Family and finances make strange, but necessary, bedfellows.
Parents want to provide for their kids, but too much working can create distance between the breadwinner and everyone at home. Conversely, if there’s not enough income, that has its own intensity, particularly at the end of the month.
Against that backdrop, Niko Moon offers “Rich Man,” a song he wrote on the road in the Midwest. Touring successfully is a goal for nearly every working artist, but the separation that goes with it makes that interplay between the people and the pocketbook even more pronounced.
“Every time I leave,” Moon says, “my little four-year-old girl runs and she wraps her arms around me, and she holds so tight she just won’t let go. I go on the road every weekend for three or four days, and then I’m home for three or four days, so I’m on the road about half of my life, and it’s never easy. I mean, my heart breaks every three days, you know, because I gotta leave her. But I know I got to because I gotta take care of her, provide for her, you know, be a good dad in that way.”
One way Moon decided to maximize his time at home was to do his songwriting on the road during 2025, creating his entire Roots album — released July 17 by Happy Cowboy/EMPIRE — during the American Palm Tour. It launched Oct. 2 at Joe’s Live in Rosemont, Ill., just outside of Chicago. Moon asked songwriter-producer Danny Majic (Shaboozey, Jacob Hackworth) to join him, and Majic in turn suggested they bring along songwriter Fraser Churchill (“Black Like Me,” “High Heels”), who was impressed by the whole songwriting operation.
“Danny and I would go into the dressing room, and as the guys were building the stage and getting sound checked, we would set up speakers in Niko’s dressing room, and we would get the laptop up, and we would start working on songs,” Churchill remembers. “I’ve never seen it done that efficiently. Niko is touring his current album while he’s writing his next album.”
They started “Rich Man” at that first tour stop, toying with a love-over-money concept. Churchill locked into a hypnotic, midtempo riff on acoustic guitar that resonated with the other two, and it laid the foundation for the rest of the song.
“That whole riff kind of pervades the entire song,” Moon says. “I didn’t want it to just be something that only happened in hook moments. I wanted it to kind of continue constantly throughout the song, so you’ll notice in the verses and choruses, even when it’s not the focus, we kind of filter it down and kind of take it underwater and let it live below the surface a little bit in the background.”
The process wasn’t particularly orderly, but they got the chorus melody down first, dropping the title forcefully into the first line of that chorus, which automatically gave some direction to the rest of the words and melody.
“When he goes to that ‘rich man’ note, we don’t want anything to outshine that,” Majic says.
Moon fashioned the first lines of the song’s melody around portions of the core riff, ending that opening line with four notes of tension and release. And the accompanying plot celebrated his other half’s positive influence — a one-bedroom condo feels like a 10-acre lot, a beat-up bass boat feels like a yacht. The guy has something — he’s not homeless — but he realizes his tangible property is better with her intangibles in his life.
“I love writing songs for your average Joe,” Majic says. “Country in general is about that. It appeals to the working-class person, you know, and I think we have that in the back of our heads when we’re thinking about it.”
Those opening lines were highly rhythmic, but as they moved toward the chorus, they shifted into a pre-chorus that relied on a contrasting legato melody. The chorus took the opposite tack, leaning on a long note at the beginning and growing more rhythmic as it wound toward the hook. “I like to play those [melodic phrases] back and forth,” Moon notes, “so that the ear isn’t ever getting bored.”
Moon wanted the set-up line for that hook to value holding hands over holding checks, though it took some wrangling to make all the syllables align with the existing melody. “We loved the idea of ‘as long as I’m holding your hand, I’d be a rich man,’” Churchill recalls, “so we were working on that line before ‘rich man’ to really make it fit. We must have spent 30 minutes, maybe an hour, on that line.”
It was a good start, though there were parts that needed more work, so they addressed it further the next day, wrapping “Rich Man” in Chesterfield, Mo. While Moon played the show that night, Majic and Churchill closed the door to the green room and recorded a demo with as little concert sound as possible in the background competing with Churchill’s lead vocal.
Majic programmed the drums and other instruments, and after returning to Nashville, he brought in Jonny Fung to redo many of the parts, including Dobro and electric guitar. They initially replaced Churchill’s acoustic guitar, but the original part seemed more inspired, so Churchill remained on the track. Moon sang the final vocals at Majic’s studio, but he also felt it needed a guitar solo, so they had Fung fit in a simple one that’s mostly atmospheric.
When Moon’s team decided to make it a single, they asked Majic to swap out the programmed drums for a human drummer, so he brought in Evan Hutchings to create the deeper sound, and he brought in Tim Galloway to play bass alongside the new beats. In that setting, Galloway’s performance during the solo section is more more athletic than the lead guitar part, a tactic which is a tad atypical in country.
“It’s usually the other way around,” Moon says. “But something about the solo doing those longer holds made it feel more epic, you know. It feels like it’s soaring.”
In the process, “Rich Man” enhances a longstanding theme in country music about prioritizing people over profit. It’s part of the story, in one way or another, in Dolly Parton’s “Coat of Many Colors,” Loretta Lynn’s “Coal Miner’s Daughter,” John Anderson’s “Money in the Bank,” Clay Walker’s “If I Could Make a Living” and Rosanne Cash’s “Ain’t No Money.”
The Aug. 25 release to country radio has “Rich Man” playing already on WQMX Akron, Ohio; KKTC Taos, N.M.; KQKI Bayou City, Morgan City, La.; WWQM Madison, Wis.; and WXBM Pensacola, Fla., renewing a message that repeatedly wins with the audience.
“It’s the kind of thing that we love to be reminded of,” Moon reasons: “what’s really important in life.”
