Riley Green’s life has been a whirlwind of studios, writing rooms, tour buses, and radio station conference rooms since he signed with Big Machine Label Group barely 16 months ago.

He’s earned a No. 1 single with “There Was This Girl,” and released his four-song EP Get That Man A Beer last month. His follow up single, “In Love By Now,” is climbing the radio charts.

“I don’t know if it will ever really sink in, all that is going on,” he says. “I couldn’t even dream that I would have a record deal, so that was kind of a victory in itself. The other thing is, we had the number one single, and I think we put the next single out the next Monday, so it never stops, it’s just kind of wide open.”

Alabama native Green had been making regular trips to write songs in Nashville–“There Was This Girl,” written with Erik Dylan, was the result of one of those regular migrations. After an indie EP in 2017, Green found himself in a four-way bidding war among several Nashville labels, before signing with Big Machine in March 2018.

“I ended up with four different labels, Warner Brothers, Universal, Big Loud, and Big Machine,” he recalls. “They were all great. At the end of the day, a lot of it has to do with where I felt I was going to get the most attention. Big Machine came to me with ideas they loved, I really felt they were going to stick by my brand that I had already built.”

He recalled signing his deal at Joe’s Bar in Chicago. “Jimmy [Harnen] and them gave me a bottle of Crystal and we walked around the streets of Chicago. I didn’t sign that night, but we still drank the champagne.”

“In Love By Now,” is a slice of heartbreak wrapped in up-tempo ‘90s reminiscent sounds. Green penned the track alongside Marv Green, Ben Hayslip and Rhett Akins, the artist and writer behind ‘90s hit “That Ain’t My Truck,” which can still be heard on country radio.

“That guy in the song I think plays pretty well the aw shucks I lost her kind of thing. I grew up listening to that kind of country music, but also I was writing with a lot of ‘90s country guys and that doesn’t hurt at all. It just gives a different way to write a song that’s been written a lot of times, I guess.”

Green is the sole writer on another standout song on the EP, “Numbers On The Cars,” written about his great uncle’s battle with Alzheimer’s.

“I watched him kind of go from the guy who was always talking, always cutting up, to the quietest one in the room. He was the big NASCAR Fan, a big fisherman. That was one of those things I just knew he’d always be able to tell me, who drove what car and what the numbers were, who the sponsors were. So it was odd to do a song about Alzheimer’s and NASCAR I guess, but it’s cool to see how people can take it and make it about their own situation or their own family member.”

Green has seen first-hand the impact of those songs on fans over the past several weeks, as he’s been on the road opening shows for Brad Paisley.

“Going out in front of someone else’ fans is something I’ve never been able to do. His fans are more traditional country music fans and Brad’s whole team is great. That’s the one good thing about country music, is all these artists who have been doing this for 20-something years, he was where I was at one time and he gets it. Everyone helps each other out. I can say we’re not roughing it on this tour. He’s got catering and he rented out a Laser Tag and Go-Kart venue after a show in Montana. He takes good care of us, but I’m sure the pranks are coming,” he says of Paisley’s notorious tour pranks.

Given the hectic schedule of touring, and time spent in the studio working on a full album, Green hasn’t yet splurged on much to celebrate his success.

“I’ve talked myself out of a lot of things because I don’t have much time. There’s no reason to buy a big fancy truck because I wouldn’t be able to use it, I’m on a bus or a plane all the time. I will say that since I’ve had a little bit of success, I don’t mind spending money on guitars anymore. I don’t think I ever had a really nice guitar until I signed a record deal. I thought, ‘Well, I’m doing this for a living now and I can make money off of it. So now I have a little collection of like 12 or 15 guitars.”

He jokes he still has a long way to go to catch up with Paisley’s collection.

“He’s got like 15 guitars on stage at all times,” he jokes. “If I have a career like he does, I’ll get plenty of guitars.”

[The story below is an excerpt from a piece included in the recently released 2019 MusicRow Awards print issue. To read the full interview, pick up a copy at musicrow.com or subscribe to MusicRow.]

Eight years. 101 artist interviews. Nearly 600 music cues. An in-depth study of the stories, songs and artists behind a century of country music.

On Sept. 15 the highly-anticipated eight-episode, 16-hour documentary Country Music will premiere on PBS stations, helmed by acclaimed director Ken Burns.

Burns, alongside producer/writer Dayton Duncan and producer Julie Dunfey, and a team of 15-20 researchers and filmmakers, sifted through nearly 100,000 photos (3,400 of which made it into the final series).

“I was surprised at how open people were,” Burns says. “They were going into attics, pulling out old boxes of photos and footage.”

Since the debut of 1981’s Brooklyn Bridge, Burns has built a reputation for painstakingly researched, unflinchingly authentic documentaries such as 1994’s Baseball, 2009’s The National Parks: America’s Best Ideas, and, in 2017, the harrowing 10-part, 18-hour examination of the history of the Vietnam War. He first set his scope on music with 2001’s 10-part, 19-hour series Jazz. 

A friend of Burns’ suggested the idea of following the intense Vietnam War documentary with a series on country music, noting that like jazz, country music is a uniquely American art form. Burns presented the idea to Duncan, who quickly agreed. “I said, ‘Yes, as long as I can write it,’” Duncan says. “At its best, country music is filled with universal human experiences or emotions, and does what great art does.”

“We want to either be introducing people to this great American music, or for people who already like country music, we hope they will hear some stories that they weren’t familiar with,” Burns says. “For some people who might have a stereotype of what they think country music is, or a bias against it, we hope if they watch our film, they will find things that surprise them.”

Instead of relying heavily on historians, Country Music allows artists including Vince Gill, Ricky Skaggs, Marty Stuart, Rosanne Cash and Kathy Mattea to guide viewers throughout the series.

“There are a number of artists who have important things to offer in our early episodes, where it talks about things that happened before they were alive or when they were little,” Duncan says. “Then, at a certain moment around episode, say seven or eight, they enter the story as characters in their own life.”

Burns and his team began doing interviews in fall 2012. Of the 101 artists who were interviewed throughout the making of the film, 20 percent are now deceased, including Merle Haggard, Roy Clark and Little Jimmy Dickens.

“We started by age and worked our way back,” Duncan says. “The very first interview was with Little Jimmy Dickens. The second interview we did, that same day, was Harold Bradley. Our third, which we did in Tulsa, was Roy Clark. The fourth was Wanda Jackson, who of course is still with us. We just missed getting an interview with George Jones,” he notes; the legendary entertainer and “He Stopped Loving Her Today” singer died in April 2013.

[Read more in MusicRow‘s 2019 Awards print issue, available at musicrow.com or with MusicRow subscriptions.]

[The story below is an excerpt from a piece included in the recently released 2019 MusicRow Awards print issue. To read the full interview, pick up a copy at musicrow.com or subscribe to MusicRow.]

As Maren Morris held court earlier this year at country music’s Mother Church, the Ryman Auditorium, on her GIRL: The World Tour, the sense of camaraderie between two superstars was as spiritual as it was physical, as Miranda Lambert quietly joined Morris (and hit songwriter Natalie Hemby) at the Ryman’s center stage, both hugging Morris before lifting their intertwined voices in song on “Virginia Bluebell,” a track Hemby co-wrote on Lambert’s 2009 album Revolution. They followed with “I Wish I Was,” from Morris’ 2016 debut album Hero. The fact that the musical selections were both deep album cuts speaks to mutual admiration Lambert and Morris hold for each other, as musicians, as artists with their own singular perspectives, and as women in control of their artistry and businesses. 

“This moment was not planned, but it made my heart explode,” Morris later stated on social media.

As spontaneous as the moment was, it played perfectly within the female-first framework Morris has crafted with her recently-released album GIRL, along with her recent radio single of the same name, and her GIRL: The World Tour, with openers Kassi Ashton, Cassadee Pope, RaeLynn, Tenille Townes, and Hailey Whitters.

And Morris isn’t alone. This year, three of country music’s superstars—Miranda Lambert, Morris and Carrie Underwood—are bringing an all-female slate of talent on their headlining tours. Last month, Underwood launched her Cry Pretty Tour 360, alongside Maddie & Tae and Runaway June. 

“We have to lift each other up because no one is going to do it for us,” Underwood says. “We have to do it ourselves. We’re all just out there trying to work together, work hard and show our fans and the industry what we can do.”

In September, Lambert will reprise her Roadside Bars and Pink Guitars Tour, with acts Morris, Elle King, Pistol Annies cohorts Ashley Monroe and Angaleena Presley, Ashley McBryde, Tenille Townes, Caylee Hammack, and more. This isn’t Lambert’s first all-female tour lineup; her 2015 iteration of the tour (which she originally conceived in 2009) was also an all-female bill, with openers including RaeLynn, Clare Dunn, Courtney Cole and Ashley Monroe.

“I’ve always supported other women, and other women have always supported me, and I’m in a girl band. When we were talking about the tour, I felt like it should be an all female lineup. Roadside Bars and Pink Guitars has been a running theme throughout my career, and they generally turn out to be the most fun tours,” Lambert muses. “They’re all amazing artists that have something important to say.”

The hope is that if country radio isn’t going to listen to what female artists have to say, that concertgoers and promoters will.

A recent study by Stone Door Media Lab’s Jeff Green found that over the past 44 years (1974-2018), female artists (including solo female artists, duos or groups with a female vocalist and duets that included a female artist) have achieved 27 percent of the Top 15 singles on country radio. The number of female artists notching songs in the Top 15 on country radio fell to an average of 21 percent from 2007-2018. Over the past five years, that number continued to plummet, to a 16 percent average. 

Kelsea Ballerini earned the first No. 1 country single by a solo female artist in more than 15 months when her single “Miss Me More” crowned the Mediabase chart the week of June 10 (the song topped out at No. 2 on the Billboard Country Airplay chart).  Morris’ “GIRL” reached the Top 10 on the Country Airplay chart, and on the Mediabase chart as of June 10. Runaway June’s “Buy My Own Drinks” became the first Top 20 country radio single by an all-female group since 2005.

It’s a bit of welcome news, given that in December 2018, the downward trend in country radio airplay for female artists hit a new low when, for the first time, there were zero female artists in the Top 20 songs on the Country Airplay chart. 

Newcomer artists who can’t claim a hit at country radio are less familiar to country listeners and country music concertgoers, which makes these artists less competitive when it comes to netting slots on major country tours. 

The cycle of rejection doesn’t sit well with Underwood.

“You try to figure out what the issue is and when you get back, ‘The song’s not testing well,’ or ‘She’s not testing well,’ I feel like everybody’s just over it,” Underwood says. “It’s frustrating because I see Maddie & Tae, Runaway June and so many other people who have got the goods, they have incredible songs, they are genuinely talented, and nice people who work their tails off. It’s frustrating to see them work for so long, to make minimal gains. We have to put our money where our mouth is and take women on the road with us and lift each other up.”

Underwood is the most-recent female artist to garner a nomination in the coveted Entertainer of the Year category at either the Country Music Association (in 2016) or the Academy of Country Music Awards (in 2017).

The most recent female artist to take home either honor? Taylor Swift, who was named Entertainer of the Year by both the CMA and ACM back in 2011.

Lambert, Morris and Underwood all are primed to upend the nearly decade-long drought in the EOY categories. However, while awards nominations and wins are deserved, each artist is following a higher purpose: to remind country listeners, programmers and the industry that female artists can—and do—sell out venues and tours and are worthy of being played on country radio.

[Read more in MusicRow‘s 2019 Awards print issue, available at musicrow.com or with MusicRow subscriptions.]