Billy Don Burns

Train Called Lonesome

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Not long after he left mountains of Arkansas and headed to Nashville in 1972, Billy Don Burns was hired by Harlan Howard to write songs. Billy Don has penned songs for the likes of Mel Tillis, Connie Smith, Johnny Paycheck, Willie Nelson, and Lorrie Morgan, among others. So it would be no wonder Billy Don's own life reads like a country song.

 

Upon his arrival in Nashville, he started out singing on street corners for tips. Soon afterward, he met steel guitar player, Lynn Ownsley, who found him a place to live in a boarding house for musicians. Through Lynn, Billy Don began making connections in the music community, which led to his job writing for Harlan Howard at Wilderness Music. Here Billy Don began meeting people of such stature as Tex Ritter, Bobby Bond, Waylon Jennings and Lefty Frizzell.

 

The following year, in 1973, he played Hank Williams at Opryland, and met both of Hank's wives- Miss Audrey and Miss Billy Jean. He also met Ken McDuffie (aka/ Cadillac Johnson), who'd written songs for Mel Tillis and played fiddle in Marty Robbins band. The two started co-writing songs together. The following year, Billy Don had his first major cuts: "Be Alright In Arkansas" recorded by Connie Smith, and "I Always Come Back To Loving You" recorded by Mel Tillis.

 

In 1975, Billy Don and Jimmy Gretzen formed the duo The Travis Brothers. They toured the country and played gigs all over Nashville, making several appearances on the Midnight Jamboree. That same year Billy Don roomed with Leonard Snipes (aka/ Tommy Collins), who penned Merle Haggard's "Roots Of My Raising Run Deep." However, Tommy wound up with a severe substance abuse problem that led to him trashing his and Billy Don's place, and several brushes with the law. Ironically, Tommy was the inspiration for and subject of Merle Haggard's "Leonard." 

 

For the next several years, Billy Don continued performing and writing, through the death of his father and a broken engagement to Lorrie Morgan, and a marriage to wife Penney. By 1986, Billy Don had his own substance abuse demons to wrestle, and checked into Cottonwood Drug Rehabilitation Center in Arizona to clean up. Upon his release later that year, he decided to give up music, and started an import business, where he spent much of his time in Asia. The business was a success, however, his heart was still in music. At his wife's urging, he moved his family to California, and then decided to return to music.

 

In 1988, Billy Don hooked up with an old friend, Charlie Ammerman, who managed Johnny Paycheck. However, a few short weeks later, Charlie was sentenced to Federal Prison, and Billy Don was left to deal with country's most notorious outlaw, Johnny Paycheck, alone. Billy Don took it in stride, and set about producing Johnny's gospel album, "Outlaws At The Cross." 

 

In 1989, Johnny was sentenced to a minimum of three years in prison, and they decided to do an album and video from the prison. Merle Haggard came in to record with Johnny, and Hank Cochran helped secure the financing for the project. However, due to countless problems and setbacks, the album was utlimately never released.

 

In 1991, broke and defeated by the prison project, Billy Don was back to playing for tips. Shortly thereafter, he met Sue Scarletta, and they formed a publishing company and began work on Billy Don's Long Lost Highway album. But the burden of going back and forth from his home in California to Nashville, was taking it's toll, and he wound up divorcing wife Penney. As his life began yet another downward spiral, he finally got off hard drugs, and in 1993, remarried Penney.

 

The following year, Long Lost Highway was released, and met with critical acclaim, especially in Europe. He went to Europe to tour in support of the album. When he returned from Europe, he and Hank Cochran formed a publishing company called Hank And Me, and began work on a joint album, titled "Desperate Men."

 

"Desperate Men" was released in Dec. of '96, and received excellent reviews. By Feb. of '97, it had reached the #1 spot on the Gavin Album Chart, unseating Johnny Cash, who had held the spot for nearly 4 months. Right after "Desperate Men" hit #1, Billy Don received a fax from his biggest idol, Johnny himself, congratulating him.

 

Now, 4 years after the chart topping success of "Desperate Men", Billy Don Burns has released his highly anticipated follow-up, "Train Called Lonesome".

 

This is a rich, acoustic effort, heavily laden with fiddles, mandolins and dobros, sung with the voice of a road warrior that let's you know he's lived these songs. The inspiration for the songs comes from a lifetime of traveling the road, of people he's met and known, and of women he's loved and lost. His songs are well crafted, and he ranks in the elite company of such songwriters as Kris Kristofferson, Ray Wylie Hubbard, Rodney Crowell- and even Harlan Howard himself.

 

"Train Called Lonesome" both opens and closes with two of the most outstanding songs I've heard in a long time- both are haunting, lonesome, chilling ballads. "Lonesome 77203" is named for a train that rides the lonesome rails by itself, never stopping, never picking up riders. In this song Billy Don compares himself to this train, singing "I'm a train..."

 

The CD's closer, "Hank William's Woman" (co-written with Earl Clark)- is dark and haunting, about a man riding the interstate, stopping at a truckstop and picking up a Hank Williams tape. As he listens to the songs, he finds just how closely he can relate to them, so close in fact, that he could have written them himself. As he's driving along, he's "telling" the woman he's leaving, that she was probably just like Hank's woman- treating him cruelly, and realizing why Hank was always singing songs about being lonesome and blue- and maybe even the cause of his untimely death.

 

"The One That Got Away" is the tale of lifelong pals- who stick together through thick and thin, and always will, until the day they die. "James Dean" (co-written with Hank Cochran) is a tribute to an idol a kid worshipped growing up- and how he still does, even after he's long since gone. "Sarai Green And Ruby Red" tells about a young, beautiful girl of the Arkansas hills, "the princess" who rides her horse, Ruby Red, and sets all the boys' hearts to fluttering.

 

"Where Was Love" finds Billy Don asking the woman who's cheated on him, what thoughts were going through her mind when she did so. "Fall On My Sword" (co- written with Hank Cochran) and "Can I Come" are songs that tell the woman that he can't go on living without her, if she were to leave. "Down Her Memory Lane" (co-written with Karen Brooks) has Billy Don as the one who's doing the leaving. "Talk About Crazy" (co-written with Karen Brooks), another standout, talks about his own failings, mostly with the bottle.

 

"Train Called Lonesome" is a huge, healthy dose of some of the most excellent, solidly written and played, traditional country music out there. It pulls no punches, and is country music...like it was meant to be.   

 

AnnMarie Harrington Take Country Back April 2002