Ian Moore

With the seeming constant need of us post-modernfolks to declare our identities in the invisible aether -- we submit here a marker, a streetcorner on the web if you will -- provided for fiddler, dancer, street performer Ian Moore. He's from New York City originalmente, Queens NY to be precise, grew up playing classical music. Teenage rebellion made it look like he was going to quit music altogether but enterprising friends kept sticking him in bands -- till finally he was paying the rent with two Irish pub gigs every week. And then there is the street. Subway stations, street corners, Mr Moore used to be a regular on the steps outside NYC's Metropolitan Museum of Art. Street culture landed him in even odder environs -- he has played in St John's Cathedral up on 110th St, he's played in the squatters camps down near legendary punk rock club ABC No Rio; he's played for some fellows down from Quebec, camped out all day amongst their load of Christmas trees selling them on the street outside a Starbucks; Mayor Rudy Giulliani elbowed his way into the irish traditional band Ian was playing with at their neighborhood street festival; he used to have a standing gig at a cheese shop on 9th Avenue, 10 bucks an hour playing among the dried sturgeon fishes and smoked mozzarella. Ian Moore met a girl -- Ms. Faye Holliday -- and now he lives down here in lovely Jackson Co., North Carolina; where the kudzu and the briar twine together forever on the hillside, where the moonshiners all have methlabs, where the musicians all have dayjobs, where where a careening junebug can crack your windshield in half. He began learning Appalachian fiddle tunes and learning to drive a car all at about the same time to varying degrees of success; knowing some Irish music can help your understanding of Appalachi fiddle, knowing how to ride a bike doesn't help you learn how to drive a car though. He has been running a music session at the Spring Street Cafe just about every Tuesday (call ahead, 586 1800) since then -- that'd be 7 years now. early Sylva area bands included: Pignut Hickory, Big Tasty and the Roots, the Diamond Cutter Stringband, and most notably Smoky Mountain Drum and Bass -- a crazed experiment in forcing jazzers, electronica DJ's, old-time ballad singers, hippie jam rockers, classic rock guitar gods etc, etc, etc... to spend hours together locked in a room. The results were quite well received, Mr Moore still works with a project that survived that frenzy -- the Moolah Temple Stringband. Ian Moore joined the Asheville area band the Ribtips in 2005 and had been going strong with those fellows until he took a wild hair to follow his wild haired Ms. Holliday North to Freedom. Up in Canada it got cold and now he's just shuttling around. If you see him buy some music or slip him a fi' dollar bill, or somesuch. Excellent. Thanks.