Rising Stars: Meet Debbie and Carrie Moore

Hi Debbie and Carrie, we’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
Moore & Moore The best performances come from people who work well together. That would be a major understatement for twin sisters Debbie and Carrie Moore, having sung together all their lives. There is something special about the close-knit harmony they create. Adept at working with an audience and making them part of their performance, Moore & Moore give the all-out kind of show that only comes from the heart.

Debbie and Carrie hail originally from Belton, Missouri. It was easy to see that these two were destined for musical careers. As young girls, they were shy performers, resulting in hiding behind the family couch when relatives tried to coax them to perform. To see them on stage today, you would never guess they would do anything else. They grew up listening to old records and would memorize all the words. By the time they were teenagers, they had performed in their church choir, at weddings, talent shows, and in numerous school groups. They wrote their high school graduation song and were voted “Most Talented” by their senior class. “We sang our senior class song at the Kansas City Music Hall for graduation. After hearing the applause and seeing how we could touch people through our music, we knew from that moment on, we were put on this earth to sing!”

After playing clubs all over the United States and Canada, Debbie and Carrie moved to Nashville, Tennessee. “We were told many people to go back home after giving Nashville only a few months. We had lived in an apartment for about that long when a light bulb went out in the ceiling. When we had to stack suitcases to change it, we knew it was time to bring down the furniture and become Nashvillians.”

It was a good move for Moore & Moore. In 1991, they released their first single, “Out With The Old,” which stayed at #1 for seven weeks on the Independent Charts. There have been four Number One singles since that release: “Steal Me A Heart,” “Don’t Come Knocking,” “Break Down the Walls,” and “I Surrender. This is still the longest-running #1 debut single in Independent Chart history. The accompanying debut video won Video Challenge five nights in a row on The Nashville Network’s Video PM.”

From 1991 to the present, Moore & Moore have received several awards and nominations from Indie Bullet, Airplay International, TNN/Music City News Awards, Business Leaders, BMI, NSAI, and NATD. Their success has prompted appearances on WTBS’s Roots of Country with Robert Oermann, The Sally Jessy Raphael Show and TNN’s Nashville Now, Video Morning, Video PM, Country Beat, Miller and Company, Music City Tonight, Club Dance, Wildhorse Saloon Show, TNN Country News, The Statler Brothers Show, and Prime Time Country, and various shows on CBS, NBC, FOX, ESPN, GAC, CMT, RFD & the BBC.

In 1994 , Moore & Moore were asked to go on tour as the opening act for the legendary Statler Brothers.  In 1995, they were honored to make their first appearance on the world-famous Grand Ole Opry.  Also that year, Moore & Moore toured with talk show host Jerry Springer, and were featured on his country album, “Dr. Talk”.  In 1996, they performed in Korea and Japan for the military and received the International Duo of the Year Award.

In 1997 they toured Europe with the Bellamy Brothers and the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band. In 1999 they toured Australia and Europe. Debbie Moore co-wrote the song “Wish You Were Here” with Bill Anderson and Skip Ewing, recorded by Mark Wills on Mercury Records. It went to #1 on the Billboard, R&R, and Gavin Charts in April 1999.

Today, Moore & Moore continues to tour worldwide and have received numerous awards, including “Country Duo of the Year” and “International Entertainer of the Year.” Their album, “Meant To Be,” was nominated for the 2007 “Country Album Of The Year” by the Independent Music Awards. Moore & Moore’s single, “Find Me A Man Like Goober,” received rave reviews, including Music Row Magazine’s Robert Oermann claiming, “Their twin-like vocal harmonies are perfect, and the bopping song is as cute as the dickens.” The accompanying video, featuring George “Goober” Lindsey and cameos of 17 legendary artists, has been added to country video outlets worldwide.

Moore & Moore collaborated with Ireland’s Queen of Country, Philomena Begley, for their 2013 single release, “Country Girls Never Get Old” (written by Debbie & Carrie), which is included on Philomena’s album, “How I Love Them Old Songs.” The song went to #1 on the Country Airplay Direct chart.

Moore & Moore’s previous CD, “The More I Get, The More I Want,” included a feature “Listen Up” article in Country Weekly magazine & a free download of the popular song, “Wild Women Don’t Get The Blues.” Their album, with the title cut of “Show Me Your Country,” was accompanied by a fun music video that debuted on Young Country, airing on RFD and the Rural TV/Family Net Network. “Show Me Your Country” was also featured on the Heartland Network, CMT.com, and many other video outlets. Their latest album, “My Present To You,” with special guests James Carothers, Helen Cornelius, Marty Haggard, T.G. Sheppard, and Billy Yates, rose to #1 on the December 2016 Country Airplay Direct chart, with 15 songs on the Top 15 on the Country Singles chart. The single “I’m Going To Roam” rose to the Top 20 on the UK HotDisc chart in August 2016, and “Follow The Star” with Marty Haggard hit the Top Ten in December 2016. The single “Wine and Whine” with Helen Cornelius stayed in the Top 20 for 6 weeks in early 2017. The catchy tune “Sand In Our Shoes” with Billy Yates was released in June 2017 with an accompanying video. The song went to #10 on the German Country Music Chart and #2 on the UK HotDisc chart!  The title cut and single, “My Present To You,” stayed in the Top 30 for several weeks (from December 2017 to January 2018). “Loving Thirty” with Billy Yates was in the Top 25 for several weeks in September/October. 2018. The twins launched a new podcast titled “Show Me Your Country” in 2020 – “Country Music duo Moore & Moore have conversations with Country Music artists, writers, and musicians as they travel the world.” In 2022, a new album will be released, and Moore & Moore was recently inducted into the ALM-Nashville Hall of Fame!

Moore & Moore are Durango Boot Ambassadors and have shared the stage with Alabama, Marty Stuart, Jerry Reed, Kenny Chesney, Little Jimmy Dickens, The Gatlin Brothers, The Oak Ridge Boys, George Jones, The Temptations, Smokey Robinson, Dierks Bentley, Mark Chesnutt, Jim Ed Brown, Confederate Railroad, Johnny Rodriguez, Donny Osmond, Sam Moore, Tom T. Hall, JoDee Messina, Doug Kershaw, Holly Dunn, Buddy Jewell, Ricky Van Shelton, Billy Ray Cyrus, Ronnie McDowell, Terri Clark, Randy Travis, Porter Wagoner, Jeannie Seely, Ricochet, Barbara Fairchild, T.G. Sheppard, Helen Cornelius, Ty Herndon, Wanda Jackson, Jack Greene, Clay Walker, T. Graham Brown, Tommy Overstreet, Janie Fricke, Crystal Gayle, Aaron Tippin, Moe Bandy, David Frizzell, Gene Watson, Mickey Gilley, Johnny Lee, Ronnie Milsap, and many others. With a career always on the move, great things are certainly around the corner. The musical blend of voices that were born to sing together, the sense of humor that only a sibling could get away with, complimented by the best in upbeat country songs, make for a great show.

Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not, what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
When we graduated high school, our parents told us we needed to get full-time jobs. We had done clerical work in the past, so we were looking under “Typists” in the KC Star want ads. Right below “Typists” was “Vocalists.” We answered the ad, auditioned, and got the gig singing with a female Elvis impersonator. We performed at various clubs in the Kansas City area. Before long, the band suggested we start our group, and we officially decided to go “on the road.” Our dad was totally against it. He thought it was a phase we were going through, although we had sung all through high school, in choirs, and at church. He just wasn’t ready for his teenage daughters to get in a van and travel the country with a group of male musicians in a rock & roll band. He told us that if we were still singing “professionally” in a year, he would know we were serious and would come to see us perform. Of course, we kept at it (and have never stopped), and he did see us perform (in Joplin, MO), and we think he was proud of us. Since then, we have traveled all across the country and all over the world. There have been many challenges and obstacles over the years.

We dealt with bar owners, club and road managers, and many other male authority figures as young women long before the #MeToo movement. That being said, without too much elaboration, we have survived and developed a tough exterior. We’re careful about who we trust. We were also on the road long before everyone had a cell phone with access to GPS, social media, and instant contact (except for an occasional “Breaker 1-9” on our CB radios). We had to depend on hard copy maps or stopping at gas stations to ask for directions, and upcoming show announcements were mainly via print ads or word of mouth. We did a lot of popular cover songs at the time (like Heart, Pat Benatar, Fleetwood Mac, etc.), and there was no such thing as pulling up lyrics online. We would put quarters in the jukebox at the clubs we played and rehearsed in, and just kept playing them over & over until we thought we had the lyrics written down correctly to learn them. We have had a police escort out of town (after being robbed and threatened by the local riff-raff), slept in a roadside park, and experienced numerous transportation failures (esp. with a beat-up ’64 Ford Bluebird school bus), and have seen the best and worst of people we have encountered in our travels. A lot has changed, but we have always tried to stay cautiously curious and keep up with the times.

Thanks – so what else should our readers know about your work and what you’re currently focused on?
We were on the road performing for 5 years straight, only going home (to Belton, MO) about 6 weeks out of the year to take a break. After our band broke up, we decided to move to Nashville and pursue our dream of singing country music. Again, our parents were worried. We were moving to a place we knew little about, but mom packed up a couple of grocery bags of food for us, and we were on our way to Music City!  We stayed in motels for a while (in parts of Nashville where we wouldn’t think about staying now), then started working temp jobs and got an apartment. Between the two of us, we ended up working at over 100 different companies through temp work, and we were still playing gigs around Nashville and on the road. Eventually, through the temp service, we were hired full-time – Carrie at a booking agency, World Class Talent, and Debbie at BMI (Broadcast Music, Inc.). We continued to play gigs on the weekends, taking vacation/sick days during the week to perform with our band, and eventually, as the opening act for the Statler Brothers tour.