Riley Green: Topping The Charts & Finding Peace In The Outdoors 

Catch Riley “Duckman” Green As He Rises To The Top Of Country Music Charts 

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Riley Green’s not a guy who blends in. At 6’4” with superhero arms and long black hair, hiding from fans and anyone else who’d want a piece of him isn’t easy, especially when he’s playing a show nearby. 

“If we get out early enough, I might put on a hoodie and go check out some of the shops,” he says from his tour bus, parked at a county fair near Frederick, Maryland, where he’s performing later tonight. “But when you’re somewhere everybody’s coming to your show, it’s pretty tough.” 

Such is life for one of country music’s fastest-rising stars, one of those people who walks into a room and you just assume is famous. His large physique and larger-than-life persona make it hard for him to hide, which is why regular escapes to hunt in the woods or work his farm in Alabama are vital parts of his life. And good luck finding him when he’s not onstage. 

“When I’m not on the road or I’m not in Nashville, there’s not really anybody that usually knows where I’m at,” he says. “I might just tell my travel agent to get me a rental car or get me a flight, but they don’t know what I’m doing or where I’m at. I just find a way to get back before the next show. Usually.” 

Gridiron To Guitar 

Even before he was a country star, Riley Green was a standout. He played quarterback at Jacksonville State University in Alabama after a three-sport career at nearby Jacksonville High School, where the gymnasium floor now bears his name. 

“I wouldn’t say I was all that musically inclined, I didn’t think I’d have a career in music,” he says, insisting his childhood was more about athletics. “But when all the sports ended for me, I think that’s when I went back to playing in bars and started writing (songs).” 

He recalls evenings at his grandparents’ home in Alabama, going hunting or golfing with his grandfather then returning home to listen to Roy Acuff and Merle Haggard music. 

“My granddaddy was a big country music fan, and when I’d go to his house, he had an old guitar I’d just sit around and play,” he says. “When I got to be a teenager, we turned my grandparents’ house into a little Grand Ole Opry, and we’d have like 250 elderly people out there Friday playing country songs. And I would just sit there and watch their hands and figure out how to make chords.” 

Stardom was never his goal, he says, as he played local gigs for fun at night, after building houses all day working construction. 

“I was a big deal in Jacksonville, Alabama, for a couple years when I was playing every bar there every week,” he says. “I didn’t think people were coming to see me because I was all that good, they just knew it was going to be a good time.” 

His popularity grew slowly, as Green played bars and Mexican restaurants in Jacksonville for years before graduating to a 1,300-person venue in Birmingham. After kicking around mid-sized venues for a few more years and releasing an EP, he began opening for the likes of Dierks Bentley and Luke Bryan in big amphitheaters and stadiums. Now, he’s returning to headline those same large venues. 

“I think it was extremely helpful for me that it happened so gradually,” he says. “And my advice when you’re starting out is play anywhere you can. You’re not too big for anything, and even now I have a hard time turning down when somebody wants me to come play their backyard barbecue.” 

Time In The Duck Blind 

Green says he’d love to play every gig he’s invited to, but his schedule these days won’t allow it. He’s currently on tour playing over 120 shows a year, ranging from Hyde Park in London to fairs like the one he’s currently hiding from. 

“Every year I say I’m gonna dial back next year, try to have a life outside of this. And every year I’ve managed to do a little bit more,” he says. “It’s really just because things are going well, as things are growing, opportunities are coming in, and I’m in that spot now where I need to do as much as I can.” 

His jam-packed schedule wasn’t eased by the opening of his new bar in Nashville, Duck Blind. It’s built out of the old Winners Bar and Grill in Midtown, far from the bachelorette parties of Broadway in a space that’s seen many a country career launched. 

“I wanted somewhere I’d actually spend my time, and I don’t know too many country singers who hung out on Broadway,” he says. “And I would wanna hang out at a place called ‘Duck Blind,’ so if I’m in town I’ll go by there, have lunch there, hang out on the back porch. And every relationship I’ve got in Nashville happened in that building.” 

The nonstop pace of his meteoric rise is exactly why Green looks to hide away whenever he can. One of his favorite escapes is hunting, which he’ll do if he has as little as a couple of days between dates on a tour. 

“Hunting is nearly the only distraction I can get from the craziness of a touring lifestyle,” he says. “When you’re in the woods and you’re trying to figure out what a deer’s doing, or a duck or a turkey, and watching the sun come up at 5:30 in the morning somewhere in a swamp, it’s hard to be distracted back to being on stage. So, it’s a great disconnect for me.” 

Green also finds peace when he’s back on his farm near Jacksonville, riding his tractor around the property and clearing his mind after months on the road. After a day of solid sleep with the doors closed, he says, he’ll take to the land and use that time to get back to what he calls a “regular life.” 

Fitness On The Road 

When one spends most of their life on a tour bus, staying in shape can be a challenge. By all appearances, though, Green has made fitness a priority, both by his energetic stage presence and trademark physique. Much of this is thanks to a portable gym he tows behind his bus, though he’s also known to tuck into a Planet Fitness early in the morning before crowds arrive. 

“I just do one muscle group a day, working out for 30, 45 minutes at the most. I don’t really have a great attention span for it,” he says. “And I just do that five days a week. And then if I got a couple extra days, I’ll see what doesn’t hurt and start over.” 

When he’s not in the gym, Green makes a point to exercise outside, acclimatizing himself to hot weather so he’s ready for the heat of the bright lights onstage. This sometimes takes the form of running stadium stairs in a weighted vest or doing workouts he discovered on TikTok. 

“I’ll go out there during the middle of the day just to get used to that heat,” he says. “I spent so much time when I was growing up playing ball, and then when I was doing construction building houses, just out all day sweating. You get used to being in the air conditioning, you don’t do that much anymore.” 

Unlike a lot of celebrity musicians, Riley Green doesn’t employ personal trainers or nutritionists on the road, instead relying on his knowledge from years of sports to keep his workouts fresh. He’ll also find workouts online from fitness influencers, though he says he doesn’t follow any specifically. 

Keeping a healthy diet is another big challenge of perpetual touring, and again Green goes to great lengths to keep from indulging in post-concert catering. 

“When you get off of the stage at 11 o’clock and there’s three pizzas sitting on the bus, it’s hard to walk by those and smell ’em without diving into ’em,” he admits. “What’s helped me a lot is I get a rental car, so at every show I can get offsite. I get out of the venue, ride around and go find somewhere that I think’s a decent place to eat, try out something new. And I’m a little more mindful of what I’m eating if it’s not something that’s put in front of me.” 

The broke musician mentality is one that’s hard to break out of, he says, and when an unlimited catering spread is presented to him his first instinct is to fill up on two or three plates. But as he’s gotten older, he’s kept to more of a keto diet, including much of the elk and other game meat he’s killed. On his next tour, he plans to add a Blackstone grill to his tour setup, so he can get out and grill his own food after a show. 

“A gym and a grill on the tour bus,” he says, “does that sound like a guy from Alabama or what?” 

The Road Ahead 

For now, Green is still on tour, with plans to hit Australia and the UK before the end of the year. And as a follow up to his “Ain’t My Last Rodeo” album, Green’s newest album, “Don’t Mind If I Do,” drops on October 18, 2024. At some point, he says, he looks forward to being an old man where he can get up, watch the news for a couple of hours and do absolutely nothing. But now is not that time, and Riley Green knows it. Which is why he relishes the fleeting moments of solitude he gets in the field or on his farm.