Guitarist

Guitarist Clay Moore was born in Texas and grew up there and in Florida. He was fascinated by music from a very young age and began cutting school at 9 years old to listen to his parents’ eclectic collection of folk, blues, country, classical, and jazz albums. Pop radio, older friends, and his older sister’s Columbia Record Club membership introduced him to yet more sounds, and he started trying to teach himself the rock and blues sounds he was hearing on his father’s Gibson acoustic guitar at age 16. A year later he took a class at his high school with El Paso, TX jazz guitar master Curt Warren, and also signed up for music theory, the only student in the class with no prior formal training. By the end of his senior year in high school Clay decided to pursue a career as a jazz guitarist, inspired by artists such as Wes Montgomery, Charlie Christian, George Benson, Joe Pass, and Pat Martino. He played his first paid gig that May, a year and 9 months after first picking up the instrument.

In the following years Clay studied, practiced, and played in various types of bands across the US and in Edinburgh, Scotland. He has performed and or recorded with Luciano Pavarotti, Doc Severinsen, Joey DeFrancesco, Rick Margitza, Wayne Newton, Peter Erskine, Ernie Watts, Randy Brecker, Lennie White, Larry Gatlin, and many others. He released three CD’s under his own name, Meeting Standards, To A Tee, and Damelo!

In 2018 Clay and his family moved to Louisville, KY, where he plays freelance and is the regular guitarist with the Derby City Dandies, Side-Eye Hippo, the Brooks Giles group, and Hora Certa.