Wakefield Singer/Songwriter, Using Music to Cope With Mental Illness, Set on Making it As a Musician

It took Wakefield Kevin Moore 36 years to tell anyone that he had been struggling with mental illness.

“It was bad,” he said. “I went through a lot because of it, years of homelessness and everything, because I couldn’t live a normal life,” he said.

 Moore, who was emotionally tormented for most of his child and adult life by the illness,  has been diagnosed with bipolar disorder with psychosis. Now, years after undergoing treatment and medication, he said it’s his music that helps him the most.

“It just clears my mind,” he said. “Sometimes my mind will be going too fast, and I’ll hear things and see things, but if I play music it all goes away.”

Since re-discovering his love for music in 2007, Moore has been able to put his past behind him and concentrate on making it as a musician. 

Troubles Lead to Music
Moore, a native Wakefield resident, said he was first drawn to music when he was 13 years old.

“I was walking by the and I heard this music, so I went in,” he said.

Inside, he said he heard a woman with a beautiful voice playing and singing, "The Ballad of Waltzing Matilda."

"I was hooked from then on," he said. "I had just taken up guitar so I went home and wrote a bunch of songs, and started performing,”

After graduating from in 1991, Moore decided in 1997 to move to Anchorage, Alaska, where he ended up working for the Boys and Girls Club as an art and music teacher. While living in Alaska, he met a woman and had a son, Tyler. He self-recorded and produced two CDs, The Basement Folk LP, 2006 and Chapters, 2007, but said he still wasn't taking his career as a musician seriously.

Moore lived in Anchorage for 10 years, but his struggles with his disorder and the time he spent in and out of psychiatric hospitals eventually proved too much for him to handle on his own. He sent Tyler to live with his sister back in Wakefield, and after a few years, moved back to Massachusetts to be closer to Tyler and his family.

It was only when he moved back to the east coast that Moore refocused himself on music. After his return, he first lived in Bridgewater, where he met Greg Lee and Andrea Mason at a music club.

 “I had been eavesdropping on their conversation, because I had a bit of a crush on Andrea," he said with a grin. "So I butted in and talked to them about folk music, and they went and got their guitars and had me play for them right there,” he said.

 The two were impressed, and the three performers started a trio group that played around Taunton, Bridgewater and Rhode Island a few times a week.

“They were the ones that said you are good, you should be pursuing this, which felt good,” he said. “I knew it was true, because I thought they were really good, and they wanted to play with me.”

Making it as a Musician
Moore has been making music since then, playing shows all the way from Portland, ME to New York City, wherever he is able to get a gig. Locally, he’s played at the Linden Tree Coffee House on Main Street in Wakefield, and has played several times at a coffee house venue in Melrose.

Through all the gigs, he’s developed his singer/songwriter sound, which is influenced by such performers as Cat Stevens and Lucy Kaplanski. He says his music is most influenced by life’s difficult situations, including his own.

Although most of Moore’s songs are sad, he also tries to challenge himself by taking sad situations and giving them a happier angle. So goes his most popular song – and, favorite song to play – “That’s my child.”

 “It’s about a father whose daughter died, and he talks to God about how great his daughter was,” he said. “I wanted to take the worst thing that could happen to you and make a non-sad song about it. I like the challenge.”

Moore said that particular song generates the most response from the audience.

“Once I even had a woman come up to me and tell me I didn’t write it - she said she had heard it somewhere else before,” he said, noting that he wasn’t sure whether or not to take the comment as a compliment.

Performances
This weekend, Moore is scheduled to headline a show in Lexington, at the Starbucks at 60 Bedford St. The show begins at 5 p.m. and Moore plays at 7 p.m.

Although the gigs aren’t yet  bringing in enough money to pay the bills, Moore said he is completely dedicated to performing and developing his craft. He released his third CD, a live album, called “Live in New England,” last year, and said he is doing his best to make it, both for himself, and for the people out there with which he hopes to connect.

“When I was going through a hard time and I heard others singing about hard times, it made me feel better, so that’s what I want to do for other people,” he said.