Ian Moore

Ian Moore has been a bit of a mystery ever since he shunned his early-’90s success as a blues guitar-shredder, which he was more or less branded by Capricorn Records like Texas cattle. He left the hot licks and long blond locks behind to reveal a wonderfully cerebral (and often estranged) gothic songwriter—a transformation many just couldn’t swallow. Blues die-hards felt wronged and others just didn’t give him a shot. He continued to churn out soaring, passionate songs so epic in their composition and performance that he almost adopted the appearance of a rock ’n’ roll Phantom figure: a talented but misunderstood artist. An outcast.

The 36-year-old’s latest album, Luminaria, is not only preponderantly acoustic but surprisingly Southern—from the aching, mournful simplicity of “What I’ve Done” to the whining steel and garbled guitars of “Abilene.” Luminaria is the kind of eerie, wrought-iron, slithering-kudzu, peeling-paint and wicker-rocking-chair kind of music that’s easy on the ears and soul. Which, of course, begs the question: why now, after the Texas native has moved to Seattle?

“It was refreshing to be in a new place where there’s a new perspective,” he says. “But it made me connect more with my Southern identity. I mean, how many writers left the South to write their best works about the South?”

His last studio record, 2000’s highly praised And All the Colors, is a dark, exotic, swirling storm of an album full of ominous, layered guitars and lyrics swollen with angst. So, Luminaria is the most significant plot turn in the story of Ian Moore since he turned in his pentatonic blues chops. The death-intrigued Moore of Colors is now a more relaxed, contented artist who recorded the entire album on the road—bits and pieces in San Francisco; Santa Cruz, N.M.; Austin, Texas; Washington, D.C.; and even at a radio station in Arizona. Moore used whatever was at his fingertips, even incorporating a Sony Walkman as a microphone on a few songs.

“My first record was this really fancy studio in Nashville,” he says. “In Colors, we ended up mixing in these high-end studios in Hollywood that were $2,000 a day. That’s part of the inspiration [for Luminaria]. Recording is not so precious. Also, some of the best records are from people who were doing the best with what they had. I kind of employed [that mentality].”

When Moore recorded “Caroline” in a friend’s San Francisco apartment, he sang softly into a computer ear microphone—a near whisper because he didn’t want to wake his snoozing friends in the next room. “It’s amazing to me,” he says. “It wasn’t like, ‘let’s get a funky mic and sound cheap.’ It just was what it was. I had to sing quiet, and I think the mic just translated that emotion.”