Dennis Moore & the Voice of Reason – Rabbits at the Controls (2024)

Dennis Moore found his songwriting voice in New Orleans, when a one-night visit on a post-college road trip turned into 10 months of total immersion in the city’s rich musical traditions.
Decades later, when the pandemic ground live music to a halt, Moore recruited some of the Crescent City’s finest, along with other personal favorites, forming a virtual supergroup of his own to make the record that had always been dancing around his head. Among the guest players are drummer Stanton Moore and guitarist Marc Ford, along with Moore’s longtime San Francisco band, The Swamees. Rabbits at the Controls, released to coincide with Moore’s 50th birthday, is a record channeled through New Orleans, mixing swampy funk, greasy soul, Southern rock and psychedelia. Imagine a Jazz Fest stage hosting back-to-back sets by The Meters and The Black Crowes. Officially, the album is by Dennis Moore and the Voice of Reason, the band name selected to convey the sense of so many distinct parts coming together in balance. “It feels like I’ve been working on this record my whole life,” Moore says. “It’s me in
musical form and I’ve never been able to capture the sound in my head as well as I could on this record.”