Riley Green has a big night coming up.
He’s 38, a country singer from Jacksonville, Alabama, and he’s up for Musical Event of the Year at the 60th CMA Awards. The nomination is for “If I Don’t Leave I’m Gonna Stay,” his duet with fellow country singer Carly Pearce. The show airs live on Wednesday, Nov. 18, at 8 PM ET on ABC and Disney+, from Bridgestone Arena in Nashville.
He’s a busy man this fall, too. Riley is also one of the coaches on NBC’s “The Voice” this season.
So it’s a little hard to believe that he once figured music would only ever be a weekend thing.
Back in college, Riley wasn’t thinking about award shows at all. He was a quarterback at Jacksonville State University, and football was the plan.
Then his family needed him.
Riley told the story to Billboard in September, and OutKick picked it up on Sept. 24. His dad framed houses for a living, and he worked side by side with his own brother, Riley’s uncle. “I was playing football, and my dad framed houses and he had back surgery, and him and his brother worked together,” Riley said.
Somebody had to help keep the work going, and Riley stepped up. “So, I took a semester off to go help do construction work,” he explained.
It was only supposed to be one semester.
But during that time off, music crept in. “I started making a little music on the weekends and I just didn’t go back,” he said.
He never returned to school. Even then, Riley didn’t think he was on his way to Nashville. He thought he’d found his life’s work on the job site.
“So, I assumed I was going to frame houses for the rest of my life and play a little music on the side.”
That’s a pretty humble way to picture your future. Plenty of folks who grew up in small Southern towns will recognize that kind of thinking.
Of course, it didn’t turn out that way. And years later, Riley found a way to thank the man he left school to help. He wrote a song about his dad called “Cowboy As It Gets,” a duet with fellow country singer Randy Houser.
Riley has said the song speaks to more than one family. “I love the sentiment of that song, and it’s kind of a little bit of an anthemic theme to people that grew up similar to me,” he told Billboard. The lyric video lets you follow every word of the song he wrote with his dad in mind.
Riley Green and Randy Houser’s song for Riley’s dad
The song meant enough to him that it’s now the name of his 2026 tour. As Riley told Billboard, “That was before I wrote the song about my dad, so that’s a pretty good sentiment for a tour name.”
So the next time you catch Riley on “The Voice,” or tune in to the CMA Awards on Nov. 18, remember the young quarterback who put school on hold for his family. He fully expected to spend his working life framing houses.
The music was supposed to stay on the side. It didn’t, and on Nov. 18 he’ll find out whether it brings home a CMA Award.