Dallas-based artist Sarah Johnson has spent almost every summer traveling to Whitefish since she was born and in her song Red Bandana she pulls from her many experiences in Big Sky country to unfold a love story.

The song is specifically about a Texas girl who meets a bull rider at a rodeo in Montana, the two fall for each other and then stay in touch as he travels the country entering rodeos. Last summer Johnson performed the tune at the Brash Rodeo while filming a music video with local videographer Andrew Chad.

A line in the chorus that pulls the song together says, “I’ll give you my red bandana to remember that night in Montana.”

Johnson says that the song isn’t based on her and one man in particular, but rather she drew from experiences going on dates with guys local to Whitefish. Then she tied in those great experiences she had going out with different people and related it back to her memories of going to the Brash Rodeo, the Whitefish River and different places around town each summer.

“It was almost like this whole story unfolded in my head,” she said. “I came up here, I met some great local guys and really had the idea of this love story between a girl that comes to Montana, finds a rodeo man and then they always have this red bandana with this memory of them meeting.”

She says her favorite parts of the song are those that refer to actual places in Whitefish and Columbia Falls. Such as when she refers to going down by the river in the song, she was thinking about the Whitefish River specifically when writing the lyrics.

When she worked with Chad, who was an old friend she reconnected with, to film the music video last summer they brainstormed the best places to shoot the footage. They ended up filming at the Brash Rodeo, Dancing Spirit Ranch and along the river. Johnson’s boyfriend played the rodeo man and Johnson played the Texas girl in the video.

“Hopefully people also get a feel for Montana and just how fun this environment is, the rodeo and then the beautiful scenery,” Johnson said. “It was just fun because we weren’t trying to make stuff up; it was just taking the things that we love about Montana and getting to do them, film and make a video.”

Johnson grew up in Dallas among a creative family. Her grandparents began vacationing to the Flathead in 1969 and moved to Whitefish permanently in the 90s. Johnson and her family would visit them each summer and sometimes in the winter as well.

Johnson started writing songs at a young age and wrote many Christian worship songs for her church. She says she branched out with her writing after a breakup she went through a couple years ago put her in a tough place emotionally and all of these songs started coming to her.

“I think that’s when songwriters can get the most in touch with their feelings, when something hard happens,” she noted. “People say it’s actually hard to write a happy song.”

She began performing more in recent years at various venues and says with encouragement from a few people in the music industry she made the leap to give a music career a shot.

She also is an artist, painter and graphic designer in addition to music.

Johnson describes her sound as Americana and she often writes biographical storytelling songs. This summer she spent several weeks performing solo in the Flathead Valley and in Texas she plays with a full band.

Johnson released her first EP called ‘Volcano’ in September of 2020. Red Bandana was a single she released as well as on the shortened album and it is her most popular song thus far. Red Bandana has tallied up 74,000 streams on Spotify.

Johnson says she is currently in the process of rereleasing some of her songs as singles and creating fresh content for those songs, including filming a music video in Montana again with Chad as the videographer for her song called Fire.

For more information visit https://www.sarahjohnsonofficial.com.