Riley Green: Who Shaped His Life And Music
Riley Green gave a special concert last night (10/12) in Nashville at the Walk of Fame Park just outside of the Bridgestone Arena. Fans and music industry folks got a preview of his new album Ain’t My Last Rodeo, which is out today (10/13). Green sang all the songs from the album and some fan favorites for the packed lawn of people gathered in downtown Nashville.
His new album has a song directly inspired by a big influence in his life: his grandparents. I asked Riley earlier this week about the song “They Don’t Make ’em Like That No More” and about his grandparents, who are no longer with us. Green said, “‘They Don’t Make ’em Like That No More.’ I wrote probably a year and a half ago, and it was right after my grandmother Nancy passed away. Obviously, my family ties and my Grandaddy comes out in a lot of my songs. This one was really kind of geared toward that way of life and the values they had and how things were back then and even just me as a kid running around with them.”
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He added, “They had a huge influence on me musically and also just as a person. So, it’s cool to be able to write songs about them and hear people sing them back to me and make them about their own lives and their own family members.”
Green’s grandparents played a big part in shaping him musically and personally. He told me, “I give a lot of credit to my grandparents for how I turned out and my music career and my success here. My grandaddy Buford was a really witty guy and wrote poems, and I think I would have really made a great songwriter. He really gave me the passion for country music, especially the traditional story-telling country music.”
He concluded, “I probably at the time didn’t realize that they were teaching me lessons to use down the road in life.”
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