tony Brown was so great because he really believed in me and the songs that we had. And that’s not always the case.”

Moorer is far too humble to admit that she has a gift when it comes to songwriting. The first thing she does is give kudos to the co-writers. “I’m one of those people who’s great with coming up with something but not necessarily sticking with it long enough to make it make sense. I’m certainly not the most disciplined person in the world and I have no problem admitting that. But I do enjoy writing and I’m getting better at developing things further.”

Moorer lucked out when it came to introducing her music to the public. Before her album hit the market, she and her song “A Soft Place To Fall” were featured in the Robert Redford film “The Horse Whisperer.”

“It was a huge break. You can’t dream it up any better than that,” she said. “Not only did people get to hear my song in the movie, they got to put my face with my voice.”

On top of making her film debut, Moorer found herself on the movie’s soundtrack with several of her heroes including Emmylou Harris, Steve Earl, Dwight Yoakam, George Strait, The Mavericks and Gillian Welch. “That was a really big thing for me to be included in that group,” she said.

With her single in a major motion picture and her album on the street, all the groundwork is laid for Moorer to do what she loves most — touring.

“I love it because when you’re out on the road, you’re out there for one thing and you can focus on that one thing. And it’s not the phone ringing and you gotta go to the post office and feed the cat and go to the store and all that stuff,” she said. “I love being focused.”

Apparently, critics are picking up on that, commenting on Moorer’s simple yet emotional live performance. As one reviewer put it, the singer “conveys more character in a slight twist of her wrist than most other performers do in a night of over-the-top stage moves.”

Moorer said she has always admired performers who don’t rely on a bunch of bells and whistles. “It just sort of turns me off because it is show business but I appreciate humanity and I appreciate something real when I go see somebody.”