Riley Green has spent the last few years turning into one of country music’s biggest names, and he still measures success the same way he did before any of it started.
“For me, I think I appreciate a lot more a sold out show, but when fans are there and they’re like singing a song that I wrote and it, like, I can tell it means something to them. There’s emotion in it, like that means more to me than an award,” Green told comedian Theo Von on the July 15 episode of his podcast, “This Past Weekend.”
Von has built his show around pulling unusually candid answers out of his guests, and Green didn’t hold back. The two talked fame, family, and what actually sticks with a person once the tour bus pulls away. Green is currently touring, and his new album, That’s Just Me, lands Sept. 18.
Von also asked whether Green feels proud of what he’s built, and the singer’s answer skipped right past his own catalog of hits.
Related: Humble Country Star Riley Green Says Fame Is ‘Not Reality’
“I think that you got to find things in your life that you do feel proud of yourself about. Like for me, it’s not musical achievements. For me, I feel proud about my farm. I feel proud that I, you know, could put my parents in a nice house and buy my dad a truck. I feel more for that than anything I’ve ever bought myself, you know, and like my niece and nephew sending me pictures, my sister, of them catching fish in my lake. Like, I’m proud of, like, that. And that those are things that I know will last forever,” Green explained.
None of that should surprise anyone who has followed Green’s music. He’s the man behind “Jesus Saves.”
Movieguide® has tracked this thread in Green before. Just last December, he told the “Like a Farmer” podcast that fame is “not reality,” crediting his Alabama farm with keeping him grounded even after three CMA wins and a run of late-night television bookings.
The pattern holds up because Green keeps saying it in different rooms to different hosts, which is usually a sign someone means it. Awards fade. The people who sing your words back to you, and the family waiting at home when the lights go down, don’t.
Green isn’t preaching that lesson to anyone. He’s just living loud enough that it keeps showing up on other people’s podcasts, which might be its own kind of testimony.
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