Abner Burnett
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Abner Burnett

Mission, Texas, United States | INDIE

Mission, Texas, United States | INDIE
Band Americana Singer/Songwriter

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Press


"Review of performance at the 12 Bar Club in London"

"[N]ext up, from Odessa, Texas, was Abner Burnett, a tequila fuelled troubadour whose varied lifestyle suggests he could be country music's version of Hunter S. Thompson.
With his big beard and greased back hair, Burnett looks like the typical 'I sing about trucks' Texan, but up on stage with just a guitar and a set of harmonicas for company, he came over as a soulful purveyor of beautifully-paced sad songs. He closed with Round the Bay of Mexico from his current CALAVERA album and the reflective I Woke Up This Morning And My Liver Was Walking Out The Door, seemingly to emphasize how much of an enigmatic and evocative singer he can be. The memory will linger for some time." - Country Music International


"Review of performance at The Weavers Arms"

"Burnett had sung a husky version of Pancho & Lefty for the man he idolized. He'd also shown his own credentials as a Texan troubadour, the kind of guy who can walk into a bar where nobody knows him, unpack his guitar, and go down pretty good .
He played a little country, a little folk, and a little blues. He picked some slide guitar and blew his harmonica. He cracked a few jokes, told a few tales and made a few friends."
- Country Music People


"Review of CALAVERA"

"(a) worthy showcase for Burnett's prodigious writing and performing talent . . . Burnett has more to tell us about the joys and ultimate tragedy of the human condition than a dozen sociological treatises." - City Life, Manchester UK


"Kevin Bourke on the Burnett/Moynihan Tour"

‘The wonderful Abner Burnett – singer, songwriter, lawyer, raconteur and all-round wild card – is quite happy to be known as a bit of a maverick, but his current teaming up with traditional irish musician Johnny Moynihan, a former member of Planxty, seems a bit off-the-wall even by his standards’ - Manchester Evening News


"Stewart Lee on CALAVERA"

‘Calavera is his third album, his first since 1979, and though the jury’s out on the honky-tonk aberration Test of Time and two sub-Steve Reich instrumentals, when picking a stark folk blues Burnett is a kindred spirit of Fred Neil and 1960s Greenwich Villagers. Who Among You Sings Praises For The Training mixes Biblical and historical American images into a wayward nine minutes of solo piano, Round The Bay of Mexico features swooping Ry Cooder slide, and The Whistlin’ Diane’s harmonica-punctuated narrative simply stuns. 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’ - The London Sunday Times


"Sylvie Simmons about Sal Si Puedes"

'Burnett, Buddhist and noted roots eccentric, divides his time between Texas, his farm in Mexico and (when he's not giving up the music business) the road. This fine album is a travelogue. A mix of honest acoustic folk-blues, rollicking piano-vocal songs that recall a gnarled, honky tonk Randy Newman, spirited Texan soul, and horny ballads.' - MOJO


Discography

1968 – 45RPM- Abner Burnett -Jerusalem-The Alley Song-Ignite Records
1975- LP – Abner Burnett and the Burnouts - Crash and Burn –Worpt Records
1979 – LP – Abner Burnett – Old McDonald – Worpt Records
1997- CD – Abner Burnett – 1975-1979- Worpt
2001 – CD - Abner Burnett – Calavera - Worpt
2004 - CD – Abner Burnett – Sal Si Puedes Worpt
2005 – MP3 – Abner Burnett – Hold On - Worpt
2008 - CD - Abner Burnett - It Ought to Be Enough

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Bio

"Burnett has more to tell us about the joys and ultimate tragedy of the human condition than a dozen sociological treatises." City Life

Excerpts from "Abner Burnett - The Biography"
By Mike Butler ~ February 24, 2010

Born March 4, 1953, Odessa, Texas. Burnett showed precocious talent - he won a national poetry competition at the age of twelve - but dropped out of high school to enroll in the University of Life. His name first appeared on vinyl - a 45 on an obscure label, Ignite Gram-o-phonics: Jerusalem b/w Alley Song - in 1968, when Burnett was 17. A debut album, Crash & Burn, appeared seven years later in 1975.

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The back cover of Crash & Burn, credited to Abner Burnett & the Burn-Outs, shows the artist in a photo-booth with two black eyes, sustained the night before in a bar-room brawl. Variously described as “low-budget jug-band psychedelia” or "acid casualty Texas outlaw rock with an unusual dark feel overall", the album opens with the arresting line, “I woke up this morning and my liver was walking out the door”.

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Burnett almost died on the same day as Elvis Presley when he was involved in an automobile accident following a pilgrimage to Fort Sumner to visit the grave of Billy The Kid. This incident makes sense of an inscription (“I had my wreck”) found on his second album, Old McDonald.

Old McDonald was recorded in 1977 in Roswell, New Mexico, famously the site of a UFO crash. More stylistically coherent than Crash & Burn, Old McDonald is an acoustic affair in the classic roots Americana style, with a setting of Herman Melville, covers of Townes Van Zandt and Bob Dylan, and a song, Bed of Roses, by Burnett's mentor, cowboy poet Buck Ramsey (the album's dedicatee).

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Manchester-based music journalist Mike Butler, an obsessive admirer of Old McDonald and its predecessor, Crash & Burn (discovered on a trip to Texas in 1991), penned a fan letter and sent it to the outdated PO Box No. on the back of Old McDonald. The ensuing correspondence resulted in low-key tours of the UK in 1997 and 1998. Following an ill-fated encounter with American Primitive guitarist John Fahey on the latter's final UK tour in 1999, Burnett teamed up with Johnny Moynihan (of Sweeney's Men; famed for introducing the bouzouki to traditional Irish music) for a tour of the UK in 2001.

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His last album, It Ought To Be Enough (2006), was conceived as a farewell to US folk-based song.