The backstory carries real weight without ever curdling into sentimentality on tape. Moore’s path to music began, famously, with a soccer injury that closed one door and opened another, and the record’s emotional centre of gravity is his relationship with James Masters Patterson \u2014 writing partner, mentor, brother-in-arms \u2014 who died in 2013 having, we’re told, written, co-written or inspired every song here. Tribute albums are a treacherous genre; too often they curdle into hagiography, all reverence and no danger. Moore mostly sidesteps that trap by treating the material as songs first and memorial second, letting the craft do the eulogising.<\/p> Geography does a lot of the record’s talking. Guitar tracks cut in Dallas, bass laid down at a house in what one imagines is a fairly unglamorous corner of Texas, vocals gathered in Albuquerque and Pittsburgh, and a UK contingent anchored by Stuart Epps \u2014 a name that carries genuine gravitas, given his fingerprints on Led Zeppelin’s Coda and his history alongside Jimmy Page and Paul Rodgers. Stitching parts recorded continents apart into something coherent is no small feat of production, and Moore, mixing everything himself at his own Ground Zero West, deserves credit for making the seams invisible. The record doesn’t sound like a patchwork; it sounds like a room full of people who never actually shared a room.<\/span><\/p> The standout, by Moore’s own account and by simple listening, is “Mysteries Of Life,” on which guitarist Jay Michael Smith doesn’t so much cover Patterson’s playing as inhabit it \u2014 the kind of ventriloquism that can feel eerie on paper but lands, in the mix, as something closer to communion than impersonation. It’s the moment the whole project’s underlying logic clicks into place: this was never meant to be Moore’s record alone, but a s\u00e9ance conducted through six strings and a hard drive full of old takes.<\/span><\/p> Seven advance singles trickled out from late 2025 onward, softening the ground for a full album that arrived later than planned but none the worse for the wait \u2014 nearly two years in the making is a long gestation for a record this unpretentious in its ambitions. What lingers, more than any individual hook or solo, is the sense of purpose behind the whole enterprise. Moore hasn’t made a slick, market-tested record; he’s made a scrapbook rendered in full band arrangement, a wake with a rhythm section. Whether or not “A Wink Is As Good As A Nod To A Blind Mule” finds a wide audience, it does exactly what it set out to do: it keeps a good man’s playing alive.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n\n
<\/span>
<\/span>
<\/span>