(Mobile, Alabama, 1986. A fourteen-year-old girl is awaken...)
Mobile, Alabama, 1986. A fourteen-year-old girl is awakened by the unmistakable sound of gunfire. On the front lawn, her father has shot and killed her mother before turning the gun on himself. Allison Moorer would grow up to be an award-winning musician. But that moment, which forever altered her own life and that of her older sister, Shelby, has never been far from her thoughts. Now, in her journey to understand the unthinkable, to parse the unknowable, Allison uses her lyrical storytelling powers to lay bare the memories and impressions that make a family, and that tear a family apart.
Allison Moorer is an American singer, songwriter, and author. She released more than ten albums and authored a book, Blood: A Memoir (2019).
Background
Allison Moorer was born on June 21, 1972, in Mobile, Alabama, United States. She grew up in a musical family and started singing when she was three. She was raised in Frankville, Alabama and later Monroeville, Alabama, after the deaths of her parents.
Education
Allison Moorer attended a college at the University of South Alabama and received a Bachelor of Arts degree in public relations in June of 1993. The day she took her last exam, she moved to Nashville and got her diploma by mail.
Allison Moorer moved to her sister singer and songwriter Shelby Lynne to Nashville, Tennessee, and began singing backgrounds in Lynne's band full time and toured extensively with her. Working as a background singer, Moorer got hired a dozen or so times to sing demos for songwriters. In June 1996, she took part in a tribute to her songwriter friend, the late Walter Hyatt, singing his "Tell Me Baby" at Nashville's Ryman Auditorium. Nashville agent Bobby Cudd was in attendance and subsequently introduced her to renowned producer and MCA Nashville president Tony Brown. He became her collaborator, co-writer, and co-producer. They worked on music together, wrote some songs, and she signed a deal with Tony Brown at MCA Records in August of 1997.
Her first introduction to the public was with a song called “A Soft Place to Fall,” which appeared in the Oscar-nominated film, The Horse Whisperer. The song, which she co-wrote with Gwil Owen, was chosen for the film by its star and director, Robert Redford. Her first album, Alabama Song, was released in 1998. Her second album, The Hardest Part, was released in 2000. After that, Moorer with Tony Brown went to her sister's label Universal South. Her new album on this label, which was produced by R.S. Field and co-produced by Doyle Primm, is titled Miss Fortune (2002). It contained the ballad, "Tumbling Down,” which was featured on the soundtrack of the popular film The Rookie. The album Show (2003) was also released on the label Universal South and then Moorer went to independent label Sugar Hill Records.
In 2004 Moorer released the album The Duel. The next album Getting Somewhere (2006) was produced by Moorer's new husband and fellow singer and songwriter Steve Earle. Moorer wrote all the songs, with the exception of one co-written with Earle. Her next albums include Mockingbird (2008), Crows (2010), Down to Believing (2015). In 2017 Moorer collaborated with her sister Shelby Lynne and released the album Not Dark Yet. It featured covers of songs by Merle Haggard, Bob Dylan, Nirvana, and The Killers as well as one original song written by Moorer and Lynne, “Is It Too Much.” Her recent album is Blood (2019). The album serves as a companion piece to her autobiography, Blood: A Memoir (2019). The album Blood serves as a song cycle featuring ten tracks that directly connect to the people, emotions, trauma, and state of mind that are all detailed in the memoir.
Allison Moorer also appeared in The People Speak, off-Broadway Rebel Voices, on the BBC series Transatlantic Sessions, Series 4, Episodes 4 and 5, performing a version of the Irish folk song, "Carrickfergus”. She toured with the Jerry Douglas and Ally Bain led Transatlantic Sessions band.
(Mobile, Alabama, 1986. A fourteen-year-old girl is awaken...)
2019
Connections
Allison Moorer's first husband was Doyle Lee Primm. They divorced and in 2005 Moorer married Steve Earle. Their first child John Henry Earle was born on April 5, 2010. The couple separated in September 2012 and divorced in July 2015. Moorer married Hayes Carll on May 12, 2019.