Bailey Zimmerman ‘Different Night Same Rodeo’ Review: Tracks Ranked

Cliched tale as boy throws down the gauntlet to convince girl to take a chance, despite everything she’s heard about boys like him. In an album that has some truly clever lines, this one takes the easy way out; for example, using the line “Girl I double dog you…” instead of finding a way to use the actual saying, “Girl, I double dog dare you.”

Sturdy, feisty country rock song defying anyone who wants to claim Zimmerman hasn’t earned his country bonafides. You can say what you want about him except he’s “new to country.”  Zimmerman’s current headlining tour takes its title from this track.

Mid-tempo shuffler with nice steel guitar work by Scotty Sanders takes the overused phrase “It’s All Good” as the base for a relationship that is all good “until it ain’t.” Zimmerman examines making the same mistakes over and over again until he realizes it’s all downhill and there’s no sense in trying to move into reverse.  It’s a “new day but the same old song, so why the hell do we keep singing along,” Zimmerman asks.

For someone who’s only 26, Zimmerman has a strong streak of nostalgia that runs through many songs on the album, including this thumping ode to a past love. He remembers all too well when it was his songs she sang along to and his hand she held, but those days are gone.

Mid-tempo, guitar-driven ballad about surviving the tough times in a relationship. Zimmerman provocatively asks, “If this was your last breath, would you waste it on me?” Are he and his partner meant to last? The jury is still out by the time the song ends.

A Chevy Silverado is the truck of choice in country songs of late and Zimmerman still has the truck, but the girl is long gone in this mid-tempo, sloping track that is one of the album’s most autobiographical.  The rhyme scheme—he rhymes “Silverado” with “heartbroke desperado”— may remind some of Morgan Wallen’s superior “Sand In My Boots.”

On this genial guitar-strumming duet with Mackenzie Carpenter, Zimmerman has turned the corner on lost love. The nights of tossing and turning are over. He may not be ready to love again, but he’s moving on “as I lay me down to sleep/memories of you I won’t keep.”

On the album’s mid-tempo closing track, Zimmerman, similarly to on “Fall in Love,” sings about a love who has found her happily ever after once she has moved on. It’s a fractured fairy tale for Zimmerman, who looks back on “once upon a good time,” but sees that this Cinderella found her Prince Charming and glass slipper only after leaving him.

Regrets, Zimmerman has a few, and as the love he thought would last a lifetime says goodbye, he tells her she might as well take his heart because he’s not going to need it anymore in this slow roll of a ballad.

“I was only scared of the devil and her dad” is a great first line, as Zimmerman recalls the innocent rush of love in in the church parking lot. Lots of firsts were happening- between cigarettes and romance—and sinning felt damn heavenly in this mid-tempo winner.

Straight up love song and one of the most traditionally country songs on the album. Zimmerman is unabashedly showing his appreciation to the lover who has turned his life around. She’s taken him from lonely to loved, lost to found, and now there’s nothing he won’t do to be the best man he can be for her. Cue the waving, illuminated cell phones in concert.

The track, which originally appeared on last summer’s Twisters soundtrack is a yearning song written by Ashley Gorley and Austin Shawn that features an emotional delivery by Zimmerman and nature imagery–dark clouds, hot flames, high water, turning tides–to describe a worsening situation that may or may not be survivable.

Zimmerman’s riding high in the saddle in this swinging, galloping track that musically will appeal to fans of Dasha’s “Austin.” The catchy melody and strong instrumentation bolster a song about fidelity and resilience in a relationship. No one’s throwing in the towel here no matter how many stumbles they take because they’re “giving everything but up” and they will be together “until they lay us in the ground.”

The Kid LAROI joins Zimmerman for this infectious high energy, pop bop– credited to seven songwriters– that sounds like something straight out of a Post Malone album. “Lost” should be found at a pop radio station near you. Bolstered by pop punk drums and screaming guitars, the heartbreaker serves as one of the album’s strongest ear worms.

Album opener is a slow-to-mid-tempo stomp with stellar fiddle work by the great Jenee Fleenor about a heartbreaker who keeps coming back into his life. The album title comes from a lyric here as he ruefully notes, “different night, same rodeo.”  

Zimmerman is out of sync with his girlfriend on this tender ballad–the best of the bunch of his woe-is-me tracks on the set. Sad boy Zimmerman and his lover are “sleeping back-to-back as we ain’t even seeing eye-to-eye” while they work their way toward the inevitable parting.

Rollicking, upbeat track that is, unsurprisingly, ready-made for a night of line dancing with some fun country twists-. The clever twist is they’ve burned each other so much, he questions how the hell they ashes by aren’t now, but they are drawn to each other like a moth to the proverbial flame. Thematically, it treads the same theme as Rodney Crowell’s great 1980 tune “Ashes By Now,” but includes the memorable line, “Both of us are bat sh-t doing bad sh-t”.

Smoky, stompy duet with Combs that the pair debuted at Stagecoach serves serve as a theme song to both artist’s dogged, driving ambition where failure is not an option. “Getting back up is the only backup plan you need,” they sing with a steely determination. Written originally for Twisters (Zimmerman’s “Hell or High Water” made the soundtrack instead), this feels like a fine, flinty manifesto for anyone who won’t give up the fight.