What The Sounds Are Really Telling Us With Their Re-Branding

The Nashville Sounds rolled out

of the

Thursday morning.

This is completely reasonable with the new stadium and the new affiliation with the Oakland A's and the guitar-pick logo is actually pretty cool (and way better than the previous boring logo): classic without being hokey, hinting at the team name without bashing you over the head with it (RIP Mr. Sound).

But let's talk about these colors for a minute.

From the Sounds release:

Broadway Burnt Orange, Sunburst Tan, Neon Orange, and Cash Black make up the club's new official colors. The Sounds are the first professional sports team to use Neon Orange in its color scheme.

I'm gonna take these out of order for a minute, because each of them are their own distinct level of horrific, as the name-branding of colors usually are.

First, "Neon Orange." Why not "Very Hot Leg Quarter Orange" if the new mascot is going to a be a hot chicken? Isn't that funnier and more Nashville(tm) than "Neon Orange"?

Next up: "Sunburst Tan." I'm not sure whoever named this one has ever seen a sunburst or a tan, but the former is never the latter and the latter is never the former, color-wise.

And, oh dear ... "Cash Black"? I'm not an art person and I'm sure our very talented designers here at Southcomm would tell me I'm ridiculous if I claim that black is black and there's no different kinds of it. In any event, "Cash Black" is so very crass. It sounds like a color John Rich would ask for his Ford Expedition to be painted. "Not just 'black,' but 'Cash Black' so that I can cynically glom on to the integrity of a genuine artist to whom I have no actual connection," is what Rich would say if he knew what "cynically," "integrity" or "glom" meant or if he knew how to properly use "whom." Plus, "Dan Auer-black" would be a lot funnier, particularly if paired with "Jack White."

But the worst of the worst is "Broadway Burnt Orange," a sort of medium breast-quarter color, if we are continuing down the hot chicken palette.

Again, from the Sounds:

"With this new logo scheme, we wanted to capture the vibrant nature of the city, of downtown Nashville. There is nothing more striking than burnt orange - you see it everywhere in this town," said Sounds assistant general manager Brandon Yerger, who headed the Sounds' rebranding process.

Oh, there's plenty more striking than burnt orange, which is basically brown's cousin who has frosted tips and a Chrysler LeBaron. Secondly, I'm not sure "you see it everywhere in this town."

said the only time he sees burnt orange is when "somebody's had too many." Maybe "tourist puke burnt orange" didn't focus-group well.

But here's the real problem: "Broadway." Check this map:

First Tennessee Park is seven blocks (including a few very generous blocks) from Broadway. More than one mile no matter if it's measured as the crow flies or driving.

Tying a color's name to an iconic street is fine, but there's another iconic street in Nashville far closer to the stadium: Jefferson Street. There was sound there too and, hey, there's brick buildings on the corridor that are burnt orange!

Despite all the bloviating about the historical importance of he Sulphur Dell site, the Sounds have done very little to actually emphasize the history they are trying to co-opt. Most glaringly, the new stadium won't bear the name "Sulphur Dell" — naming rights' deals are a reality, I get it, but is it impossible to have called the new ballyard "First Tennessee Park at Sulphur Dell"? And now the team's color scheme will allude to a tourist strip more than a mile away rather than the neighborhood that's in the shadow of the stadium, the neighborhoods that are being directly affected (for good or ill) by the stadium?

Why, it's almost like "Jefferson Street" bears some kind of connotation the Sounds don't want to be a part of, even though the long-shuttered R&B and jazz clubs along Jefferson were Nashville sounds too, even if they weren't the Nashville Sound™.

It's as if the North Nashville neighborhoods that will spread out beyond the outfield walls of First Tennessee Park are something the Sounds are trying to ignore or are ashamed of. Instead, the Sounds want to further bury the history of the site and use the neon on Broadway (or its apparently-ubiquitous burnt orange) to market the team.

So who are they actually marketing to? Touristy bros and bachelorette parties for whom Lower Broad is the be-all and end-all of Nashville and suburbanites who are far more comfortable with exposing their families to Broadway with its puking twentysomethings at honky tonks than whatever they think happens in North Nashville.

It is, ultimately and obviously, a marketing plan designed by and for out-of-towners with a preconceived vision of what Nashville is and very little understanding of the city's human and physical geography. Instead of celebrating the history, neighborhoods and people of the city they call home, the Sounds continue to whitewash it all. Or turn it burnt orange.