**Ghosts in the Pines: A Personal Journey Through Riley Downing’s “Start It Over”**
Every once in a while, I stumble across a record that feels like an unsigned letter addressed to my inner life. Often, these albums slip by unnoticed, buried by glossier offerings in the vast digital river. So it was with Riley Downing’s 2021 solo debut “Start It Over,” an Americana-country record that seems both old as the soil and as urgent as the next sunrise. It never cracked mainstream charts; it lived in small indie shops and the skin-prickling echo of word-of-mouth. But I found it during a period when I was working for minimum wage in a windowless office, feeling like my days were rearranging themselves into a pile of withered leaves. Listening to this album wasn’t entertainment; it was a form of self-reclamation.
Riley Downing is best known as the deep, gruff voice anchoring The Deslondes, a New Orleans roots band itself living on the outskirts of the mainstream. With “Start It Over,” Downing quietly released a quietly devastating record—swampy, tender, rough-edged. It’s country, but the sort you would hear on a cracked back porch, sifting the past through a whiskey glass. It snuck past almost everyone; even in Americana circles, it was a whispered recommendation rather than a headline.
The first notes of “I’m Not Ready” sound like the thud of my own fears: “I’m not ready for the world to get heavy, I’m not ready to be the man I was meant to be.” That line alone sent me circling my apartment for days. Downing sings with a mournful patience, as if drawing words out of mud, not pretending to be wiser than his failures. There’s something in how he inhabits disappointment—not wallowing, but naming it out loud. It made me think of all the times I ducked out of potential or let anxiety erode opportunity. When Downing admits, “I want to start it over, but I don’t even know how,” I felt seen in the most uncomfortable, beautiful way.
Lyrically, “Start It Over” lives in the small, aching places daily life occupies: collapsed dreams, late-night loneliness, honest work and failed love. “Deep Breath” is the kind of song you wish your father had written for you. The refrain lands like a prayer: “Just take a deep breath, don’t let it in, just take a deep breath, and try again.” I’d played that track at 2 a.m. after half a bottle of Wild Turkey and texted exes and old friends—each one a silent plea to try again. It wasn’t a heroic moment, but it was honest, and Downing’s voice made me feel less alone in my missteps.
The production, courtesy of Andrija Tokic (who’s worked with Alabama Shakes and Margo Price), is spare but golden: you hear the shivers of the strings, the creak of the chair, almost Downing tapping his boot against the Louisiana dust. There’s nothing here that doesn’t need to be, nothing that steals attention from the lyrics. Melancholy pedal steel washes into “Good to See Ya,” a love letter to fleeting connections; the ragged shuffle of “Hey Mister” feels carved out of childhood memories and old debts. If you’re looking for anthems, this isn’t your album. If you want the truth, even the ugly kind, this is gospel.
The most striking cut for me was “Crazy.” “The whole world’s gone crazy, and maybe so have I / Every mirror’s a stranger, and I don’t know why.” Those lines mirrored the pandemic panic—days and months measured by anxious news scrolls and the slow shrinking of my sense of self. I wrestled with anger, with loss, with the knowledge that life doesn’t always provide a clean redemptive arc. Downing’s delivery doesn’t promise resolution, just companionship in uncertainty. Some days, that’s all I needed.
I know I keep returning to the personal—my own failures, my own late-night self-examinations—but the heart of country music, its most redemptive quality, is how it transforms the singular confession into universal balm. “Start It Over” is about Downing’s own reckonings, but it ends up being about everyone who ever felt stuck between what they want and what they’re afraid of. That makes this record a kind of medicine—or maybe, a confessor, humming just below the level of reproach.
There is a warmth here, a kind of forgiveness at the album’s core. By the time you reach “Stud Song” and “Won’t Look Back,” Downing is no longer simply cataloguing failure or regret. He’s building up tiny intentions—get through the day, try to do right, show up when it counts. “I can’t change the weather,” he admits, “but I can try to face the rain.” I jotted that down in my journal, the kind of mantra that means more the rougher your week has been. I listened as I walked to therapy for the first time in months, equal parts ashamed and uplifted.
If I have a criticism, it’s that the album at times risks blending into a single mournful tone. The pacing is deliberate—like chewing through tough meat; you can’t rush, but too much and the sentimentality drags. I wished for one moment, just one, where Downing let loose outright joy, or anger, or absurd humor—something to break the sepia atmosphere. The world he’s painted can feel so heavy, so unrelenting, that the possibility of escape, even briefly, would be a gift.
Still, “Start It Over” is a record for outsiders, for anyone adrift in transition, heartbroken, alone, trying again. It’s not meant for arenas or radio. Listen alone, in a dim-lit room, stare at your hands. It’s the album I’d want played at closing time, after everyone else has left. It reminds me—maybe all of us—that you can stumble, regret, and begin again. That’s worth more than a thousand hit singles.
Kroes den Bock