Like many people who grow up in the middle of North America, Colorado-raised singer-songwriter Jobi Riccio grew up thinking doing music for a living was something only other people did. Riccio’s mindset changed when she encountered actual working musicians. “I went to a bluegrass festival in Colorado,” she recalls, “and met musicians who gigged and made a living doing it, and I was like, ‘Oh, it's not just like famous people you see on TV and you hear on Top 40 radio who are doing music.’ You can do music in all kinds of ways.”

Riccio earned a degree from the Berklee College of Music in Boston and eventually relocated to Nashville to pursue a career as a singer-songwriter. She released her debut album, Whiplash, in 2023, and on May 15 of this year, she released her second full-length, Face the Feeling.

Now two albums in to her career, Riccio is embracing the lessons she’s picked up along the way. “I had learned that I had to become a more honest person with myself in adulthood if I was gonna get through it,” she says. “And I couldn't people-please my way through existence, which I think women specifically are socialized to do.”

While in the Twin Cities to play a show at the Fine Line supporting Deer Tick and following that with a solo set the next day at The Current’s Happy Hour at Sociable Cider Werks, Riccio visited Minnesota Public Radio for an interview with Radio Heartland’s Mike Pengra. Riccio shared more about her background as a person and as a musician, what it’s been like being a transplant to Nashville, and what she’s looking forward to next.

Watch and listen to the interview above, and find a full transcript below.

Interview Transcript

Mike Pengra: I'm psyched to be in the studio with Jobi Riccio. I've been a fan of yours, Jobi, for — well, since your first album came out. Your second one is out now, and I love it. I love your music. Welcome to Minnesota.

Jobi Riccio: Thanks so much for having me.

Mike Pengra: Yeah.

Jobi Riccio: Stoked to be here.

Mike Pengra: You're from Colorado.

Jobi Riccio: Yeah.

Mike Pengra: You're from Morrison, which is where Red Rocks is, right?

Jobi Riccio: Mm-hm.

Mike Pengra: You grew up there, and now you've — I heard you moved to Nashville recently.

Jobi Riccio: Yeah, it'll be five years in September.

Mike Pengra: Oh, really, that long? OK.

Jobi Riccio: Yeah. Yeah. It's kind of flown by, actually. I've been touring a lot of it, which is what I set out there to do, so—

Mike Pengra: I've been looking at your schedule. You're busy, you're very busy.

Jobi Riccio: Yeah.

Mike Pengra: So, were you going to be a musician all your life growing up, you knew you were going to do this, or when did you start playing music?

Jobi Riccio: I started singing kind of before I started playing music. I started singing from a really young age, probably like five or six years old, and I started playing guitar about 12 when I realized, like, "Huh, I might want to write my own songs," when I started really, like, picking up on lyrics in songs. And yeah, I think that I didn't really realize that I could be a musician as a job until I met other working musicians. I went to a bluegrass festival in Colorado and met musicians who, you know, they gigged and they made a living doing it, and I was like, "Oh, it's not just like famous people you see on TV and you hear on Top 40 radio who are doing music; like, you can do music in all kinds of ways," and I realized, like, it can look all different ways, and I think there's more of an understanding of that with the internet and social media now, but this was in, like, you know, the mid 2000s and early 2010s when I was coming of age. And yeah, so I think that's probably about when I decided I really wanted to go for it, and then I attended music school.

Mike Pengra: Berklee, right? Wow, that's a big deal.

Jobi Riccio: Yeah, and decided I didn't want to teach high school history or be a farmer or study forestry, which were other interests of mine, and still, I guess, interests I hold. Not so much history, but, like, I don't know; I was just, like, good at social studies.

Mike Pengra: When you go to Berklee and study music, do you study with the intent of being a teacher or being a traveling musician, or is there certain majors you take on there?

Jobi Riccio: I think it depends on the student. Some students are there, and they want to study teaching, and they want to be music teachers, which is, I mean, anybody who wants to be a teacher, it's a very noble thing to go out there and do, especially these days. And there are a lot of kids there who want to be songwriters, who want to be players, session players, side "hired guns," you know, as they say, people who play on records, people who play on tours, people who are engineers working in studios, so it's basically all kinds of people in the music industry. Music Business was another program that I had friends in. There was also like this kind of funny, like, create-your-own-major thing called Pro Music that I had some friends in. I personally studied songwriting because I loved to write songs as a teenager, and I didn't really know ... I mean, it's a funny thing to try to go learn, and in some ways it is something that you, it was good to have structure around it, and it also, I think, I learned that it is something that you can have craft in; like, you can learn tools that are really helpful, and it's also such a subjective thing, and such a just like a muscle to work. So, I think that that was one of the one of the most useful things I learned from school.

Mike Pengra: So, you made the transition from [college] to Nashville. Tell me what that's like, moving to Nashville as a young songwriter. It's kind of a big deal.

Jobi Riccio: Yeah, well, it was a little strange, because I had the pandemic, and I went back to Colorado for that, so I had some period of time where I was living back in Colorado, and I worked at this, like, indoor ski gym — that was very weird!

Mike Pengra: I'm trying to picture that in my mind!

Jobi Riccio: Yeah, it was bizarre and totally not, like, an essential business, but it was like the only place I could get hired at the time. You know, I hadn't finished my degree, and like, then I did, but yeah, it's like I had this weird niche degree, and a lot of places, like, people were hard up for for jobs.

Mike Pengra: Yeah, and there's probably no gigs at that point either.

Jobi Riccio: No. Yeah, I was doing like live streams and stuff, and so I worked at this indoor ski gym, which is basically just like this warehouse with these, like, astro-turfed hills, and like little kids would come in, like, masked, one at a time, and I would like teach them skiing on these hills. It was very bizarre.

Mike Pengra: Well, of course, you're a skier, I should've known, you're from Colorado.

Jobi Riccio: But it's — it was very weird. So that was my job. And then I worked at a brewery, and once I saved enough money, I moved to Nashville in September 2021.

Mike Pengra: And what was that like? A big, a big, huge change?

Jobi Riccio: Yeah. Bit of a culture shock. I had never lived or spent a lot of time in the South before. And yeah, I had a bunch of community and people already in Nashville, so I felt like it was unfamiliar and familiar all at once.

Mike Pengra: Yeah.

Jobi Riccio: I was like, "Oh, well, I know all these people, but the context with which I'm seeing them is totally new." Like, I had never been around ... Also, Nashville is entirely a singular place. Like, it's drunk Disneyland; like, I'd never been around so many, so many drunk people before. Like, truly! And it was so unnerving; like, to be like, "Oh, like, I live in a tourist destination." Because Colorado is, it's a tourist place, but it's like outdoor tourism.

Mike Pengra: Yes. Right.

Jobi Riccio: And I feel like it's kind of transitioned from being a tourist destination to just a place where people move, and I don't know if that's a good thing, because now it's like the third most expensive place in the country.

Mike Pengra: I didn't know that.

Jobi Riccio: Yeah. I just saw that and was like, "Well, guess I'm never moving home then." But yeah, basically, like, it took me a while to kind of find my footing, because I'm a Westerner, but my dad is from the Northeast, so like I feel like living in Boston, like, I understand the Northeast, I understand the West. Midwesterners, love y'all — very like, sweet, earnest people, easy to get along with. Like, I don't know, yeah, but like I think the South, I was just sort of like, I was just trying to connect there. And yeah, I guess it wasn't so much the culture of the South that I was struggling with as much as the culture of Nashville, the tourist city that I was kind of like, "Ewww ..."

Mike Pengra: All the wedding parties and...

Jobi Riccio: The bachelorettes, yeah! And the drinking and the, like, feeling like you have to pander to the tourists as, like, "the working songwriter waiting tables," and it's like—

Mike Pengra: Yeah.

Jobi Riccio: I hate that. But eventually I felt like I finally started to kind of settle, and I started touring, and things started picking up in my career when I released my first record.

Mike Pengra: Whiplash came out a couple years back. Loved the record.

Jobi Riccio: Thank you.

Mike Pengra: What was that like? And then, think about making songs for your new record, which is just out now. The transition to songs, did any of those songs exist back then when you were making that first record? You put them in a safe and wait for the second record to come out? How have you grown as a songwriter since that record?

Jobi Riccio: I maybe had like one or two of the songs sort of stored away from Face the Feeling while we were doing Whiplash. We made Whiplash in Asheville, North Carolina, and I made it with the same — well, not entirely the same three people, because there was another collaborator who owned the studio, Gar Ragland in North Carolina, who we worked with, who wasn't on this new record. So almost the same collaborative unit of myself, Jesse Timm, who is out here playing bass with me, who played at Fine Line last night, and Isaiah Beard, and we all co-produced and all kind of play different roles, like Jesse is a really gifted arranger and wrote the string parts on Face the Feeling, wrote the woodwind parts on Whiplash, and Isaiah is an amazing producer and mixer, so he is like crazy good with the Pro Tools software, which is for anyone listening who's not familiar, it's basically just like the software that you record everything onto on the computer.

Mike Pengra: Multi track.

Jobi Riccio: Multi track, yeah, and he's just amazing at making music sound three dimensional, and I feel like you can really hear that on both of my records. But in terms of me as the songwriter and how I've grown, I think I interpersonally did a lot of work between these two records; like, I was struggling with things in my personal life on both of them, but I kind of changed my approach to how I dealt with them, and on Whiplash I feel like I am just sort of processing coming of age, and then on this new record, I'm like dealing with things and feeling through them to their very end and trying to come through to the other side and looking at things and being like, "OK, so this is what's happening, and like, where do I want to go with this?" I suppose. Yeah, like I had learned that I had to become a more honest person with myself in adulthood if I was gonna get through it, and yeah, I couldn't people-please my way through existence, which I think women specifically are socialized to do. And yeah, I reached the age of, the ripe old age of like 24 and was like, "Oh, I have to start like telling the truth, actually, and like having hard conversations," because this is not ... I don't ... I'm feeling resentful, and I'm not being honest with myself here, and I think there's a lot of that grappling that you can hear me go through on the lyrics in the writing of Face the Feeling.

Mike Pengra: Yeah. I'm talking with Jobi Riccio in the studio today. Face the Feeling is her latest album. It's a really nice record. And you talked about growing as a songwriter in the second album; what's next? Are there more songs that are sitting in your, in your back pocket that you just haven't quite finished yet? And another album in the next few years. What's in the future for you?

Jobi Riccio: Yeah, I think for me it'll be like tapping back in to my creativity, and for now, I'm I'm really excited to be touring this record, and I was playing with a band here last night, and I'm out with Deer Tick, which is so fun. It's been so fun to get to know those guys, and to play and hear them play every night. Yeah, I've always wanted to play with a band behind me, and this is my first tour that I've gotten to do that, and I think this record is more of a band-forward record, so I think I'm learning how to tour with a band right now. So I think this next season of touring is like me working that muscle, and then also, when I'm on the road and off the road, kind of seeing what's going on creatively, doing some morning pages. I have some songs kicking around. I don't know if it's a record, if it's an EP. I've definitely got some material. I just, yeah, I don't really know what's next, to be honest. But yeah, I'm really excited with this record and the growth that I've experienced, and yeah.

Mike Pengra: You've got a big tour coming up next fall?

Jobi Riccio: Yeah.

Mike Pengra: Where are you all going?

Jobi Riccio: I'm going out with John Craigie to Europe, and we're going to the U.K. and Ireland, and Paris.

Mike Pengra: First time playing across the ocean?

Jobi Riccio: So, strangely, I've played in Sweden and Norway.

Mike Pengra: Oh, yeah!

Jobi Riccio: Yeah, a fair amount, and by "a fair amount," I mean twice, which is more than once.

Mike Pengra: Yeah!

Jobi Riccio: So it feels like I can say "a fair amount." Yeah, I have a fan over there who's a promoter, Björn Pettersson, who really loves my music and has championed me in Scandinavia, so we're going to Sweden as well.

Mike Pengra: Cool. Stockholm?

Jobi Riccio: Stockholm, and we're going to Oslo in Norway. Yeah, and then after the John Craigie tour, I'm going to play Take Root Festival in the Netherlands, and then do some more dates that aren't announced yet in the Netherlands, and yeah, so I'm going to be in Europe for over a month.

Mike Pengra: Wow, wow.

Jobi Riccio: Yeah, I'm really excited.

Mike Pengra: Jobi Riccio is my guest today, and I just want to say, congratulations on your two albums. You're only two albums in, but you sound much more mature than that. You've got a great sound. I love your songwriting. Thanks for all you do, and thanks for coming to Minnesota and treating us with your sound.

Jobi Riccio: Yeah, I love it. I love the music that's come out of here. It was really exciting to play here last night for the first time, but I was also, like, nervous. It's like, I felt the same thing when I like played in New Orleans for the first time—

Mike Pengra: Yeah.

Jobi Riccio: ...because i have such a reverence for the music here. Yeah, or like Chicago, like, I'm like, "Dang, gotta do well by these people, because they know good music!"

Mike Pengra: Thanks.

Jobi Riccio: Yeah.

Mike Pengra: Thanks for coming.

Jobi Riccio: Yeah, thanks for having me.

Credits

Guest – Jobi Riccio
Host/Producer – Mike Pengra
Audio – Josh Sauvageau
Video/Digital Producer – Luke Taylor

External Link

Jobi Riccio – official site