Moody, like other singer-songwriters his age, spent his high school years playing a coffee shop circuit yet maintained as low a profile as possible out of necessity. Coming from a family that didn't quite know how to interpret Moody's folk storytelling, which often touches on raw, emotive subjects, his parents tended to dismiss his musical ventures.

"I kept it a secret until like my senior year of high school," Moody says. "I get the fact that your parents aren't going to be completely down with you getting paid very little money and playing shows and trying to make it. I feel like that's not really any parent's dream."

Fulfilling dreams or not, Moody's sound borders on precocious, spinning stories of heartache and geographic isolation into something well beyond his years. As an earmark of folk tradition, his lyricism is straightforward, but the underpinnings to his songs are the result of a natural ear, often using angular chord arrangements that attract as much attention as his singing does.

"The Balcony Scene is my way of putting something that everyone feels into a really simple but emotional way," he says. "I don't ever expect any of my songs to really touch someone until I actually hear someone tell me that."