5 Minutes in Texas With Sam Riggs

When Sam Riggs chose to follow his dream of being a professional musician, picking up and leaving his native Florida, he had a decision to make: Nashville or Austin. He ultimately elected to settle in the Texas capital, citing its reputation as an incubator for original talent. Since then, he formed Sam Riggs and the Night People and released his full-length debut, 2013’s Outrun the Sun.

It’s a Red Dirt record, full of wide-open ballads and mid-tempo country-rock, with songs about taking leaps of faith, overcoming shattered hearts and letting go. It’s also an album colored with more than a few shades of Riggs’ influences — including Garth Brooks and Riggs’ mentor, Texas country rebel Ray Wylie Hubbard.

Earlier this month, Riggs released a video of a solo performance of his new song “Second Hand Smoke,” which will be included on his as-yet-unnamed follow-up to Outrun the Sun, due later this year. (Watch the video below.) “It’s a song about addiction, pure and simple,” Riggs says of “Smoke.” He admits he has struggled with addiction at times in his life, and in characteristically soul-baring fashion, he’s unafraid to discuss those struggles in his lyrics.

In Rolling Stone Country‘s latest “5 Minutes in Texas” series, Riggs talks about the influence of Hubbard and Reckless Kelly, the cinematic music video for “When the Lights Go Out” and his Star Wars-themed line of merch.