Russell Moore

He was born on 21 December 1963 and grew up in Pasadena, near Houston. When he was seven or eight, cousins who lived around Houston took his parents to a bluegrass show, and the family began traveling to festivals in Texas, Louisiana and Oklahoma. One regular stop was a show on the first Saturday of every month outside Cleveland, Texas, hosted by the Bluegrass Ramblers of Texas. An Osborne Brothers album his mother bought by mail order, Voices in Bluegrass, and Bobby Osborne’s high lead singing on it were what drew him to the music, and he began playing at about eleven. At fifteen he joined the Bluegrass Ramblers, playing mandolin with them at concerts and festivals in Texas, Louisiana and Arkansas.

Around 1982 he moved to Arlington, in the Dallas–Fort Worth area, to play in a new band, Southern Connection, with the banjo player Scott Vestal, Vestal’s brother Curtis and the guitarist and singer Marc Keller; the members worked construction and other jobs to get by. In about 1983 they opened for Doyle Lawson & Quicksilver at the Blue Barn outside Cleveland, and Lawson, who had been listening, got them booked at his festival in Denton, North Carolina. They sold nearly everything but their instruments and clothes, drove east and settled in Asheville, where they played six nights a week. A few months after opening for Quicksilver a second time, at Bill Stanley’s Barbeque, Moore and the two Vestals were offered places in Lawson’s band, and in 1985 they moved across the mountains to Bristol, Tennessee, to join it.

In Quicksilver he played guitar and sang lead. The band took him across the United States and Canada, to Europe three times and on a six-week tour of Central and South America. His records with Lawson include The News Is Out (1987) and My Heart Is Yours (1990), and he was in the band in 1990 when its “Little Mountain Church” was named the IBMA’s Song of the Year.

In 1991 Moore, the bassist Ray Deaton and the fiddler Mike Hartgrove left Quicksilver together and formed IIIrd Tyme Out in Georgia, in time for that summer’s festivals, with Alan Bibey on mandolin and Terry Baucom on banjo. The name counted the full-time professional bands its founders had been in. Their first album, IIIrd Tyme Out, came out on Rebel that year, and its “Erase the Miles,” written by Carl Jackson, spent two months at the top of the bluegrass charts. Rebel also released Puttin’ New Roots Down (1992) and Grandpa’s Mandolin (1993), whose title track held the top of the charts for three months; by then Wayne Benson had come in on mandolin. The band then moved to Rounder, where Letter to Home included an a cappella version of the Platters’ “Only You.” Moore told the Houston Chronicle that he had always held good music to be good music, whether it was “Cabin on the Hill” or “Only You.” The all-gospel Living on the Other Side (1996), with Earl Scruggs as a guest on Lester Flatt’s “I’m Working on a Road to Gloryland,” was followed by Live at the Mac (1998), recorded at the Mountain Arts Center in Prestonsburg, Kentucky, John & Mary (1999) and Back to the Mac (2001). The IBMA named IIIrd Tyme Out Vocal Group of the Year every year from 1994 to 2000, and named Moore Male Vocalist of the Year in 1994 and 1997.

In the early 2000s disputes among the partners and frequent personnel changes put the band’s future in doubt. Moore decided to keep it going, took over its leadership, and put his name at the front of the billing. Signing with Rural Rhythm in 2007, the band settled a new lineup; Russell Moore & IIIrd Tyme Out (2009), with the single “Hard Rock Mountain Prison,” was followed by Moore’s third Male Vocalist award in 2010, and Prime Tyme (2011), with “Pretty Little Girl from Galax,” by further awards in 2011 and 2012. Benson, who had left in 2004 for the John Cowan Band, returned in 2007. After the banjo player Steve Dilling retired from the band on Thanksgiving Day 2013, a new lineup with Keith McKinnon on banjo made It’s About Tyme (2015), and the band also recorded Timeless Hits from the Past… Bluegrassed for Cracker Barrel. In 2017 the Uncle Dave Macon Days festival in Murfreesboro, Tennessee, gave Moore its Heritage Award, and in 2019 he won Male Vocalist of the Year for the sixth time. In 2014 the guitar he played most was a 1938 Martin D-28 herringbone.

On 3 December 2024 Alison Krauss & Union Station announced that Moore would take the guitar and vocal place left by Dan Tyminski for their 2025 album and tour, nearly 75 dates from April to the end of September. He had sat in briefly with the Earls of Leicester a few years earlier, but this was his first job as a sideman since Quicksilver, and he took it on the condition that IIIrd Tyme Out would stay together. He sings lead on “Granite Mills,” the first track he recorded with the band, and on “North Side Gal,” both from Arcadia, released on Down the Road Records on 28 March 2025. While he was on the road with Krauss, IIIrd Tyme Out issued a single, Guy Clark’s “New Cut Road,” with Benson, McKinnon and the fiddler Nathan Aldridge, and booked its own tour to resume in October 2025.