In 2019, Riley Green was the first of three acts on Brad Paisley’s tour, playing a 25-minute set for crowds that had come to see somebody else.
When his song “I Wish Grandpa’s Never Died” started going viral, Paisley posted his own cover of it and invited Green to sing it with him during his headline set every night.
Now Green is the one at the top of the bill, and he is doing the same for the acts who open for him. On the Zach Sang Show, in a clip shared on TikTok, he said it is important for his openers to get to know him and for him to introduce his fans to them, because Dierks Bentley, Jason Aldean and Paisley did that for him.
“I know what it was like for me when I was on my first major tour opening for Brad Paisley, I was first at three,” he said.
He still talks about that spot on the bill, and about the men who made room for him in it.
Brad Paisley Brought Riley Green Out Every Night in 2019
On August 11, 2019, at his World Tour stop in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, Brad Paisley told the crowd he was in awe of Riley Green, that he loved the new song and that he wanted to be his backup guitarist on it. Then he introduced him.
“Just so y’all know…this is a nobody from Alabama, playing a song I wrote about my two granddaddies, with an idol of mine,” Paisley said.
Coming from the headliner, that is about as generous as a joke gets.
Green told Big Machine Label Group that the two of them sat down after a show one day to talk about the song, and that Paisley even joked about writing one called “Immortal Grandpas” and playing it at a show. Green said it “was a really awesome thing for him to do.”
For You
Hannah McFarland and Jake Worthington Are on His Album and His 2027 Tour
That’s Just Me, a 19-song record, came in at No. 3 on the Billboard 200, his highest-charting album and his first top 10 on that chart. Alongside Alabama’s Randy Owen and Brooks & Dunn, it features two of his openers, Hannah McFarland and Jake Worthington, and he sings those songs with them on the road now.
A song on the headliner’s album is an introduction that keeps playing long after the tour bus pulls out.
Worthington has been on the road with him before. He was listed among the openers on the Damn Country Music tour, the same run that carried Ella Langley before her two duets with Green, “You Look Like You Love Me” and “Don’t Mind If I Do,” became hits.
Both Worthington and McFarland are booked again for 2027. They join Muscadine Bloodline on the bill at Numerica Vets Arena in Spokane, Washington, on April 1, and they share the late April and May dates with Randy Houser, including Raleigh, North Carolina, on April 29.
On one of those spring nights, somebody who came early only to claim a good spot for Green will hear McFarland for the first time and look up her name before the headliner ever walks out.
In 2019, Brad Paisley called Riley Green a nobody from Alabama and gave him his stage every night anyway. Now the man with a No. 3 album is singing beside his own openers on songs that carry their names on his record, and he is passing that same introduction down the line.
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