Page 8 - ION Indie Magazine SeptOct 2018

Karen Mooreside: Welcome to LA, my
stomping grounds! You’re originally from
Atlanta, GA. What inspired you to move
from the hip hop capital to Los Angeles?

Riley Biederer: Thank you! Yeah, Atlanta is
awesome, but it wasn’t quite a fit for what I
was trying to do as an artist. I’m a pop artist
and Atlanta is somewhat more urban/R&B. I
had been traveling back and forth so much
between the two cities for years that I just
decided it was time to make the move. It was
an amazing decision too…I love it!

Karen Mooreside: Tell the readers of ION
Indie Magazine about “Riley the artist; the
early years.” What life experience led you
to music and what was it that made you
say, “Music will be my calling.”

RB: My mom and my Grandma were both
quite musical, along with a few others from
that side of the family, so I kind of grew up in
a very musical home. I think around the age
of 9 or 10, I got really into poetry and writing,
which turned into songs very quickly. I got
my first guitar around 14 and that’s when I
started playing gigs and stuff out and about
as much as I could. Once I secured a
management deal with Elton John’s “Rocket
Management,” It was pretty much history
from there.

KM: Why pop music?

RB: I grew up idolizing Britney Spears, Avril
Lavigne, Taylor Swift, etc. The typical things
a young girl loves, and it sort of just stuck.
“I’ve written hundreds of When I started out, I was leaning much
songs over the years harder into the country/pop genre but as I got
and I think, stylistically, older, that aspect of country kind of just
faded and I realized I wanted to do full-on
they’ve all evolved and pop. That’s when I started traveling out to LA
grown up as I did.” for writing sessions instead of Nashville and
~ Riley on songwriting I was hooked.