By Honoré Gbedze, The Afro News Vancouver : Riley Inge is a local Vancouver resident for the past 16 years and the Founder and lead vocalist of Riley and the Ryze Band. He is a seasoned entertainer having worked closely with the industry’s best and brightest artists. Riley was formerly on stage with The Temptations, Smoky Robinson and Barry White to name a few of his expeditions in the music world of Motown Records.
A tragic rollercoaster incident in 2010 that initially left him paralyzed has not stopped his determination to beat all odds as he courageously battled to move on, get well and help others through his faith and belief.
Riley Inge was born in the Southern State of Alabama and lived there until he was 17. His beloved Father passed away when he was only 7 years old and left his Mom with seven children. Riley was the 5th child born to the Inge family. His Dad was the backbone of the family and had strong values and a strong faith. He raised his children well and gave them a choice and told them that they could either go to church or they would die. Since none of them wanted to have the latter choice, they decided to go to church. It was at church that Riley developed his love for music and singing.
With the passing of Riley’s Dad, his Mom suffered much loss and got mixed up with the wrong crowd. Riley, described the hardship of his family after his Father’s death of them being in heaven when his Father was still alive to them going to hell after he passed. Life got so rough that the Welfare Authorities had to step in and intervene and informed his Mom that her children will be taken from her and sent to reformatory school. Their Step-Father would not hear of such and moved the children to a farm, where he was abusive by working them hard and took them out of school four days a week. At school Riley was ridiculed a lot because of being poor and not knowing much as he missed many days of school. At this young age he turned this negative situation into a positive one by taking control of the malice and befriended his classmates by entertaining them and thus became the class clown who everybody liked.
One day while working in the cotton fields, he saw a rainbow and this gave him hope as he remembered seeing a rainbow in a story book that had a huge pot of gold at the end of it. While he was day dreaming of what he could become if he had a chance to climb onto that rainbow that was now in the sky and get to that pot of gold, how good life would be; his Step Father caught him gazing into the distant sky and accused him of slacking off on the job and gave him a stern scolding telling him that he would never amount to anything and that he should pay more attention to his other brothers in the field who were working hard as they would make something of their lives and become somebody. Riley, did not let this ridicule knock him off course of remaining positive and muttered to himself that there is no way that what was just told to him would ever become of him. Having been in a negative environment after his Father passed away, he knew and was determined that he was destined to have more than he currently had at the time and would become a better person.
At the age of 16 Riley had an opportunity to go to Florida or New York to work. He chose to go to New York as all the teenagers that went to New York, seemed to come back well versed, polished and well dressed. So off he went to New York to work as a dishwasher in a hotel. Once there he discovered that getting his hands wet was not his forte and happened to see the bus boys bring in glasses from the dining room and they would just pile it high in the dish pit with no sense of sorting. After observing this for a while and giving it some thought, Riley decided to approach the Manager and recommend that a better way of sorting and cleaning the glasses could be had which would keep the glasses separated into sizes and in trays before they were washed and that it would be easy to access again once cleaned. The Manager asked him who would do this job and Riley eagerly answered that he would assume this task. This got him out of washing dishes and getting his hands wet. He later then aspired to become a bus boy and then wanted to progress to being a waiter, but that was prohibited because of his ethnicity. Riley took this as his cue to move on and he landed a job as a short order cook at a New York Delicatessen.
Riley started to realize his dreams when he was about 18 years of age. He began to shape all the things that were laid on him as a child, being put down constantly and told that he would never amount to anything when he was 7-8 years old. He had a natural talent at playing the drums; one time when he was quite young he used his Mom’s metal wash tub, strapped it around his waist, took sticks from a tree and started drumming and followed the town parade down the street. At school he snuck into the music room and played on the drums, the Music Teacher caught him playing and was impressed with his drumming and offered him to be the captain of the drums. Then one day while in a music lesson the teacher asked him to go to the board and write, music theory, on the board, Riley hesitated to go and his classmates started to laugh and told the teacher that he couldn’t write. The teacher asked him if that was true and Riley replied ‘yes it is so because I am dumb’. The teacher scolded him and said that he should never consider himself dumb and encouraged him to think positively and to remove that negativity from his thoughts. This was a challenge for Riley as he was always pinned with negativity at a relatively young age through his childhood years.
Riley’s life experiences made him overcome many obstacles and this drove him to start a foundation for youth called STOP (Steps To Overcome Problems). He wrote and performed many children’s songs after listening to a rather derogatory rap song one day while in his apartment in Los Angeles and said to himself if this is what children are listening to then the world is in for disaster. He also produced a commercial status movie called Don’t be a Bully.
Now as an adult and Father himself of four grown children, Riley says that his life changed when his first child, a son, was born. He raised his children on the same principles as his own Dad taught him whom he only knew for the first 7 years of his life, but he modeled his role as a Father of how he thought his Father would have raised him had he been alive to see Riley grow up. Being in the circle of musicians he was in at the time his children were born and seeing them going ‘A’ wall with drinking and having a good time, gave him the clear notion that we was not going to be that way and being a Father means that you have responsibility and accountability and have to provide for your family.
Despite the many challenges that Riley faced in his life he made the statement that ‘its not how you fall, it’s how you get up that makes all the difference’. He went on to say that God gives us a mechanism to build our bodies and our minds and if you dig yourself a hole, you just have to stop digging.
Riley’s advise for Fathers and would be Fathers are first you have to know yourself, then you have to check your foundation, in other words know your values, be responsible for the life that you are about to bring into the world, remain grounded and true to yourself. You must have confidence and be able to stand for something, if you don’t stand for something you will fall for anything. You lose your perspective when you are not able to see, hear or able to speak as these attributes opens the door to opportunity and last but not least you must love unconditionally.
In 2010 Riley suffered a tragic accident that left him paralyzed and he was told that he would never be able to walk again, but his strong faith and conviction to overcome this obstacle allowed that he beat all odds and has made enormous strides towards walking again.
His closing words of our session were ‘I’ve been blessed to get through and over all the circumstances placed in my life, kept my faith in God as nothing can be done without him. My foundation is my faith in God and my determination is my work ethics.
You can be a complete Winner, even if you are a beginner,
If you think you can, you can
Just change your C thought to an A, go and make that big play,
You can change this great nation, you can re-direct inflation,
If you think you can, you can
There is no more time to lose, but plenty of time to Win,
If you think you can, you can
By Riley Inge
See a live performance of Riley and the Ryze Band on Fathers Day, Sunday, June 17 at
CENTRAL BISTRO, 1072 Denman Street, Vancouver, BC 7:30-11:30pm, reservations recommended.