Sam Riggs was flying a single-engine plane from Austin, Texas, to San Angelo in the spring of 2017 when he heard the oddest sound: Nothing. Catastrophic engine failure. He’d lost all power, and had about 6,500 feet to figure out how to escape a potentially fatal problem. “There was,” he admits, “a moment of panic, a moment that felt very surreal.” But Riggs pulled it together. With the help of air traffic control, he found an abandoned airstrip on a Lone Star cattle ranch and touched down without a scratch. One of his most perilous moments ended up becoming one of his smoothest landings as a pilot. It’s something of a metaphor for Riggs’ life. He’s a wild live performer, an inveterate risk-taker and an enthusiastic adventurer. As a self-sustaining, independent singer/songwriter, he’s taken a leap of faith on more than one occasion, always willing to back up his plunges with a voracious amount of work. So he shrugs it off a bit when he thinks about how close he came to the edge in his aviation exercise. “That’s just how my life has always gone,” Riggs says with a laugh. “I’ve sort of become used to it.” The sense of daring is a key element in Riggs’ brand of country, a rock-infused sound with a chip on its sonic shoulder from a guy who counts Garth Brooks, Foo Fighters, George Jones and Blink-182 among his influences. He hails from St. Cloud, Florida, where the Everglades create a flat, steamy environment. Disney World and the beach were both within driving distance, but neither was part of his reality. He was surrounded by orange groves, cattle ranches, snakes and wetlands. And his home life was less than ideal. His parents split when Riggs was 2 and his older brother, Mike, was 4. The stress his mother faced created a childhood that he now considers “tumultuous.” But music provided some relief. His mother, author K.J. Radebaugh, turned the home into their own personal coffeehouse at night, playing guitar for her boys and taking requests – three songs apiece – before they went to bed. Her performances of “Me And Bobby McGee,” Irish folks songs and “Mammas, Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up To Be Cowboys” gave Sam an early taste for country music. In the meantime, Riggs’ dad took him to see Garth Brooks in Orlando in 1998 on the three-year world tour that preceded his retirement. The effects and Brooks’ command of the audience were mindblowing, and life-changing, to a 10-year-old. “When they played ‘The Thunder Rolls,’ all the lights went out in the arena, and then the thunder rolled in, and there he was in a spotlight on the stage playing that guitar,” Riggs recalls. “The rain was coming down around him, and it was like, ‘This is unreal. I have to do this.’ I had already wanted to be a singer – every little kid wants to be a singer at some point – but it was like, ‘This is it, I have to find a way to do this.’ And I’ve been chasing it ever since.”