CURRENT SINGLE: “If It Wasn’t for Trucks”
When Riley Green first signed his record deal and he had to do photo shoots and make music videos, the label would often find these very rural settings. For his very first photo shoot, Riley says, “We go and there’s like cows and a farm and all this. And we take all the pictures. And then the next one is somewhat similar. We drive 40 minutes out of town to some place where there’s a barn and some old wood and saw milling and stuff.”
Pretty quickly, it occurred to Riley that he and his team were spending a whole lot of money on shoot locations for no reason. He said to them, “‘Hey, hold on a second. Have y’all been to my house? Like I’ve got literally everything we’re driving out here and paying for.”
For instance, for the cover of Riley’s latest EP, If It Wasn’t for Trucks, features an older red truck with some mud on it and a dog sitting beside it. Riley explains, “We were talking about what we needed the artwork to be, ‘Like, man, it would be good if it was like this and that and whatever.’ And I said, ‘Well, hang on.’ So I sent ‘em this picture, and they’re like, ‘Where did you get that?!’ I’m like, ‘That’s in my mom and dad’s back yard. That’s my dog and my truck. I took that like eight years ago. It’s on my Instagram.’”
Now, before Riley does a photo shoot or shoots a music video, they scope out the land and the props he already has available down at his home in Alabama. As for the cover of his EP, Riley says, “It’s really cool for me, as opposed to just going and getting some kind of random artwork, to have something that actually has a tie to one of my very first trucks.”
Riley Green – If It Wasn’t for Trucks artwork :49
“First photo shoot I ever did, I’d never done a real photo shoot, you know, and Big Machine gets this place out here and we go and there’s like cows and a farm and all this. And we take all the pictures. And then the next one is somewhat similar. We drive 40 minutes out of town to some place where there’s a barn and some old wood and saw milling and stuff. And we start shooting music videos, and it’s like, man, we need an old truck, we need this. And I finally realized that I can go, ‘Hey, hold on a second. Have y’all been to my house? Like I’ve got literally everything we’re driving out here and paying for. And the same thing happened with the album cover for ‘If It Wasn’t for Trucks.’ We were talking about what we needed the artwork to be, ‘Like, man, it would be good if it was like this and that and whatever.’ And I said, ‘Well, hang on.’ So I sent ‘em this picture, and they’re like, ‘Where did you get that?!’ I’m like, ‘That’s in my mom and dad’s back yard. That’s my dog and my truck. I took that like eight years ago. It’s on my Instagram.’ So, it’s really cool for me, as opposed to just going and getting some kind of random artwork, to have something that actually has a tie to one of my very first trucks.”