Americana Highways premieres Randy Lee Riviere’s song “Our Town” right here, from his forthcoming album Wyoming, due to be available via Wilderness Records on February 26. Wyoming was recorded, produced and mixed by Kevin McKendree at The Rock House, Franklin, Tennessee. “Our Town” is Randy Lee Riviere on guitars and vocals; Kevin McKendree on piano, electric piano, organ, and lead guitar; James Pennebaker on pedal steel, fiddle, mandolin, and guitar; Kenneth Blevins on drums and David Santos on bass.
Randy Lee Riviere’s songwriting reveals an aptitude for conveying the significance of place and landscape.
With “Our Town,” you could talk about the breakdown of our past. How easy it is to look beyond those things once so important in our lives. But how does it feel when you try to visit those old secret places, and they’re just gone?
“Our Town” speaks simply to the human side of this process … the emotional side, what’s really important, who we are, what helped forge us into who we are. Our home towns. The surrounding countryside. All the country I used to run around on is housed over. It hurts me deeply. We shouldn’t stand back and watch inordinately wealthy people sweep in and rip our homes from our hands and lives. How does that really feel when it happens? And it happens time and time and time again in America. Big screws small. — Randy Lee Riviere