Kip Moore has been on the road pretty much non-stop since most of the COVID mandates were lifted across the country.
Now, it seems like pretty much every state is back to normal in terms of concert protocol and special regulations to get into the show, but back when artists weren’t able to be out on the road playing shows, a lot of them weren’t able to pay their bands and crew, either.
Kip took money out of his own pocket to pay his band and keep everybody employed.
Of course, he was pretty quiet about it and never shared any of that publicly, but Nashville’s a small town, and people eventually found out and commended him for doing so.
And in a recent interview with radio station QYK, he was asked about why he’s been hitting the road so hard already this year.
He explained that he was bleeding dry, so to speak, in terms of money for several months in 2020 because of how much he was spending on payroll, and is just trying to make up for lost time now:
“This year, shoot, we’ve already done probably 45 shows. So it’s been intense. I mean, I made a point to be like, we’re gonna play as much as we can, ‘cuz it was a year and a half of…
You know, I stuck with my guys through the whole thing, so I bled out for a long time. So it’s it’s like, I need as many shows as I can get.”
I think a lot of fans would be shocked to know how much money it really takes to put on a concert in a different city every night, and what the actual take-home pay is for your favorite country artist is.
Jon Pardi actually talked about what an exorbitant amount of money it takes to put on a great show on a recent episode of the Whiskey Riff Raff podcast, which is well worth your time to check out if you’re interested in the breakdown and explanation.
And I should probably take some advice from Kip on saving money the next time I inevitably see a dress that I can’t live without, as he noted he’s lived a very simple life and saved a lot, even after he started making good money in his career.
Being so conservative in that aspect of his life is what allowed to him to continue to pay his band while we were all stuck at home, which is nothing short of impressive, to say the least.
And it sounds like he was happy he could, noting that he was “super blessed” to be able to help them out in that way:
“I think what helped me a lot was that I’ve lived such a very, very simple life, you know.
So when that kind of moment comes, it’s like, okay, I already felt super blessed where I was at. So it was just like, you know, I can hang in this thing for a while.”
His integrity is one of the things I think a lot of his fans love most about him, and that’s something that hasn’t changed since he started out in the business.
He even joked that his management wonders what other endeavors he has going on that they don’t know about, because his spending habits haven’t changed in over a decade, even with #1 hits on the radio:
“You know, it’s funny. My business management, they’ll call me all the time, they’re like, ‘You’re the biggest enigma. We can’t figure you out.’
We have quarterly meetings, and they all laugh. We have this big firm that handles all the artists, they’re like, ‘We actually think you’re doing something shady that we don’t know about.’
They’re like, ‘Your account is the exact same as 2010. We see Kroger, and we see different surf shops where you buy surfboards, and that’s it. We don’t know where anything else is happenin’.’”
I was always raised not to talk about money in public, but I think it’s pretty safe to say that he took out quite a large chunk of change from his savings account to keep everybody on the payroll.
It’s not something many other artists were doing, or probably even thought about doing, back during that time, and it just makes me respect him even more than I already do. No matter what field you’re in or how much you make, it feels like you just don’t see that kind of generosity these days, unfortunately, so it’s really cool to hear about him doing that and giving so freely.
And Kip is continuing his trek across the country, as he has quite a few festival appearances coming up this summer and is gearing up to kickoff a headlining tour this fall. I’ve said it once and I’ll say it a million times, he puts on a helluva live show, so make sure you check him and the guys out in concert if they’ll be anywhere near you.
He also just released a brand new single from his forthcoming (and still unofficially announced) fifth studio album on Friday called “Fire On Wheels,” along with a new music video showin’ off his dance moves: