Ron Pandy – Bloomer Girls (Single Review)

American folk has always fascinated me as a genre. One might think, it is the furthest from what you’re used to, why would it fascinate you?

Simply, because of how it seems to tell a story frozen in time. Almost as if it were an old pantomime, retold for generations to come. Songs in this particular genre have a way of being a time capsule! It may not match the hyper-futurism or production of songs I’m generally used to, but I think the best way to truly evolve is to expose yourself to forms of art, or even genres of music, that you’re not typically used to. It is an art form in the rushed medium of time, as we grasp ourselves while taking note of how much quicker the second row of the clock runs.

In today’s article, we will be reviewing ‘Bloomer Girls’ by Ron Pandy. As a person who never usually analyses lyrics in conjunction with instrumentation, this song challenges the boundaries of my limits. To be fair, I don’t deem most lyrics very educational or informative, however, this song paints a story that is quite interesting and historically factual.

However, Ron Pandy is extremely unique as he interweaves the terminology as well as the phenomenon of baseball as a lens to America’s evolving moral and social climate. Interestingly, he mixes particular social ills such as racism, misogyny, and mental illness, and addiction- known human vices- with the latter. This leads to something that I’ve truthfully never seen before in terms of songwriting and gives him an edge. As someone who isn’t necessarily part of the social consciousness of this aspect of Americanism, it makes me feel as if I can understand the history and evolution of it- through Pandy’s sheer ingenuity.

As for the instrumentation, it starts with very warm and inviting folksy/country chords and riffs. It paints the picture of quaint, essential ‘America’, where people come together and there is no divide. The bass and the melodic guitar give the song the accent it needs, with character as well as slight melodic variation. I must admit, though, there isn’t too much going on in terms of music production.

The real star of the song is the singer, Ron Pandy, coming in with a twang to his voice, as well as that of a ‘grandfatherly’ wisdom. He then sings the lyrics, transcribed below:

Roll out the red carpet
Strike up the band
The Bloomer Girls are coming to town
They’ll outplay any man

It was the early 1900s Baseball’s at a fever pitch
The Bloomer Girls train rolled out they were out to make it rich
From the eastern seaboard to the prairie towns of Kansas
They carried their own ballpark fence and a grandstand made of canvas
And they’d challenge all the men’s teams to a game win or lose
In their Turkish style harem trousers and high button shoes

People came in from the city they came down from the farms
Women dressed their Sunday best their menfolk on their arms
And in a game of skill and guile the men often took the loss
Their wives cheering for the Bloomers to show the men who’s boss
For women could not vote could not own land in their own name
The Bloomer Girls are here to say those laws will have to change

This song contextualizes the ‘Bloomer Girls’, an All-Star women’s baseball team from the early 1900s. They paid homage in name to a particular woman named Amelia Bloomer, who was a newspaper editor as well as a women’s rights advocate in the late 1800s. Her newspaper was somewhat of a vessel for the Women’s Suffrage movement- a movement meant for women to achieve their right to vote. She also normalized pants in terms of women’s fashion, as a pioneer of the ‘skirt-pants’ combo that bore similarity to certain Turkish and Western/Central/South Asian pants, known today as bloomers.

As the song implies, they would travel across the country by train, carrying a ballpark fence and a canvas grandstand, challenging the men’s teams. They ingeniously did this, tying their whole brand and motive to the women’s rights movement in context, as well as changing the direction of American sociocultural politics.

All in all, I appreciate this song’s existence. As someone from Gen Z, living and breathing influences that may not have been possible even 10 years ago, this song’s style as well as its lyrics puts me in a trance in imagining the past. We forget music styles as well as events in history that lay as the precedent to the wealth of information as well as possibilities that we get to navigate through these days. The more I listened to this song, the more I liked it, even if it was the complete opposite of my typical repertoire of music.

Rating/Good  – ‘Bloomer Girls’ is an intriguing song, that will give awareness to genres of music and social events that younger listeners may not even be aware of. It is warm, innovative, and pays homage. True to the genre of folk, and the spirit of folk, as is.

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