The prose style that singer-songwriter Allison Moorer wields in her new book Blood: A Memoir makes good use of the kind of images that writing teachers often recommend to their students. But it’s no academic exercise. What Moorer writes about in Blood — obsessively and with pained insight — is the pull of family, which can put your face in the dirt even when family is all you’ve got. The book, which is Moorer’s debut as a writer of long-form prose, is being released simultaneously with an equally brilliant album, also titled Blood, that covers some of the same ground. It’s worthy of a great musician who over the course of her more than 20-year career has walked lightly on the big front lawn that surrounds the houses of country, pop and Americana.
Moorer’s book and album detail her struggle to make sense of the events of Aug. 12, 1986, when her father shot her mother dead and then turned his rifle on himself inside the family’s house in Frankville, Ala. Moorer and her older sister, singer Shelby Lynne, were teenagers when their parents died, and had already become adept harmony singers, having grown up in an intensely musical household. Moorer’s book examines her family dynamics in terms of her musical ambitions, while her latest music breaks the mold of singer-songwriter-influenced Americana.
Moorer makes two appearances in Nashville over the next two weeks. On Saturday, Oct. 26, she’ll play on the Grand Ole Opry, and she’ll read from Blood at Parnassus Books on Nov. 2. She’ll also play a series of shows through early December that will incorporate book readings and solo performances featuring special guests like St. Paul and the Broken Bones frontman Paul Janeway. In addition, Moorer will be joined on some dates by a couple of equally fine singer-songwriters: Mary Gauthier, who co-wrote the Blood song “Heal” with Moorer; and Moorer’s husband, Hayes Carll, whom she married in May.
For Moorer, who hasn’t undertaken a solo tour in several years, hitting the road to promote her new book and album comes with its own set of expectations.
“It’s an experiment, and I’m quite nervous about it,” she tells the Scene by phone from Nashville, where she’s lived since early 2019 after spending most of the past decade in New York. “It’s been a while since I’ve toured. Since I became a mother, that part of my life has changed drastically. I’m looking forward to getting out and seeing my audience that I haven’t seen in a long time.”
Moorer’s literary gifts are evident throughout Blood, which she completed in 2017 after graduating from Manhattan’s The New School with a Master of Fine Arts degree in nonfiction. Still, she first made her mark 20 years ago with a series of albums produced by guitarist Kenny Greenberg, who once again sat in the producer’s chair for Blood. In particular, Moorer’s 2000 full-length The Hardest Part masterfully blends confessional lyrics and power-pop country, partly defined by Greenberg’s guitar work.
What’s fascinating about Moorer’s dual identity as singer-songwriter and memoirist is her ability to control tone. Describing her baffling, hopeless alcoholic father, she writes: “He’d slip in and slip out like some alternate-universe superhero beamed down to keep the bars in business.” Moorer makes a list of his worst episodes, but she also remembers how he got Reba McEntire to autograph two styrofoam coffee cups after a show in Mobile, Ala.
As she says, she knows how songwriting and prose writing inform each other.
“The one similarity I keep coming up with [between] songwriting and prose — because the two things are very different things — is rhythm,” Moorer tells me. “At the end of the day, that’s what the two forms have in common for me. I think that if songwriting taught me anything that I could use in writing prose, it’s that.”
Moorer’s new book and music seem closely related — consanguineous, you could say — and neither flags for a second. The album seems minimalist, as if illuminated by a bare electric bulb hanging in a wood-paneled den. But it’s full of detail. “Nightlight” features Steve Patrick’s evocative trumpet, while “Set My Soul Free” sounds subtly Beatles-esque.
The pain Moorer feels is omnipresent, but she remains vigilant about how the past can deform life in the present. She’s one of the finest artists working in American music right now, and it sounds like her journey of discovery is only beginning.
