Two great acts on one album.
Riley Green is gearing up to release his new album That’s Just Me on September 18th, and he has four collaborations in total on the 19-song tracklist, including “Go Again” with Hannah McFarland, “Well Well Whiskey” with Jake Worthington, and two iconic acts round it out as Brooks & Dunn will join Riley on “Pave All Them Dirt Roads,” and Randy Owen, lead singer of Alabama, is featured on “Lookout Mountain.”
And it sounds like both of those collabs came about pretty organically, as “Pave All Them Dirt Roads” was written simply as a tribute to Brooks & Dunn’s “Red Dirt Road,” which they ended up loving and waiting to be part of.
“Lookout Mountain” was also a tribute song, which references Alabama’s “My Home’s in Alabama,” and Riley wasn’t even thinking of it as a duet… he sent it to Owen just so he could hear it, and as it turns out, Owen asked Riley if he needed a partner on it:
“Well, ‘Pave All Them Dirt Roads’ was definitely something that I wrote as a tribute to the song from Brooks & Dunn. I didn’t know they’d like it enough to be a part of it, so that was a little bit of a surprise. But probably the biggest surprise was ‘Lookout Mountain’ and Randy Owen and being a part of that.
Because, you know, the full circle moment for me with that song is, the first time I heard look out mountain was in ‘My Home’s in Alabama’ by the group Alabama. So when I wrote the song, I sent it to Randy just for him to hear. It wasn’t an invite or hoping he’d be a part of this, but he texted me and said do you need a partner on that?
So that meant that he liked the song enough, so that was surprise. And I don’t know what he was gonna do on it, and he came in and sang, and it was a perfect addition and certainly special moment for me.”
He added that it was one of his favorites on the album, and this isn’t the first time Riley and Randy have worked tougher, though, as they collaborated on Riley’s song “Better Than Me,” which was part of his 2020 EP If It Wasn’t For Trucks. Growing up in Alabama, the band’s music has obviously been a huge influence on Riley, and so this is certainly a full-circle moment and the entire album is shaping up to be stellar.
All of the pre-released singles were super solid, and you can always count on Riley to give you down-the-middle country with well-crafted, heartfelt lyrics and a variety of subject matter ranging from love to life back home in Jacksonville.
And Riley actually previously debuted “Lookout Mountain” at the Randy Owen & Friends special concert this year, and it’s a good old fashioned heartbreaker that finds Riley turning to whiskey as a girl leaves him in the dust on top of lookout mountain, which is a ridge in northeast Alabama:
“So lookout mountain, there she goes,
Where she stops nobody knows,
She might halfway across the state and here she looks so close,
Look out heartbreak, here I come,
Cuz right now she’s on the run,
and over the edge is the only way around it,
So look out whiskey,
Look out lonely,
Lookout mountain”
Of course, the studio cut will also feature Owens, but I already love the sound of this one and I can’t wait to hear both of them on the album cut:
“Imagine That”
“My Way”
“Think As You Drunk”
“Go Again”
That’s Just Me Tracklist
- “My Way”
- “That’s Just Me”
- “Don’t Come Any Closer”
- “Go Again” (feat. Hannah McFarland)
- “Imagine That”
- “Got That From You”
- “Bartender In Destin”
- “Beach Happy”
- “Think As You Drunk”
- “Well Well Whiskey” (feat. Jake Worthington)
- “P.O.S.”
- “Runs in the Family”
- “Pave All Them Dirt Roads” (feat. Brooks & Dunn)
- “Lookout Mountain” (feat. Randy Owen)
- “Seven Second Ride
- “Radio Road”
- “Ol’ Stray Dog”
- “More of a Man Than Me”
- “Ten Pairs of Boots”
