Kolton Moore & the Clever Few - First Show Ever in NYC - Mercury Lounge - October 22, 2025

Photos by Brian Andrews (Lone Pine Media)

Before tour, you make lots of plans for what you’ll do: How many places you’ll visit, how many people you’ll talk to, how many social media posts you’ll make, how many videos you’ll make.

Then you get on tour, and reality sets in. Putting on shows is hard work, so it’s tough to get as much sleep as you need. You take care of the basics (showering, eating, laundry, setting up for shows, playing shows, tearing down and loading out after shows), and realize you don’t have as much time or energy as you thought you would. So you take care of some essentials (sending emails about the upcoming shows, thanking people on socials for coming, moving photos and videos to the external hard drive, etc), and all of a sudden the day is over and you accomplished maybe 50% of your to-do list.

That’s just like life, I think. I’ve always been a little envious of people who seem to be ok with just sitting and relaxing. That was never my way, though. I get bored after too long. I’ve always dreamed of exploring, building things, seeing the world, experiencing as much as I can in the time I have between birth and death. I’m trying to get better about living in the moment and not thinking too long about all the things I want to do.

Kolton Moore & the Clever Few - First Show Ever in NYC - Mercury Lounge - October 22, 2025

Photos by Brian Andrews (Lone Pine Media)

NYC Walkabout October 23, 2025

We got to play our first ever show in NYC last week at Mercury Lounge! It was an amazing show and I’ve got some pictures from our photographer Brian to share of that, but first, here’s some that I took the following day when we had a day off to spend walking around the city.

We caught a fun street show in Times Square, got a pretty good slice of pizza, walked around Central Park for a bit, saw the new Louis Vuitton building, and then I broke from the group to go on a side quest to get spicy dan dan noodles at Very Fresh Noodles, bought a super cool blue velvet overshirt at Marine Layer, got a coffee at Do Not Feed Alligators, rode the subway down to the Financial District and then rode a bike up along the water to Chinatown to meet up with the boys for dinner at Uncle Lou’s. Then we all caught a bus back to where our tour bus was parked in Secaucus NJ.

Overall, just a super fun day in the city.

You Should Feed the Bots

A week ago, I set up an infinite nonsense crawler trap – now it makes up 99% of my server’s traffic. What surprised me is that feeding scrapers garbage is the cheapest and easiest thing I could do.

Really excited to be back on the road! I meant to post about this sooner, but I’ve been working my ass off for the past couple of months getting everything ready for this tour and our album release. But now we’re on the road!

As I’m writing this, it’s 9:05 PM and I’m sitting in the green room at Richmond Music Hall in Richmond, VA. It’s our first time ever playing in Richmond! So far the tour has been really fun, we’ve played shows in Birmingham, Nashville, Knoxville, Chattanooga, and Charlotte. Tonight is Richmond, tomorrow night is Washington DC, and then we’re on to Pennsylvania, New York, Ohio and Michigan next week.

I’m also trying something new this tour: Being almost completely sober. Besides a couple small beers during a late morning walk at Anakeesta in Gatlinburg on a day off, and a couple small glasses of wine, I haven’t been drinking since the start of September. And I have to say, it’s made a world of difference for my mood and my energy. I’ve felt for awhile that I needed to stop drinking, so I’m glad I finally cut alcohol out almost completely. I wake up feeling rested every day, the work feels easier, and just feel way better overall. I haven’t weighed myself recently, but I think I’m dropping a few pounds too. In short, it feels amazing!

I still feel incredibly grateful to be able to have the opportunity to tour and play shows, and I’m hoping to write up an article with some helpful advice and things I’ve learned about it soon.

But that’s all for now!

Visit www.koltonmoore.com to see upcoming shows!