If you’re going to title your highly anticipated album Black Bandana, Corey Kent knows you better commit to the look.
Sitting on oversized couch at the Standard, one of the oldest clubs in Nashville, the Oklahoma singer-songwriter is notably wearing a black bandana while he ruminates on a record that has the potential to bump him from arena opener to arena headliner. But even with the kerchief, a signifier of rebellion tied loosely around his neck, Kent can’t help but wrestle with the idea of integrating into the mainstream, and all that goes along with it.
“I am in the process of redefining what is successful to me. Because, when you get the hit, when you get the radio chart, when you get the platinum record, there’s a lot of pressure on you to repeat that,” he says. “But what’s ironic about that is, it was never my measure for success in the first place. My metric was, ‘Are people showing up at my shows? Are they buying my merchandise? Are they singing my songs?’
“The other question that I keep asking myself,” Kent continues, “is, ‘Do I really want fame?’ Because I do not think that I do. I enjoy going out in public with my family, and going out to the bar with the boys. I enjoy normal life, as it is meant to be lived.”
But after Black Bandana, Kent’s fourth studio album and second for RCA Nashville, he may not have a choice.
Kent co-produced the LP with Chris Farren, Austin Goodloe, Joe Fox, and Jon Randall, and it stands as his most complete record to date. His charismatic vocals lift every song, and the melodies balance hard country-rockers with heartbreaking ballads throughout. Half of the album’s 10 tracks are written or co-written by Kent, and a couple — like “Never Ready” and the title track — are intensely personal.
“Anybody can regurgitate a barroom song,” he says. “But ‘Never Ready’ and ‘Black Bandana’? Those are uniquely me.”
The former is a wistful, contemplative song about the way the heaviest moments in life — good or bad — always take you by surprise, while title track is an ode to Kent’s own stubbornness. It’s hard to hear him sing, “When the whole world’s waving white flags, be the black bandana,” without being immersed in the Kent worldview, one forged by bucking convention at every turn.
“Black Bandana” struck such a chord with Kent, 30 and married with three children, that he changed the entire direction of the album right before he went into the studio.
“I have so many songs, and I’m really big on each record feeling like a cohesive record,” Kent says. “We wrote ‘Black Bandana’ three weeks before we cut it. That was the last piece of the record, and then it became the title track. There was a song called ‘Bixby’ that was supposed to be the title track. But when we wrote ‘Black Bandana,’ we went, ‘Oh, shoot, this isn’t the Bixby record anymore.’”
Kent says that Bixby, titled after Bixby, Oklahoma, where Kent was born, will surface one day. But right now, the name just references the suburb of Tulsa that, during Kent’s youth, was still a distinctly small town. He spent his early years as a fan of country music there before joining a touring Western swing band at age 11.
“From ages 11 to 16, every stage I was on, that was what I was playing,” Kent says. “Not necessarily because I loved Western swing, but that was the opportunity that was given to me. That was a unique start. I don’t think there’s very many people in my generation who even know what Western swing is, much less know how to play it, know the history and standards of it, or how it ties back to Tulsa and Cain’s Ballroom. But it gave me a master class on the history of my music scene.”
Although he scored a publishing deal in Nashville at 17, Kent’s musical roots are split between Oklahoma’s Red Dirt scene and the independent country circles of Texas. He credits a 2014 Turnpike Troubadours theater show in Tulsa with opening his eyes to the value of independence as a musician and songwriter, and his touring profile was boosted post-pandemic with a steady run of gigs supporting Texas mainstays such as Randy Rogers and Cody Johnson.
Kent also spent this summer as an opener on Parker McCollum’s Burn It Down Tour, which spawned a viral moment in Rio Rancho, New Mexico, after McCollum stumbled on a stage riser during his set. Both artists played the incident cool, and McCollum left the tour impressed with Kent and his latest record.
“Corey is not only an incredible musician, he’s also become a great friend,” McCollum tells Rolling Stone. “Having him out on the road with me has been an honor, and I can’t wait for everyone to hear this album”
Kent will kick off his own headlining run in a few weeks. The Black Bandana Tour starts on Sept. 21 in Paso Robles, California, and stretches into early 2025. There are currently more than 30 dates on the tour, including a run to the U.K. and Ireland in February. Openers include Kaitlin Butts and Braxton Keith.
That Kent is standing on the brink of stardom with Black Bandana caps a journey that seemed destined to be slow and steady — until it wasn’t. His publishing deal and move to Nashville culminated in Long Way, his 2016 self-released album that charted on Billboard’s country albums, and he appeared on The Voice’s Season 8, singing a Bob Wills song to make the cut. Then, a one-two punch: He lost his publishing deal and moved his family to Frisco, Texas, just before the pandemic. Kent ended up selling his house to keep his band paid.
“I had to go work for a pavement company to provide for my family, and it felt like life had just kicked me in the freaking teeth, the rug got ripped out, the whole game changed,” he says. “You’ve been working your whole life, you played all your cards, and it’s just, ‘Psych!’ Game board off the table. Here’s the new game.”
But the upheaval actually served to recenter and inspire Kent.
“That was the green light that I could now go have success. I remember thinking, ‘Every amazing story has a major setback. What have I overcome in my life? My parents got divorced and I didn’t have the perfect childhood, but that’s not the obstacle that makes you who you are.’ But now I’ve got a friggin’ story.”
Within two years, Kent turned it all around. He never stopped playing music, although he says 2022 was spent in a van and trailer. He self-released another album, 21, and followed it with a single release of “Wild As Her” — co-written by Morgan Wallen, Brett Tyler, and Kelly Archer. Almost accidentally, his version caught fire on social media.
“I wasn’t playing the game,” Kent says of that moment. “I was living in Texas. I had moved away from Nashville after I got dropped. I didn’t have TikTok or socials on my phone. My manager was after me to put in the effort to create content. But I wasn’t interacting. So, it was a super out-of-left-field call to get from him to say, ‘You’re having a massive moment online. This song is taking off.’ I didn’t know what that meant. I don’t know, to this day, how you quantify that a song has gone viral.”
Within a year, RCA signed Kent and pushed “Wild As Her” hard on country radio. In May 2023, the single hit No. 1 on the Mediabase chart. It has since been certified double-platinum by RIAA and went on to anchor Blacktop, Kent’s 2023 RCA debut that ultimately cracked the Billboard 200 and also included the excellent “Something’s Gonna Kill Me,” one of Rolling Stone’s best country songs of the year.
His career has been on an upward trajectory since, at an increasingly rapid pace. In addition to the McCollum tour, Kent spent part of 2023 as direct support for Jason Aldean on his arena trek, and a portion of 2024 opening for Ashley McBryde in Europe. Now, as he looks ahead to his most promising headlining tour so far, Kent is genuinely excited. Onstage, he believes, is where he fits in best.
“Playing shows will always be number one,” he says. “Thinking about how my career started, it was live music. I was on stage, playing Western swing music to 1800 people at Cain’s Ballroom. For me, that will always be the most important part. We are a live act that happens to have had some success on the recording circuit.”
Josh Crutchmer is a journalist and author whose third book, Red Dirt Unplugged, is set for release on December 13, 2024, via Back Lounge Publishing, and available for pre-order.
