Mikey Moore finds himself at a crossroads, musically. Having left the up-and-coming worship band he founded, The Exchange, about a year ago, the Seattle-area artist took some time to process and pray through his next steps, and now finds himself staring at multiple opportunities to build the Church with expressions of worship. 

Whether he's leading worship for congregations at various churches around the Northwest, working with Brandon Bee's new worship collective, or producing his own music, Moore finds himself with the exciting problem of having several big opportunities in front of him. 

One of those opportunities, and passions, is the new music he's been making. With an album forthcoming and two singles just released, Moore is making worshipful, catchy pop/rock that will attract fans of OneRepublic, Daughtry and the like.

On the heels of his second single release, "Make Your Home," I caught up with Moore to introduce him to the NRT audience and to find out more about these various passions.
 
Tell us about yourself. You're going solo after being lead singer of The Exchange. 

I've been doing a lot in the last year or two, lots of changes, lots of switch-ups. I was part of [worship band] The Exchange and kind of parted ways with them back in October and decided just for a month or two to take a break and reevaluate and see what I wanted to do, see what God wanted me to do. I wasn't really entirely sure what my next move was.

After about a month or two finally after prayer and consideration, decided maybe I should start out and start doing my own solo stuff again. So I came out with a Christmas EP and just kind of threw myself out there, saying I'm doing music still.

Since then I have just been leading worship at churches around the state and then writing and recording, trying to gear up to complete an album.
 
You'd done solo stuff before? Had you put out any kind of record or anything solo prior?

No. I did when I was 15 years old, but I don't really consider that. That was an investment my parents made in me when I was younger to kind of encourage me to keep doing music.

They spent way too much money on a record for me, well five song EP, on me and I wish they wouldn't have spent so much money, but it definitely encouraged me to keep doing music.

How would you feel your time with the band has prepared you for what you're doing now?

I think being with The Exchange for four years, from starting a band to turning it into a group that was semi-successful, was really important. I think being on the road for a little bit and getting some experience traveling and meeting new people and learning how to call hundreds of churches and getting only a few yeses, putting together shows and marketing helps a lot now. 

I think just being in a group, the people you surround yourself, especially if they're good at what they do, which the people in the band were great at design and great at arrangement in songs, you learn how to be better at those things as well. So it really prepared me even though I'm still not the best at marketing, design, stuff like that, it taught me how to be better in those areas.

It also helped my songwriting. I really learned a lot from being in a band with great musicians how to write better parts, how to lyrically write music that's more relevant, that's going to connect with the most people. When you're on your own sometimes you run songs by your wife or a friend or something and they may have an opinion. It may not be the best song for connecting with the multitude of people, but when you're in a group of guys they're like , "We need to rewrite that."

Again, there are pros and cons. I think the best part of being in the group was just bouncing ideas off other people and having them tell you if we're good or not.
 
You mentioned your wife, who's obviously a big creative partner as well as a logistical one, obviously. Talk about your home life, your day job, your family life, your church life. Talk about that side.

I work at Trader Joe's back home here. I absolutely love it. It's a great place to work and so that's kind of my day job until music is my day job. I enjoy working there. It's flexible, which is really nice. My wife is hugely supportive of everything that I do musically and travels with me and is a huge creative aspect. She kind of is my voice of reason when it comes to certain stuff, which is great. She helps me think through things.

Then I'm also on staff at a church here in my hometown, but I also travel to different churches filling in for their worship leaders that either go on vacation or they need a Sunday filled if they're sick or something like that. There's actually about eight or nine churches over the course of the last five years that I've been heavily connected with where they'll call me.

So brand new churches will call me from referrals or I'll just call some churches. The cool thing about it is I have a day job and I'm on staff here at church, but I get to actually be kind of have an apostolic ministry where I'm going and I'm encouraging churches and getting to share my heart with these churches that I go to and it's a lot of fun. I really enjoy it.

It's still all pretty local, so it's like this Church of Washington mission.

It's pretty cool. I feel connected. I feel like I have eight or nine home churches, which is really awesome.
 
For those who've never heard you or even what you did with The Exchange, talk about your musical style, what people can expect from hearing your music.

People who have never heard me, I think when they hear my solo stuff they're going to hear a lot of a OneRepublic kind of sound in there. It's going to be more piano-driven, so a lot of The Fray, OneRepublic. You've got a little bit of rock in there, so you could even throw some Remedy Drive in there, maybe even a little bit of Tenth Avenue North. Ryan Tedder is the lead singer of OneRepublic and his vocal style is something that I have really taken a liking to, so that'll probably be what is thrown in the mix a lot as I start to write my new solo stuff.

You've released two singles so far: "Saving Grace" and "Make Your Home." Talk about those for a second.

Those two songs are written by me and my buddy down in Nashville. His name is Bryson Breakey and me and him have been great friends for quite a few years now and he's kind of my artistic partner in crime. To record those songs I went down to Nashville and me and him drove to Texas and hooked up with our buddy Brooks Pascal, who's the former lead singer, actually current singer now again of Sullivan, who used to be on Tooth and Nail Records.

So me and Bryson and Brooks kind of all came together and hashed out these songs and lyrically I wanted to go deeper than I have been with The Exchange and with my previous solo work. I wanted to kind of hit areas that are talked about, like grace is talked about all the time, but the idea of actually implementing and using grace in everyday life sometimes gets lost in the mix. It's talked about, but not used and I wanted to actually show the idea of the prodigal son in "Saving Grace" especially, but the idea of the prodigal son thrown in with the idea of God's grace for us on a practical level.

Like I said, grace is talked about a lot, but not used a lot. I wanted to lyrically in my solo stuff go deeper than I had before and then like I said my friend Bryson, in these two songs, kind of helped flush this out and make them great songs. I think they turned out fantastic. I'm happy with them, but it makes me excited for the stuff we're going to create in the days to come.

And "Make Your Move" just released on August 26th...

It's on iTunes, but I also mainly released it on NoiseTrade just as a way for people to go on, download it for free, or donate if they wanted to. I wanted to make it a choice.
 
What is next for you? What are you getting excited about? What's on the horizon?

To be honest, the horizon is kind of vague, but not in a bad way. I'm kind of taking it day by day right now just because there are so many directions I could go. I'm with The Responding at Crossroads Church in Vancouver. I'm working with Brandon. He's actually one of the head music guys over at Crossroads right now. He's putting together this group called The Responding and we're recording I think two records in the next two years, so our first record is coming out here soon and we've got another record I think coming out next year or the year after that. I'm not sure. Kind of tentative.

So yeah, I'm working with The Responding. I'm doing my church ministry where I'm traveling and then I've also got my solo stuff. I used to be really anxious about trying to figure out what I'm  going to do next. I think I've kind of let it go and just taken it day by day and going, "God, whatever you have in front of me right now, I'm just going to go after, and whether that be The Responding one week or my solo music the next week, I'm going to put 100 percent in all of them." But at the same time whatever direction it goes, whether I start to do The Responding more, my solo work more, or the church ministry more, I want to be open to not being stuck in my mind as to what I have to do. I want to make sure that I don't have my own desires and my own goals in the way of maybe what God may be leading me to do just because I'm headstrong on one idea.

How can we be praying for you?

The biggest thing to be praying for is that I would continue to trust in the Lord knowing that He sees the bird's eye view of my life and that even though when I can't see a week or two out when I'd like to, that He sees the big picture and so just trusting and continually trusting that God knows exactly what needs to happen and I don't have to worry about it.