Kip Moore needs his own TV show.
The master songwriter loves to live on the wild side, and as he says, he will always try something once. From his passion for surfing and traveling the world to being the seeming “yes man” in many of his friends’ lives, Kip Moore is guaranteed to have some of the craziest stories in country music. But unlike many other artists who have crazy stories from a night out, Kip’s will feature some wild events that often occur in a foreign country as he and his friends are exploring the land.
Moore recently appeared on the Big D & Bubba radio show to discuss his latest record, Solitary Tracks. While they discussed the impressive record, one part of the interview took charge as Moore detailed a run-in he once had with the cartel.
“I had a buddy of mine that called me to do a motorcycle ride from L.A. to the bottom of Baja. So the whole way, we didn’t just take the coastline on the Gulf side, like we would go to the Middle Country and then to the West side and East side, we were all over the place. Might take us about 9 days.
And we had a guy that trailed us, he would stay within 10-15 miles. You know, he paid this guy, who was connected with the cartel, just to keep an eye on us.
The man who was tailing Moore and his friend was not there the whole time, though. On day 2 or 3 of the trip, their “security” finally met up with them when the route began to get a little questionable… AKA more dangerous. While Moore and his buddy thought they were being smart to do this, they were surprised to have a run-in with a character early on in the trip when they did not yet have safety personnel near them.
“We pulled into this gas station at one point, maybe 10 hours into the trip, in this little town, and we were getting gas, and I see this guy drive by on the highway. He’s got a bandana over his face, and I can see he’s got a sleeveless vest on; couldn’t see the back.
Then he drives back by, he’s looking at us. And I’m already, you know, just my common sense is like ‘we need to get, we need to fill up quick and get out of here.’ By buddy’s getting a Coke, and I’m like, ‘drink that effin’ Coke, and let’s go,’ you know.
He pulls up in there, and he just plops right beside us at the gas pump. He’s got a Vagos jacket on, which just makes the Hell’s Angels look like puppies… the most notorious gang in the world, and he just nodded at the highway like, ‘Get to moving,’ and I said, ‘You got it, buddy.'”
Moore and his friend hit the highway as the sun set, hightailing it to their rest stop for the night, as these were not roads you’d want to travel when it’s dark out.
“We hit that highway, and I bet we were cooking at 110-115 for, I don’t know, maybe 30 minutes straight through the mountains. I mean, it was pretty intense. I just didn’t know if there was any kind of call out on us or anything, and they guy wasn’t with us yet.”
When their “security” met up with them the following day, Moore and his friend met him for breakfast at a local restaurant. As the men all sat down to eat Moore looked around and saw these giant family style tabled filled with folks dressed to the nines, also clocking that he and his friend were the “only gringos” in the building.
“I asked the guy that’s kind of keeping an eye on us, I said, ‘Let me ask you something. Is there any cartel in this place?’ Because it felt that way. I don’t know much, but all the stuff I’ve seen was just everybody dressed so, so good, and all these families, tons of kids.
And he just laughed, and he goes, ‘Whole place is cartel, man.’ And I was like, OHHH. It was just intense, but everybody was so great to us, but once again, I was like, we need to get moving.”
Although, Moore thought the moments were intense when he was in the presence of cartel members, he also recalled how cool it was how tight-knit these families were in this part of the country and how kindly he was treated. Later, he detailed his experience staying at a bed and breakfast and how the children were helping their parents run the operation.
Big D then says that he’d pay good money to see GoPro footage of these events, noting that Kip Moore needs his own TV show. I 100% agree with this.
The whole interview is well worth the listen as Moore details a few other wild excursions he’s recently had.
Check it out.
While you’re here, also fire up the latest Whiskey Riff Raff episode, in which we sat down with Moore to talk about Solitary Tracks and much more.
