Riley Green is going out on a headlining tour after spending the summer opening stadium shows for Luke Combs. He just announced his new album, due out in October. His first success in country music came in 2018 with his single “There Was This Girl,” and he released an album on Big Machine Records, Different’ Round Here, in September 2019.
Green is a country boy raised in Jacksonville, Alabama, and his songs often reflect the influences of his life growing up in a small town in the South. He is known by the nickname “Duckman,” which he got due to his love of duck hunting.
Riley told us recently that traveling around the country is a plus for a hunter like himself. He said, “My favorite thing about huntin’ in general is goin’ somewhere that you would never go otherwise. That’s the one thing I like about playin’ music, too. I tell my buddies all the time, like we ended up in Silas, Alabama, down at this little hole in the wall bar and riding home, I was like, ‘Man, you know, we would never see half the stuff we see if it wasn’t for me playin’ music.’ And hunting’s the same way.”
He added, “It’s a different thing to go do than sittin’ on the couch watchin’ TV or going to a ball game or anything else, to go out and get in the woods and watch the sun come up. I enjoy that part of gettin’ out and doin’ somethin’ that’s a little bit different.”
In fact, he and Thomas Rhett went duck hunting before they recorded their #1 song, “Half of Me,” together. Green told us in the same interview that before he joined Thomas on the duet, he spent a lot of time with Thomas’ dad, Rhett Akins. “Before I even knew Thomas, I’d written with Rhett quite a bit. Obviously, he’s a big hunter/outdoorsman, so we hit it off. I think the first time we wrote, we talked about hunting for two hours and didn’t even write a song.”
He added, “And then, I ran into Thomas at an awards show, and he mentioned he wanted to go duck huntin’. I hadn’t ever been, and I guess I was the guy. It was pretty natural for us. We like a lot of the same stuff, and I think a lot of great stories and great songs come from a huntin’ camp.”
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