Riley Green has immortalized his grandfathers with his new song, "I Wish Grandpas Never Died."
“I actually made my granddaddy Buford and my granddaddy Lendon both co-writers on ‘Grandpas Never Died,’" he explains in a statement from his label. "They weren’t in the room with me when I wrote the song, but the song is literally written from a point of view of what values they taught me growing up.
"And I feel like the cool things about that song is it’s not necessarily values that every 30-year-old guy has. You know, it’s kind of from me appreciating some of the things that they appreciated from when they grew up – from the type of music to the way the world is today.
"My granddaddy Buford used to make us practice giving handshakes to him when I was growing up," he continues. "And that was such a big deal to him and I don’t know that it is anymore. That was kinda my way of saying I wish that things were a little bit more like my granddaddies wish they were.
"The easy way to put it is, I couldn’t have wrote the song without ‘em, and I thought it was really cool, on a song called ‘I Wish Grandpas Never Died,’ to have their names on something that’s gonna last forever.”