Recordings

ABNER BURNETT RECORDINGS AT CD BABY

Discography & Reviews offered by Mike Butler,
Music Critic for City Life - Manchester, England

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With Abner's Comments

Sal Si Puedes
ABNER BURNETT
Worpt 004, 2003, CD

These are recordings that began in 1985 in Houston, and were finished in Mexico in 2002. When I began them, I was a failed Rock & Roller, ex small time hustler who had blundered into an opportunity to go to law school. When I finished them I was a grizzled and slightly crippled old bastard, burnt out on the law practice, and demoralized about having any place in the music pantheon. Some of the songs were written as early as the mid 1970’s. The styles range from solo performances (voice and piano or guitar accompaniment) in the singer/songwriter tradition to ensemble pieces that arise from the R&B and Soul music of the 1960’s and early 70’s. I am a Buddhist, and a little of that nonsense sneaks in occasionally.

Find That Dog A Home, Boomtown, 7-Falls, Beyond the Sea, Galveston Bay, Forgotten Road, Spirited Waltz, Take It To The President, Demands of Love, Sorry As I Can Be, The Uncharged Knight, Bright Side

With only one cover song (Charles Trenet’s charmer, Beyond the Sea), this makes a convincing case for Abner’s unique merit as a songwriter. Originally conceived as a simple, folksy album for voice, guitar and piano (‘barndance and flatbed truck bred entertainment’), Abner added a slew of rowdy roadhouse anthems at the last minute. Of these, dig the way the cut-price electronics (previously only heard on Calavera’s eccentric instrumentals) intrude on the Fats Domino-styled Find That Dog A Home. And the romping Take it To The President takes a lightly subversive swipe at the American way (if the president gets off very lightly, this probably dates the song from the Clinton era). The up-tempo offerings – along with Sorry As I Can Be, a reckless expose of the male psyche –are softened by a string of songs of achieved beauty. Abner brings universal meaning to stories of an attorney quitting his failing law practise (Boomtown) or an old sea dog bemoaning his childlessness (Galveston Bay). What really disturbs the home market is the way he undercuts the Texas dash and bravado with an almost visionary streak of romanticism (his ballads are free of the artificial sweeteners of mainstream pap). Abner trades in ambiguity – like the mysterious medieval allegory of The Uncharged Knight – and may occasionally reveal more than he intends, as in the unguarded last verse of Forgotten Road.

ABNER BURNETT: Kay Kay and the Rays Featuring Abner Burnett

KAY KAY & THE RAYS FEATURING ABNER BURNETT
Worpt 94441-1, 2000 CD

I had been practicing law in West Texas and playing in what I would call “lounge acts” for a few years. The brother of a friend of mine opened a barbecue restaurant in the town where I was living. There was a bar in the back with a dance floor. I started showing up with a piano and playing there on the weekends. Then, I found a bass player and a drummer. We were playing a pretty standard blues repertoire. The owner started booking other blues acts, and the place took off for a while. But, luck didn’t last, and how long can a blues bar survive in a C&W town without luck? The friend of mine died, and at his funeral there was a young lady singing gospel, Kay Kay Greenwade. Another friend of mine who is also a fine bass player, Bob Trenchard, put a show band together, including horns. I was with the group for a couple of years, and as this CD demonstrates, the band had talent and ideas. Kay Kay is still performing and is certainly someone worth making an effort to hear. She does some touring, and has made other recordings that you can find at her website. I got restless and went to Mexico.

Crossfire, Garden of Eden, Waiting For Dreams, Standing on Shaky Ground, Mystic Pontchartrain, I Can’t Stand the Rain, Evil, Stealing love in the First Degree, There’ll Come A Time, Never Gonna Hurt Dianne, Slow Drag, Love is a Beautiful Thing, Juke Joint Kings & Queens

Back to the bar-room. The band is primarily a vehicle for feisty soul singer Kay Kay Greenwade, but Abner justifies his billing by singing lead on Garden of Eden, Mystic Pontchartrain, Evil, Never Gonna Hurt Dianne and sharing vocals on Standing on Shaky Ground, Stealing Love in the First Degree, Juke Joints Kings & Queens and Love Is A Beautiful Thing (which may qualify Abner and Kay Kay as the new sweethearts of soul). Standard bar-room fare, perhaps, but Abner bestows a few idiosyncratic quirks it would otherwise lack. Mystic Pontchartrain shows that intelligence and good-timing New Orleans ‘second-line’ rhythms don’t necessarily cancel each other out. Stealing Love in the First Degree, by contrast, is just the kind of R&B song you would expect two lawyers to write. ‘I know the lyrics to Stealing Love are kind of corny, but listen to the opening, the horn lines, the drums at the end, and the organ. Those are my contributions. I think we dressed it up pretty nice,’ says Abner.

ABNER BURNETT: CALAVERA

Calavera
ABNER BURNETT
Worpt 002, 1998 CD

This album also includes selections that span a long time period, from the mid 1970’s though 1998. Distinct from the other CD’s, it includes some electronic music created while I was having problems with my ass and my legs. I couldn’t walk without canes, and stayed pretty heavily medicated from about 1990 to 1993. The electronic music is kind of dreamy. The rest is similar to what you’ll hear on the other albums. There’s a nice version of “The Days of Wine and Roses” on the recording.

Test of Time, Who Among You Sings Praises For The Training (Abner’s Sad-Eyed Lady), Knowin’, The Father’s Son, The Mahakala is Savage and Terrifying, A Woman’s Quiet Night, The Whistlin’ Diane, You Love Me Baby, I’m Not Getting Over On You, Footsteps, The Days of Wine and Roses, ‘Round The Bay of Mexico, The Kid’s Last Night (Heaven is in the Mountain)

The official comeback album. ‘Most eclectic… is Calavera, released 19 years after the last one. The Texan lawyer, cult non-star and old drinking pal of Townes Van Zandt covers a broad swathe of Americana, from rootsy folk-picking and rolling country rock to the gorgeous Who Among You Sings Praises For The Training, an amalgam of Dylan’s Sad-Eyed Lady, and his own free-form piano lullaby’ – Sylvie Simmons, Mojo, September 1998. ‘In closure, the digital desert landscape and mumbled Spanish of The Kid’s Last Night almost reconcile Burnett the instinctive troubadour with Burnett the frustrated composer’ – Stewart Lee, Sunday Times, 11 October 1998.

ABNER BURNETT: 1975-1979

1975-1979
ABNER BURNETT
Worpt 001, 1997 CD

In 1996, I tried at least twenty two cases to a jury verdict. They were mostly criminal defense and personal injury cases. After receiving a letter from a guy in England who had picked up a couple of albums in a thrift shop in Austin, Texas that I had made in the 1970’s, I wrote back and invited him to give me a call. He invited me to make a little tour of England and Ireland, and I agreed to do it. When advised that one should not make the tour without a CD (I’m not sure I even had a CD player yet), I found someone with copies of the old LP’s and took them to Austin to a CD mastering and manufacturing company. With several hundred units of the product as identified above, I landed in London. It was a grand time. I made some friends, and have made a few trips back. The music included is from Abner Burnett and the Burnouts Crash and Burn, recorded in 1975, and Old MacDonald, done in 1979. The first is in a style kind of anticipatory of the punk/indie/alternative scene. The second is pretty straight folksinger fare with solo vocals accompanied by guitar and harmonica. I had become friends with Buck Ramsey, a great man and remarkable musician who had turned me towards an acoustic style reminiscent of the cowboy tradition.

I Woke Up This Morning, Call In The Buzzards, Riverwalk Strut, Why Do I Still Think About You, Baby’s Callin’ Me Home, Ding Dong – Slick’s Song, The Other Side of This Life, My Twentieth Birthday, Arpeggios & Dominoes, That’s What You Get, High Noon, Bluebird, Bed of Roses, In My Time of Dying, Enter Lewd, Honkytonkin’, Horses Grow Old, Ivory Thighs, Texas River Song, Pancho & Lefty, Hindu Pickin’ Cowboy, Girl From The North Country

Lo-fi, low budget reissue of Crash & Burn and Old McDonald on an atrociously packaged CD with the wrong track order. Abner, in a 1998 Newsletter, defended the release with skills honed from his law practise. ‘Most criticism has focused on the substandard engineering/recording techniques, poor mastering and sloppy packaging. Nitpicking, I think, but willingly say, ‘Perhaps’. Me and the rest of the kids making the music were usually wasted, and might have fudged on the hi-fidelity factor a little. I made one mistake on the order of song listing on the back cover. Remember that the Navajo weavers put a flaw in each of their works so that the soul is not captured. Let us move on.’

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