Justin Moore Pens a Love Letter to the Land He Calls Home on New Song 'This Is My Dirt' (Exclusive)

Justin Moore would never knock Nashville — he just could never live there. 

"It was never my intention when I moved to Nashville to live there forever," Moore, 39, tells PEOPLE about his time living in Music City at the beginning of his career. "I always just looked at it like a necessary part of my journey while I was trying to achieve my dreams."

Of course, many of those dreams did end up coming true, but they came true in the multiplatinum country hitmaker’s home state of Arkansas.

"I was always pushing and looking for an opportunity where the timing made sense for us to come back home," remembers Moore, who recently scored his 12th No. 1 with "You, Me, and Whiskey” (feat. Priscilla Block). "I came home one day from being on the road and my wife [Kate] goes, ‘Hey, you ready to move home? I had been asking her for years and I just had to wait until she was ready. A week later, we had already found a house and moved back home."

And for Moore, that move back to his hometown ultimately saved his career. "I would not still be doing this for a living if I didn't live here," Moore says from his home office of his Arkansas home. "I just wasn't happy. I don't think you can perform your best at your craft unless you're happy. It was the right move for us, and it's been wonderful."

Today, Moore coaches his kids in their sports and attends the church he was baptized in. "It sounds like a cliché country song,” Moore admits with a laugh. "But it’s true."

Make no mistake – Moore has never been one to release anything even resembling a cliché country song. Instead, the hitmaker of achingly honest songs such as "We Didn’t Have Much" and "The Ones That Didn’t Make It Back Home” has found a way to deliver a musical tapestry of relatable stories that hit the heart in the places that most try to hide from the world.

And he does it again with his new single “This Is My Dirt,” a heartfelt ode to the legacy of family that Moore wrote alongside Paul DiGiovanni, Randy Montana and Jeremy Stover. The heartfelt song also serves as the first taste of Moore's next album, coming later this year.

"My grandfather passed away just over a year and a half ago,” states Moore about the circumstances leading up to the truthful lyrical backbone of the song. “He was raised here. He got the land from his mother who died when he was born. This land has been in the family since the mid 1800s. It’s the land I grew up on too. I ultimately inherited the land from him."

And it’s this land in which Moore, his wife Kate and their four children now live on, and the land that Moore says he can’t imagine ever letting go of. In fact, a line in "This Is My Dirt" refers to that very fact as Moore sings the words that he would "hate to be the first to sell it."

"Look, when my wife and I are long gone, my kids know that they are taken care of and there'll be stuff they can sell, but my [eldest] daughter knows this [land] is never to be sold,” Moore says.  

He draws in a deep breath while fidgeting with a homemade bracelet wrapped around his left wrist.  “My 12-year-old made me this,” says Moore, who will hit the road with Cody Johnson starting on Jan. 19.  “She and my oldest have really gotten into making these. This one says, ‘Go Hogs.'" He laughs. "They know me and they know how much I love them, and how much I love it here.”