Quentin Moore: Young artist, old soul!

(Photo: Quentin Moore collection)

Quentin Moore is well-known. He plays all over Dallas and Texas and has a lot of fans. A lot of people know Quentin Moore, but few know the back-story. This is the back-story.

Quentin is originally from Austin from a relatively large family of five girls and two boys. They were church-going folks, but his parents were liberal enough to allow them to enjoy rap, rhythm and blues and the current music of the day. His dad, now 78, listened to music from the 1950s and ‘60s. So Quentin grew up in what he called ‘a melting pot of a whole lot of different things.’

He started singing in the church, but said he never seriously thought that he would do it as a career. He picked up the drums in middle school. By high school he was playing the keyboard and then began to think more and more that a music career might be a possibility.

He went on the University of North Texas in Denton, a school that has one of the country’s oldest and most respected jazz programs. While at UNT, the group Snarky Puppy was just being formed. Also around this time Kirk Franklin united with God’s Property; several members of God’s Property were at UNT.

Around this time R.C. Williams, Shaun Martin, Robert ‘Sput’ Searight, Braylon Lacy, Jason Bell, Gordon Pope, to name a few, were some of the musicians Quentin got to know around UNT. These guys would go on to win Grammy Awards in the respective groups including Snarky Puppy, Kirk Franklin’s God’s Property and Erykah Badu.

In his first year at UNT, Quentin wrote his first song Tell Me, a soulful ballad which showed promise, confidence, and sure-handedness in his burgeoning ability as an artist. At the time, he borrowed a friend’s keyboard to compose the song. He became so immersed in his craft that his friend hounded him and asked him to return the keyboard. But Quentin was determined to get that first song out of his head and onto paper.

Many people know Quentin as the fun-loving, easy-going and gregarious personality but behind that image, he is a shrewd businessman. While many of his contemporary musicians are content to work for a fee, Quentin is the rare musician who rents a venue and promotes his own events.

“When it is time for business, it’s time for business,” said Quentin the businessman, a side his fans do not always see. “Back in the day you could just focus on being an artist. Today labels don’t look at you unless you could generate numbers.”

He has to promote, he says, or he would become irrelevant. “And if I become irrelevant, I don’t eat.”

One would not know it, but this is the side of the business Quentin hates. “I can’t stand it,” he says. The promotion, the video editing, the business side, “I can’t stand it. It is very stressful. It is not natural and becomes a task.” But it is something that has to be done. He has to be the artist, the performer and entertainer; and in addition do the ‘dirty work’ and heavy lifting of the manager, promoter, etc. (And may be this explains why most other artists are just content to be the performer for a fee as a opposed to taking on the risks and potential benefits of hosting their own events.)

He is a busy man, playing acoustic shows at a coffee shop on a Thursday, backing another artist on a Friday, playing a wedding on a Saturday, and playing three church services on a Sunday. It is enough to make a singer tire and lose his voice, which is why he does nothing on Mondays.

There are many sides to thirty-two-year-old Quentin Moore. As he sat in the restaurant Odd Fellows in Oak Cliff with his girlfriend Chas, he said, that there is yet even another side of him: he pointed to his girlfriend and said he is going to be a father.

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