Riley Jane Finds Her Voice on the Page

Riley Jane’s relationship with music started with listening. Long before she was recording songs in GarageBand or releasing an album from her dorm room, she was absorbing lyrics passed down through her dad’s love of 60s folk. Bob Dylan was always in the background, sometimes through covers, sometimes through original recordings, shaping how she understood songwriting as something thoughtful, political, and rooted in storytelling. That influence still shows up in her work today, even as she carves out her own voice. For Riley, writing music is less about chasing perfection and more about paying attention. To language. To the world around her. To the thoughts she needs to get out before they turn into songs.

Riley released her debut album while navigating her first year of college, writing, performing and recording it entirely on her own. The process taught her just how wide the gap can be between songwriting and production. “I’m a lot more on the actual instrument and writing side than I am at all with audio tech,” she admits. The technical side felt like a different world. So she kept it simple. GarageBand tutorials. Basic recording. Learning just enough to make the songs live outside her notebook. The album itself became a collection of favorites pulled from different projects she had been working on. Not everything she writes is meant to be released. Some songs exist only to help her understand herself better.