Today we’d like to introduce you to Riley West.
Hi Riley, can you start by introducing yourself? We’d love to learn more about how you got to where you are today.
From a young age, I was always influenced by music and sound. My mother has recordings of me playing with drums as a toddler, singing along to Sister Act soundtracks, and mimicking The Ohio State Marching Band growing up. From there, she put me into instrument and vocal lessons throughout my childhood, as well as just about any sport you can think of. I was homeschooled until 8th grade, which offered my four siblings and I a lot of time to learn in unique environments, attend more field trips and group experiences than the average school kid would, and allowed us to learn subjects that were geared towards our specialties in more depth.
During my 8th grade year at St. James the Less, I began learning the trumpet and participated in a few school plays while also competing in football, swimming, and track. Once I reached DeSales High School, I focused primarily on my football, swimming, and track teams, finding less available time for music but never losing touch with my appreciation for a plethora of genres. It wasn’t until my Junior that I decided to get back into trumpet, trading in football and swimming to join the concert band, choir, and talent show, but continuing my favorite and best sport in track. By Senior year I was performing solos for the school choir, joined the spring musical, and competed in the State track meet 4×4 Relay with my talented brother brother Tyler.
Freshman year of college ensues at the University of Cincinnati, where I was a preferred walk-on as a 400-meter Hurdler and 4×4 anchor. Kanye West and Skrillex fueled my training, pushing me to compete harder while Drake, Kid Cudi, The Weeknd, and Frank Ocean allowed me to escape the shock of young adulthood. Coaching changes took place going into my sophomore year which resulted in me being released from the track team… A painful blow that left me severely depressed and somewhat without a goal in college. I ended up switching majors from Sports Administrations to Communication and also taught myself graphic design, where I was able to create a clothing line called RexklessWear that got a lot of attention statewide.
Missing home and my family, I transferred from UC to my dream school, The Ohio State University in 2014. This transfer introduced me to a core network of friends, which included Malik Tuck, better known as DJ Leek.
Leek and I became close through our passion for music, fashion, and Buckeye football, leading us to attend The Number Fest together in 2015. Leek promised he would be on a stage the next time we went, and sure enough, he was! He got a slot on the Silent Disco in 2016, for which he asked me to design a baseball jersey with his name and the OU colors on. The jersey ended up being seen by one of the co-owners of Number Fest, Adam Lynn, who asked me to design for their re-emerging summer festival, Breakaway.
I met the Prime Social Group team shortly after and began mocking up designs for a Prime basketball jersey to be sold on-site, along with t-shirts, hoodies, and other merchandise items. This relationship carried on through the year and transformed into a Graphic Design Internship under Tara Scieszinski, who was the Creative Director at Prime and taught me a great deal about design. Young and ambitious, I split time studying communication and psychology at OSU and designing at Prime for a year and eventually was offered a position as Design Assistant. Working for a company that is heavily involved in the music industry is never something that I thought I would want to do, but quickly became something I was passionate about. Much more passionate than scholastics at least…
Feeling a great amount of pressure working for PSG and a serving job, I dropped out of Ohio State and focused on work and design full time. This allowed me to sharpen my design skills late at night and dive in deeper to understanding the concert and festival scene. Eventually, I was at just about every show or event that was possible to attend, including supporting and shadowing Leek’s performances at Park Street, Big Bar, and Ugly Tuna (the first and best one). Late in 2018, I was offered a DDJ-RB2 by a young intern at PSG named Mitch James Wilkens, who had been very active in our company-wide relationships with Ohio State students and assisting with artist relations for our shows and festivals. From this point on, I was fully encompassed with learning to DJ, designing fluidly and efficiently, and selling tickets to Prime events, which built up a LOT of connections. I played my first public show with Sam Biederman at Midway, where I probably irritated him the entire night due to my track selection and lack of technique, but he showed immense patience with my blunders and allowed me to learn from them professionally.
Spring 2019 is in full swing, and The Number Fest rapidly approaching. I was added to the Silent Disco lineup by Kevin Le who oversaw our local artists and knew a lot of music industry standard practices from his time working with Peekaboo, G-Rex, and other notable Michigan-based artists. Through my network and connections, I was able to achieve top ticket seller of the event which earned me an opportunity to perform on the main stage. This wasn’t the biggest crowd I had been in front of in my life, and it was mostly drunk college kids, but I can still feel the butterflies in my stomach even when reminiscing on it today. I did my best to put on an electrifying performance to set the tone for the rest of the day and was even able to bring out my youngest brother Schy West to perform a track that he and Tyler produced together called ‘Rager.’ This is a moment in time that will always be dear to me and opened my eyes to new possibilities.
Since then, I have been fortunate enough to play a multitude of parties, bars, events, and clubs around Columbus, worked my way onto Breakaway’s Corona Stage 3 years in a row, and performed two Haunted Fest sets with Mitch James for Rezz, RL Grime, Ghastly and NGHTMRE, played opening sets for Zomboy through MBFP, as well as Virtual Riot through Uncut Republic in Cincinnati. I’ve also had the privilege of playing the local stage at Lost Lands 2021 and an RV set in my first trip to Electric Forest this past year.
All in all, music, design, fashion, and sports have played an intense role in making me who I am today – your smiling friend at shows, electrifier on stage, and most competitive asset in promotion.
We all face challenges, but looking back, would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
Anyone that intends to follow their dreams is going to face obstacles and challenges. One of the greatest challenges I’ve faced, especially over the last few years, has been depression. I tend to put too much pressure on myself and have been told that I don’t give myself enough credit. I believe part of the reason are because I have specific expectations for myself and can be a bit of a perfectionist.
The great thing about the obstacles I’ve faced is that they’ve inspired my self-expression and emulated in my sets and projects. Emotion fuels a great amount of my track selection, which allows me to convey feelings of happiness, sadness, anger, and excitement through lyrics, tempo, and sound.
Thanks – so what else should our readers know about your work and what you’re currently focused on?
On a daily basis, I graphic design for Prime Social and take on other freelance projects. Marketing and promotions for shows and festivals have been a strong suit of mine, which helps a lot when it comes to selling tickets for an event – people can rely on me to either have tickets to the shows they want to attend, find someone/someway to get them a ticket or get rid of their ticket for them through my vast network.
DJing is an escape that drives me to push myself and connects me to new people.
My current focuses are continuing design work as a freelance artist, building a fan base as a DJ with production lessons in the very near future. Most recently, I’ve been learning how to manage artists and establish a platform for them to express themselves on. My 10 year goal is to use the music industry experience I’ve obtained to tour-manage and hopefully run an agency where artists can be seen and heard across the globe.
What would you say has been one of the most important lessons you’ve learned?
Believe in yourself, take risks, and everything happens for a reason that may not present itself at the moment.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://linktr.ee/recklesswest21
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/recklesswest21/?hl=en
- SoundCloud: https://soundcloud.com/recklessxlnc
Image Credits
https://linktr.ee/willdub
