Jerrod Niemann has a lot of work to do. He successfully managed to alienate a great deal of fans, casual fans and even radio during his ‘High Noon’ era, going from perceived grossly underrated artist to a bit of a laughing stock. While lead single ‘Drink To That All Night’ was a #1 hit (his first since 2010’s ‘Lover Lover’, and his second overall), its use of electronic elements and later remix with Latino rapper Pitbull made it rather polarizing, particularly since it helped usher in country music’s new tendency towards EDM. Still, it was follow-up single ‘Donkey’ that took the gun, pulled the trigger, built the coffin and wrote the obituary, and the ridiculous track was limited to the top 50. It was official: country radio had found its boundary line. Jerrod’s label (Sea Gayle/Arista Nashville) quickly back-tracked after it was clear ‘Donkey’ was making an ass out of them (sorry, couldn’t resist) and released ‘Buzz Back Girl’, but the damage was done and after crawling into the top 40 they gave up and moved on.
Almost exactly a year since ‘Buzz Back Girl’ hit radio in a plight of desperation (it was released on July 14, 2014, while the new single went to iTunes last week), ‘Blue Bandana’ arrives as the lead single from a forthcoming new album. Rife with the potential for novelty imagery and plenty of overpriced merchandise opportunities, it makes sure to name-check enough assorted festivals (Bonnaroo, Coachella, Lollapalooza, Newport Folk Festival, Woodstock, Wakarusa, Merle Fest, Hangout Music Fest and more) to make Jerrod’s inclusion on future line-ups almost a given. Interestingly it doesn’t mention CMA Fest, an event you’d expect to be of prime importance in a country song about festivals.
The lead character in the song is a kind of glorified hippie child, a woman in her 20s who drifts from festival to festival, all the while drinking up the atmosphere, the people, and every kind of music going. “Told me she ain’t missed one since the summer she turned 18, hit that road on a gypsy dream, hitched a ride in a beat-up van followin’ her favorite band,” Jerrod sings during the first verse, taking just three minutes to fall in love with her enough to be “driving across this land looking for a blue bandana”. It’s different to the usual mainstream country radio fare, I will admit, but the depth of the narrative is limited and the surface depiction of the woman makes her out to be one of those annoying trend-following girls with cut-offs, flower crowns and perfect make-up that have become all too present at festivals these days. She isn’t even treated to the kind of gypsy-esque feminism seen in Kenny Chesney’s ‘Wild Child’; she is just a woman wearing a blue bandana going to festival after festival, seemingly with no life or personality outside of that. Much of the song is instead dedicated to either outright naming or somehow referencing various festivals, instead of actually fleshing out a female character, and in that way it feels like just a promotional tool rather than a good country song.
The music, it must be said, is a vast improvement on Jerrod’s much-maligned tracks of the last era, but honestly that’s not much of an achievement. It begins on a prettily picked acoustic guitar and little else, and while drums do come in they are relatively subdued, something that can also be said for the electric guitars. Of course, all of this subtlety is ruined as soon as the first chorus comes to a close, as for a brief moment the guitars and drums try to pretend they’re rocking out on stage, and this continues to crop up at various points throughout the rest of the song. It’s here where it slides into the generic and forgettable, and I had to listen to the track a few times before I could actually pay attention beyond the first verse. What was a good idea to begin with is made boring and commodified, and at any rate was probably a Kenny Chesney reject before it was ever a Jerrod Niemann single.
