Video: Jill Riley Releases 'Cowboy Hats & Cadillacs' Music Video

Americana Original, Singer/Songwriter Jill Riley, a fourth-generation member of the Cluck’s, a Texas cattle ranching family, debuts the new music video for her first single, "Cowboy Hats & Cadillacs," from her forthcoming fall album release, Common Ground, today.

“Cowboy Hats & Cadillacs," directed by acclaimed filmmaker Michael Merriman and his son Michael Merriman, Jr., for Sharpened Iron Studios, vividly portrays the contentious debates and divisions among the Cluck family's second and third-generation cattlemen, a reality Riley witnessed first-hand while growing up in a small town in Texas.

The specter of those conflicts was over every funeral of the second-generation Clucks. "At a time when we should be celebrating the life of the deceased, the tension could be felt so palpably that you could cut it with a knife at times," she notes.

Influenced by Jessi Colter, Rickie Lee Jones, Emmylou Harris, and Tanya Tucker, Riley developed her own unique style, and it was at that intersection of musical inspiration and self-discovery that Riley birthed the songs on her Common Ground album.

"After doing a deep dive into my family history and heritage, I've learned that one thing that is "tried" in a small town over and over again is family relationships," says Riley.

Regarding the recent controversy about the Jason Aldean song, she says, "Before pointing fingers and shaming any other race or people group, we would better serve each other by taking a look into our own bloodline families in America, and heal the divisions there first by owning our individual part in it. I believe those efforts would echo out in the most powerful way to help heal our families and the divisions in the nation. I believe we all desperately need to learn how to love each other well."

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