Riley Green Went From Construction Sites to Country Stardom. Now, He’s Pouring His Own Whiskey
In 2017, Riley Green was working as a construction worker who had dreams of being a musician. Fast forward a few years and he was named the Academy of Country Music’s New Male Artist of the Year and soon had a string of hit songs. His meteoric rise has only continued and you can now add actor to his long list of credits–he’ll soon be appearing in the TV show Marshals, which is the spinoff of hit Yellowstone. He’s also the face of the new whiskey brand Duck Club Bourbon, which celebrates his love of the great outdoors. The brand has Duck Club Bourbon (it's 92 proof and has a suggested retail price of $30) and Duck Club Bourbon High Brass (it's 110-proof and has a suggested retail price of $40).
“Growing up and doing construction work in Alabama, I could never afford good whiskey,” admits Riley. Things began to change a bit when he started performing. “Playing little hole-in-the-wall bars for a free bar tab kind of thing.”
Courtesy Duck Hunt Whiskey
But he really developed a taste for whiskey when he started visiting duck hunting camps in Arkansas. The experience is as much about stalking fowl as it is about the camaraderie and spending time with friends. “And there always seemed to be a good bottle of bourbon around. And that's one reason that I was so drawn to this brand. It couldn't have fit me better,” he says. He thought to himself, “I would need that bottle sitting on the shelf of my duck camp. I would have to have that if I'm a real duck hunter.”
Read on for Green’s personal drinking philosophy and his all-time favorite song to put on a bar jukebox.
Why do you think duck hunting and bourbon go together so well?
On some of my best hunting trips we didn't see a duck. Certainly didn't shoot one. And that's what makes a good glass of bourbon and duck hunting go so well together, especially like as an end of the day thing. There is so much work that goes into hunting to maybe have no reward. So you got to have something built in and that's sitting around a campfire at the end of the day, when you put out 300 decoys and walked through a muddy swamp, fell in a beaver hole, and got your waders soaking wet. And then you get back to the house and you get that whiskey.
What's your favorite way to drink whiskey?
Just on the rocks. I've got a little round ice cube maker in every freezer that I've got. Cause there's something about that just makes it taste better.
It seems to me that country music and bourbon have a special relationship.
Well, the image that comes into my mind is sitting on a porch. It's sunset with your daddy, your grandpa or your buddies, and telling stories and catching up and, you know, just BSing. Country music to me is storytelling. I mean, melodically, it goes in a lot of different directions and there's some more poppy stuff and more traditional, but the storytelling is at the root of country music to me. What makes a song country is to have a story. And I think the best stories are told over a glass of bourbon on a porch somewhere.
What country legend would you have a glass of whiskey with?
It'd have to be Merle Haggard. Well, you know, this is a completely true story. First song I ever sang was Mama Tried. My granddaddy Buford loved Merle Haggard. And, you know, my granddaddy Lennon was a hunter, the outdoorsman, never missed a ball game with any of his grandkids. And my granddaddy Buford was more artsy, wrote poems, really a witty guy, really good with words. And he had an old Epiphone guitar and we'd sit around and kind of play, you know? And he loved Merle Haggard and he passed away in 2010. And I remember when Merle Haggard died, I felt like my granddaddy died again. Like that was the only celebrity, somebody I've never met that I really had some type of emotional connection to, and that's got to be through the stories and songs. Everything that he sang made me feel something and certainly takes me back to a place in my life. It's got a nostalgia to it. A really cool thing is that bourbon can certainly have that too, you know?
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Have you ever worked as a professional bartender?
Unofficially. I've got a bar in Nashville, Tennessee, opened a year before last, and it's called the Duck Blind. And every once in a while, I'll get behind the bar and pass out drinks, but I don't know how to work the computer. So if anybody gets a drink from me, it's free.
If we’re at a bar what are you putting on the jukebox?
God, that's tough, man. To me, I've always been really drawn to like sad country songs. A lot of George Jones stuff. But that's well before my time. I would say in my era, my favorite was Alan Jackson. And one of the best written country songs, probably my favorite country song ever, is Here in the Real World by Alan Jackson. It's an easy listening song, tells a story and, you know, still makes me feel something. So I think that always would be my go-to.
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Do you like to have a drink before you go on stage to perform?
One Duck Club on the rocks as I'm going to the stage. Medically I don't know that it helps open your wind pipes or what, but there's something about it once you get it in your head that it does. It certainly warms you up, you know? And then you got that kind of celebratory drink when you get done. It's a perfect way to start and end the show.
Does your rider now include Duck Club for your dressing room?
My rider has always been pretty simple. It's like a case of water and some protein drinks and some granola bars, but now I'm going to have to have Duck Club on there. We'll have a nice setup and we have a little bar in the backstage called the Duck Blind and we'll make sure it's stocked up with it. So I definitely won't be going anywhere for a show without it there with me.
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Were you nervous about sharing Duck Club with your whiskey drinking friends?
There wasn't really any nervousness about sharing it with any of my, like, bourbon folks, because I thought it was great. But I was excited about getting that feedback. It's kind of like writing a song. You might like it and you might feel good about it, but until you play it for somebody, those people that you really trust, and they go, oh man, this is great, you really don't know. It's such a subjective thing and bourbon is the same way. So it's cool when you get that feedback and you get to share it with somebody like that.