With the Larry Joe Taylor’s Texas Music Festival now commencing, many artist have arrived into Erath County to show festival attendees an awesome time with awesome music. With this in mind, singer-songwriter Jarrod Morris has taken the call to bring his ‘Red Bandana’.

Morris began his journey at singing around the end of his high school years.

“I wasn’t very good at it,” Morris said. “I don’t even know if I am now but there are more people that want to hear me sometimes.”

Despite this, Morris continued to work on his singing and soon began to write his songs.

“I guess (I began writing) in third grade penmanship class,” Morris said jokingly before correcting himself. “Writing songs, I (began to do it) in college, I just started tinkering around with it. I would play (the written songs) for my buddies and they would just tell me how awful they were.”

After this time, he soon began to move toward public performance.

“It was about five or six years ago, I was living down in Florida and I started playing at a bunch of beach bars,” said Morris. “I was playing for six hours beach bar gigs with a bunch of drunk Northerners.”

As he continued down this musical path, it became clear to Morris that this was something he wanted to do, “because I like to write songs and I want to be a songwriter. I enjoy that process,” Morris said.

Morris felt that he would have a better chance of making a living out of singing his songs and being a recorded artist rather than selling his songs.

“I really like a lot of the old nineties country guys” said Morris regarding artist he looked up to. In particular, Morris mentioned artists from the 70s era such as Dave Mathews Band and the Marshal Tucker Band.

His recent single, Red Bandana, has led him to having over 2,700 monthly listeners on Spotify.

“I think it’s going to be the biggest song in the world,” said Morris. “It’s doing alright in terms of a first single.”

Morris mentioned how he has received a lot of messages on social media regarding how a lot of people have enjoyed the songs and have continuously listened to it. Morris feel that his new single is a reflecting of being something more than the typical songs of the same genre.

In terms of his style of music, Morris described it as, “not rock and roll, but it’s got a little bit of an edge to it.”

Morris described this edge in his style is a foundation of folk with a country influence and a hint of bluegrass, with roots from Morris’ personal experience and his pet dog as inspiration towards the writing of the songs.

As he has found success in his career, it was not without challenges.

According to Morris, his biggest challenge in his career has been, “recording an album. It’s just a lot of moving parts. It’s just a lot of time, a lot of money. Getting a band together is equally as hard. In terms of writing songs and getting up to perform them you just have to rely on yourself but when you have to rely on other people it get s a little more difficult.”

Despite the difficulty, Morris was pleased to announce the release of his new album, “West of the East.”

The album was released on April 20, 2019, the album contains ten songs which will carry a more hip-hop beat to it, as a means of, “(throwing) people for a loop.”

Looking towards the future, Morris says that he is working on signing a booking deal. All goes to plan, he will begin a tour during the summer of 2019 and prepare to release around two to three songs in 2020.

While the venue is not Red Rocks Amphitheater in Jefferson County, Colorado, Morris looks forward to performing at the Larry Joe Taylor Texas Music Festival.

“The festival is kind of (amazing),” said Morris. “Probably just hanging out with everybody.”

Morris adds how he has always enjoyed the venue as attendees of the festival have always shown respect and listened to his performance.