Riley Green Recalls The ‘Eye-Opening Moment’ That Convinced Him To Pursue Country Music

Riley Green | Barefoot Country Music Fest

For Riley Green, there is one clear career-defining moment that stands out far above the rest for him. The singer-songwriter was making a decent living in construction, while making money on the side playing weekends at a local restaurant.

“I was playing a Mexican restaurant in Jacksonville, Alabama every week for about $150 a night,” Johnson recalls on Southern Living‘s Biscuits & Jam podcast (via Country Now). “And there would be 50, 60 people in there. I did that for about eight years.”

Green might have continued doing that, and working in construction, if not for the encouragement from someone from a much larger venue, specifically Iron City in Birmingham. It was more than 70 miles away from where Green was playing week after week.

It’s an invitation Green initially turned down.

“I said, ‘Man, that place holds 1,300 people. It’ll be empty, you know?’”Green recalls. “And finally he talked me into coming down there, and I think it was 1,260 people showed up. I had no clue anybody knew who I was in Birmingham. So it was kind of an eye-opening moment that I might have a chance to have a career in music, you know? ‘Cause I was just doing it on the weekends, when I wasn’t framing houses, as a hobby.”

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That one gig kicked off a successful career for Green, who has his fifth Top 20 single at radio right now, with “Worst Way.” Green had a No. 1 hit last year with Ella Langley, on “You Look Like You Love Me.” The song earned the pair a CMA Award. They now have five ACM Awards nominations for their duet, including for Music Event of the Year.

“It was really organic,” Green tells Country Countdown USA. “I knew Ella. We were going on tour together, thought it would be cool to have a song together. I wrote a verse, and sent it to her, and they liked the idea, and it worked out very well.”

Like his Birmingham gig, Green admits he had no idea how much that song would change his life.

“I was happy it became the hit that it is, because it’s such a traditional song,” he says. “It’s cool to see there’s room for that kind of song with talking verses. It’s cool that it’s that different. It doesn’t sound like anything else on the radio.”