Nathaniel Riley Releases Debut Album, Bird Songs

Alt-folk singer-songwriter Nathaniel Riley has the look of a train-hopping troubadour, but the reality is more complicated. He is the kind, hardworking father of an elementary school kid in Fort Collins and has put his heart, and a lot of time, into creating his debut album, Bird Songs, which drops today, July 14.

Riley was born in Connecticut, but moved to South Dakota at age eight. “That’s where I figured it all out,” he says. “It was definitely a change of scenery, that’s for sure. I grew up on a farm, but we weren’t farmers by tradition. My mom was obsessed with animals, and it made her happy, so we just kept getting more.”

Riley says he was the only guitar player at his South Dakota high school, and he remembers begging his friends to ask their parents for instruments and amplifiers every Christmas so he could start a band. “The kids that stuck with it, we ended up being a band for a long time," he recalls. "We did pretty well.”

That band was called Hideaway, an emo outfit that played around Wyoming, Fort Collins, Nebraska and South Dakota as teenagers, dissolving when Riley moved to Fort Collins to start a family and shift his musical focus.

“I would drive from South Dakota to Colorado once a month to see shows, because it wasn’t happening up there," he explains. "Colorado was always one of those things – ‘I gotta find my way there.’ It’s still a happening thing. You don’t have to look too far for inspiration everywhere, whether that’s the mountains or the music scene.”

Riley has a membership at the Music District in Fort Collins and is embracing the incredible resources and community associated with it, from practice spaces to a recording setup to songwriting and business consultations. His relationships and experiences in Fort Collins, from the Music District to the local arts scene in general, helped lead to Bird Songs.

“I’m just really proud of how it came together, and it’s a really fond memory of making it with all the folks I made it with, and it’s nice to capture a moment in your life," he says. "That’s really what this feels like to me, and it’s scary because it's the first [album] and I’ve put so much into it, whether that be living the song, the rehearsals and writing. When you’re ready to put something out and hope that people care about it, that can be scary, but it’s part of the journey.”

At his solo shows, Riley is that train-hopping troubadour from his cap down to his shoes, conveying quality versions of his dusty, poetic alt-folk tunes. Bird Songs, however, wallops listeners with a deep, diverse helping of more rocking and vibey sounds. Electric guitar, banjo and violin all feature heavily on Bird Songs, and Riley brought in an all-star cast of Colorado musicians for the project. Steve Varney, of Boulder icon Gregory Alan Isakov’s band, contributed banjo.

“I’m friends with Steve, and I had him play banjo because I love his clawhammer,” Riley says. “That was really cool, because when I did the demos for the album, I played banjo as well, and I wrote banjo parts for the whole album. I remember thinking, like, I'm really connected to these banjo parts, you know? So I was a little bit nervous having somebody else play the banjo, but I liked his mix of clawhammer and finger picking. And I knew that that would be pretty melodic. Everything moves so fluidly, you know? Things fell into place.”

Riley also hired Bridget Law of Elephant Revival to play fiddle on Bird Songs, and was thrilled with the results. “She's great," he says. "That was crazy. It really made the songs special in that way, the fiddle playing. I had seen her play for so long, and it was so cool to get her on the album.”

Riley says he sees legends such as Leonard Cohen and Bob Dylan as his “cornerstones,” but has been more inspired by modern heavies, including Joshua Burnside and, as his album title suggests, birds.

The bird element of Riley’s debut goes back to his grandmother, who loved birds and always had bird-themed decorations around. Riley particularly remembers a clock she had that would have a different bird’s song each hour, and the imprint his grandmother’s bird obsession eventually had on him.

“I always found myself being a cloud watcher and bird watcher simultaneously whenever I needed to kind of just think about stuff,” he says. “I really enjoyed looking up at the sky and watching them, and then during the pandemic, I kind of became a bird watcher because right outside my window, there's this big tree that just fills up with these finches. They’d wake me up before the sun was up, and they would chirp until the very end of the day, and I had nothing else to do other than write songs and hang out on the porch.”

Riley says many of his songs come from a place of nostalgia, lending sentimental value to most of his lyrics, so the full-circle experience of being inspired by birds during the height of the pandemic and remembering his grandmother makes for a touching genesis of a debut album.

“It felt sort of right to just narrow it down and be like, ‘Oh, my grandma loved birds, and then here they are again.’ I think it was a lesson, something about myself that I learned, that birds are pretty significant – more than I thought – in my life. So here I am: ‘Let's call the album Bird Songs.’”

Nathaniel Riley's Bird Songs is available on all streaming platforms. He plays Dharma Farm, 12281 North 75th Street, Longmont, at 7 p.m. Saturday, July 15. Tickets are $40.