Andrew Moore and Hooch Bring a Golf Legend Into the Studio on "Mountain" Album
John Daly heard "Tyrant" for the first time when Andrew Moore played it live in front of him at an event, and Daly's reaction, telling Moore the song had touched his heart, ended up shaping the entire trajectory of this album. The golf legend didn't just offer praise. He exchanged numbers, stepped in as co-producer alongside Nick Autry, and called in a favor from his friend, Grammy-winning artist Dan Tyminski, to feature on the track. That's an unusual origin story for a country song, and it gives "Mountain" a genuine sense of unpredictability behind its polish.
Moore wrote every lyric and every melody across the album's thirteen tracks himself, working with producers Jason Groves and Justine Blazer alongside Daly and Autry. That range of collaborators shows in how the record moves between different emotional registers. "Peace Love and Harmony (Live at the Record Shop)" strips things down deliberately, built around a direct plea for kindness rather than a polished studio arrangement, while "Tyrant" carries the weight of its unlikely celebrity connection into something more anthemic.
The band recorded across five studios, including Nashville's Sound Stage Studios, where Johnny Cash, George Strait, and Waylon Jennings have all worked, and captured everything in a live format rather than piecing tracks together digitally. That choice matters here.
Live-format recording leaves less room to hide imperfection, and the band leaned into that risk directly, even letting spontaneous decisions shape the finished product, like building the chorus of "Tasmanian Devil" entirely from percussion instruments found in a studio closet.
"Mountain" asks listeners to trust an album built partly on genuine chance encounters and improvised studio decisions, and Andrew Moore and Hooch earn that trust through nearly two years of deliberate work, resulting in a record ambitious enough to already carry Grammy consideration and thirteen Josie Music Award nominations behind it.
