Moore had grown up in tiny Poyen, Arkansas, where he worked on his grandparents' cattle farm and enjoyed an archetypal American rural childhood.
He started singing as early as two years old, and at eight he won a talent show at the local high school. He sang gospel songs in church but spent the rest of his time listening to country music, studying the genre inside and out, focusing on old and new country all at once.
Moore may have been from a small town, but he wasn't naïve, and when he finally moved to Nashville after high school, he was prepared and already armed with a manager. Soon he had an attorney, too, and signed a writing deal with Big Picture Music.
His first single, "Back That Thing Up," was released later that year and made it onto the country Top 40 charts. A second single, the autobiographically apt "Small Town USA" was released in February 2009. Moore returned two years later, armed with another Top Ten country hit, "If Heaven Wasn't So Far Away."
