2020 Forced Riley Downing to "Start It Over"
By Tamara Grayson
Honoring America’s musical legacy had always brought Riley Downing peace of mind, but recording his debut would zap him from his comfort zone.
For much of the 2010s, Riley Downing was a fifth of The Deslondes’ gritty Americana patchwork. He sang lead on many key tracks in his gravelly drawl, filled in lower harmonies on others, and wrote democratically with the other four members of the New Orleans-based band. After giving Hurry Home, their 2017 LP its due tours and time, the gang opted to let the outfit rest, at least for the time being.
This granted Downing some downtime in his native Missouri. Though his band was asleep, Downing was no less staked in the world of Americana, still keeping in touch with his musical partners and piling his mountainous collection of vintage 45s. Soon, Downing felt the urge to get back in the game, and he and fellow Deslonde John James "JJ" Tourville decided that recording their own 45 together would be a fun, affordable solution to Downing’s creative itch.
This long-distance songwriting partnership, with Downing in Missouri and Tourville in North Carolina, turned a couple of songs into three, and the song count kept inching forward. Soon it was clear that Downing would kick off his solo career with a full batch of songs that practically sprouted on accident. But while honoring America’s musical legacy had always brought Downing peace of mind, recording his debut would zap him from his comfort zone.
After some pre-planning and only a handful of song-idea exchanges, the COVID lockdown arrived. Fellow Deslonde Sam Doores released his self-titled debut album just in time for the shutdown; for Downing, it meant the album wouldn’t grow from in-the-moment bonding and jamming like past projects of Downing's. Rather, it would grow from months of steady, gradual prep before a brief blast of session work planned well in advance. The uncertainty created by COVID made letting the songs evolve by playing together impossible, and Downing’s producer of choice, old friend Andrija Tokic, needed time to get his bearings engineering for a COVID-riddled market.
That made the process awkward for all involved, but even though it was unfamiliar, it worked. ”Everybody just got to it when they had time, which everybody had a little bit of,” Downing says. “We'd send ideas and re-writing and everything back and forth over and over." Tokic became almost as loud a creative voice in the fold as Downing and JJ, sending ambitious arrangement ideas to the songwriters from his woodsy studio in Nashville.
A few months into lockdown after letting the finished compositions simmer liberally, all involved were prepared to tackle those COVID-safe Nashville sessions. "It was almost like all the songs were brand new again by the time you get to the studio, just because the musicians had never really played them, and everything was just pretty fresh," Downing says. He found it surreal to re-approach these hardly-ever-jammed songs that would become his debut. The situation grew more unreal as an endless sea of famed musicians made contributions. Members of the Racentuears and Lynyrd Skynyrd among plenty of other hallmark names in blues rock made the bill.
"It's kinda [Tokic’s] wrecking crew, so I was just lucky enough to be old enough friends with him that I got to kinda go along for the ride and get those musicians because of the relationships he's built up with them,” Downing says.
Start It Over resulted, a dozen tight Americana songs that pile on stomping Southern rock grooves and slow skiffles, bluesy and down-home in substance, modern and expansive in sound. Those chord changes and licks land right where they should, bringing you back to that warm, familiar, feel-good place where the best Americana inhabits.
The record presents Downing as a friendly next door neighbor. The un-acted, relaxed, authentic tone of his deep vocals has an unmistakable charm, and even though Downing's lyrics about uncertainty, strife, and dejection spill across the album, they are wrapped in a blanket of Take a deep breath; it’s gonna be alright. Thanks to his voice, the overall reassuring quality of Start It Over hits center, even in the context of a genre as innately reassuring as Americana.
The atmospheric, heavily embellished kick to Start It Over's sound resembles The Alabama Shakes' reverb-heavy blends of old and new. "It was pretty unreal to finally have that for the first time compared to just, you know, a demo with acoustic guitar," Downing says. Organ and piano lines swirl in and out, nimble glockenspiels and huge background choirs spring from the ground, and occasionally things are stripped back for contrast's sake like on the light and uppity "Hey Mister.” The stage Start It Over sets is elaborately decorated and filled with smoke machines, all to feature Downing up front who is being nothing more than his humble self.
The left hooks of 2020 did nothing to knock down Downing’s artistic levelheadedness. Through the challenges, Downing was given the chance to view his organic Americana outpourings from numerous new angles, and as a result, there’s no angle through which you can knock down the resulting songs. "When we were making the record, I didn't know if the Deslondes were gonna do anything else and I was just kinda starting over for myself for the first time in a way,” Downing says. “But after last year, I think everybody just needs to start it over."
