Justin Moore celebrates 8th No. 1

Remembers “The Ones That Didn’t Make It Back Home”

By Preshias Harris

Justin Moore remembered “The Ones That Didn’t Make It Back Home” (Valory Music Group) at a No. 1 party in Nashville on 05 February.  Justin was joined by his co-writers Jeremy Stover, Chase McGill and Paul DiGiovanni. Stover produced the song with Big Machine Records chief, Scott Borchetta.

The song is Justin’s eighth No. 1 single. For the other writers, it was Jeremy’s seventh No. 1, Chase’s fourth and Paul’s second chart-topper. It was also Jeremy’s thirteenth No. 1 as a producer. Paul is also lead guitarist with the rock band, Boys Like Girls.

Before the award ceremony, I sat down with other members of the music media as we talked to Justin, Jeremy, Chase and Paul.

The story behind the song

Justin began by talking about how audience reaction to one of his earlier No. 1 songs, combined with his admiration of his grandfathers’ military service, inspired the creation of “The Ones That Didn’t Make It Back Home.”

“We had a song out, eight or nine years ago, ‘If Heaven Wasn’t So Far Away,’ and it was a big record for us,” said Justin.  “Every night on stage, for those of you who have seen us play, we would say the same thing to intro that song every night, which was just talking about our service men and women.  I would give a little spiel about both my grandfathers serving in the military and then I would always end it by saying, ‘We’ll send this out to the ones that didn’t make it back home.’ I did that for eight years and I don’t know why it took me so long to figure out that might be a song idea and a title for a song.”

He pointed to his co-writers and added, “These guys happened to be on the bus that weekend. For whatever reason, it hit me one night that it might be a song idea and I came back to the bus after the show and said, ‘I’ve got this idea, I don’t know if it’s any good.’  I told these guys and they all looked at each other.  That means one of two things. Either it’s a really good idea or it’s terrible and they don’t want to hurt my feelings.  Fortunately, it was the former and we finished it the next day, I guess.”

Music video includes more who serve

I said that the lyrics to “The Ones That Didn’t Make It Back Home” focus on the military, but the music video includes firefighters, police and first-responders too.

“I think that’s a big part of it,” replied Chase. “When we are out [with Justin] I love watching the show and when Justin does that intro to “If Heaven Wasn’t So Far Away” I think Justin is the first artist I’ve seen that really covers everybody. Teachers, everybody.  So I guess for me it was just built in with the idea.”

Justin picked up on that point. “When we’re traveling around, the different events I’m a part of, our military gets some credit – not as much as they deserve, but they do get some credit,” he said. “It seems to me that all these other groups of people seem to get forgotten. Police officers, teachers, nurses, coastguards and more. They seem to get zero credit. So shooting the video, we kind of wanted to channel onto all of those groups.  We didn’t get to all of them, but a number of them.”

Paul DiGiovanni added some of his thoughts. “I bumped into Justin at a video event at the end of last year and the radio station that put [the event] on, when he was playing the song, they played their own slide show,” he recalled. “It felt like they had, like, a hundred people that had passed in the community – some were armed forces, some were first responders, every walk of life from the community.  So I felt that was a natural thing that happened with the song, where people made it their own which was really cool to see.”

Songs written on the bus

Following up on that, I said that, looking at the writers’ credits on Late Nights and Longnecks, it seems like Justin and the guys are like a family.  I wanted to know if it stays that way when they travel together on the bus and about the songs on the album got written on the bus. 

“I think on this album, two of the songs were written on the same trip, ‘On the Rocks’ and ‘For Those Who Didn’t Make It Back Home,’” said Jeremy Stover.  “Other than that, it was at Justin’s house in Florida. I think it’s really important now to kind of find a focus and everyone understands the focus. Producing the record and everything like that, for me, a big part of my job is to put the pieces together. For example, Justin had never worked with Chase or Paul before. Obviously, I had and I thought this is going to be a really good match. It helps us grow, it helps us create new things.”

Justin talked about how audiences have reacted to ‘The Ones That Didn’t Make It Back Home’ during his live shows and what that means to him.

“Some songs are hits or whatever you want to call them but they don’t get an instant reaction when people don’t know it yet,” he said.  “But this one, obviously, when we played it to an attentive audience that actually listened to lyrics and weren’t just throwin’ back shots and beer and ready to raise hell, you could tell that this song was pretty special.  For me, being at meet and greets – even early on in the life of the song – people were telling me how they were relating the song to their own lives and stories of their loved ones or themselves who had served or were currently serving.”

‘Opportunity to be more than just a hit’

He added, “It was pretty special early on from my perspective of playing it live.  I knew that the song had an opportunity to be more than just a hit song.  I mean we’re all in this business to write hit songs to make money and support our families and it’s good for all of our careers. But speaking for myself, and I think all these guys [the writers] it’s even more special when you’re part of a song like this that can be more than just a hit record. When you talk to people and it has helped them through a difficult time.”

Jeremy Stover chimed in at that point.  “If I can just add a little bit to that,” he said.  “There are a lot of songs like ‘I love you, I don’t love you, I miss you, I wish I had you back,’ but these kind of ‘lifestyle’ songs, in my opinion, are so important for country music.  It really is a country music thing and I think it is really important that we don’t lose sight of that in the format because there’s a lot of land between coast to coast there that I think, on a daily basis, people that work hard, try to do the best for their kids, relate to this [song] in a big way. To me, that goes a lot past the ‘I love you, I don’t love, wish I had you back kind of songs.  I’ve written a ton of those and had hits with them. But these are my favorite kind of songs, because the people that relate to this kind of song are the people I grew up with.”

The reasons for “Why We Drink”

“Why We Drink” is the second single from Justin’s album, Late Nights and Longnecks. Justin said that he and his wife Kate were out to dinner with his parents a couple of years ago and it took a long time to get their food. Justin ordered a drink, then another and another.

“My mom said, ‘Why do you drink so much?’ and I was like, ‘Hell, I don’t know,’” Justin recalled.  “I thought about it.  As songwriters you listen to people with song titles in mind. We were writing for this album and I had this idea: ‘Why do we drink?’ I said, I’ve got this idea, ‘Why do we drink?’ and I don’t know what to do with it. I don’t remember if it was Jeremy or who it was, who said ‘Because it’s Friday, because it’s Monday, because our team lost, because our team won.’ And I went, ‘Yeah, kind of all of the above!’ So we went with it and probably wrote in forty-five minutes.”

So… does Justin’s mom get a share of the song’s royalties?

“I still ain’t told her because I don’t want to give her any of the money for it,” joked Justin with a laugh.  “It’s already a four or five-way [writers’ royalty split], we don’t need to make it a six-way!  No, we just shot the video for it a couple of weeks ago and she makes a little cameo appearance in it, which she is totally uncomfortable with.  We kind of re-create the little story of the beginning of it.”

Justin and Tracy Lawrence on tour

Justin is heading out on tour to support his new album. “The Late Nights and Long Neck Tour, for me to have the opportunity to go out on tour with a guy that I’ve looked up to for a long time, Tracy Lawrence, and now calling him a buddy, this is really special and really cool for me,” he said. “We’ve only played one show so far. We had a couple cancel due to weather. I’m certainly looking forward to it and it’s a huge honor for me. He’s one of the guys I looked up to when I was growing up. Throw in the fact that he’s from Arkansas as well, it just compounded my fandom of him by a million times.”

Justin and his co-writers expressed the importance of their families in their lives. Justin noted that his children are unimpressed by his fame. “Now they just get annoyed by the fact that I’ll be coaching their basketball game and after the game I’ve got to sign a bunch of autographs,” he said.  “It’s just embarrassing to them now, what I do and who I am, I guess. They’re like, ‘Dad can we please go to Chick-Fill-A!’”

With the look of a proud father, he added, “My oldest daughter this week was saved and accepted Jesus as her Savior. That’s probably the proudest moment I’ve experienced as a dad. She was like, ‘Dad please don’t make a big deal out of this.’   Sorry, I have to make a big deal out of this!”

More about Justin Moore at his website and on Facebook.

Preshias Harris  is a music journalist and music career development consultant with the emphasis on new and aspiring artists and songwriters. Her book, ‘The College of Songology 101: The Singer/Songwriter’s Need to Know Reference Handbook’ is available at   www.collegeofsongology.com   Follow her blog at  www.nashvillemusicline.com