Heavy Weather - Liner Notes

Heavy Weather is my fourth studio album.  It is the product of over four years’ work and I hope my friends, fans, and supporters will deem it worth the wait.  Heavy Weather has served effectively as a dramatic theme by which to draw ideas, songs, and stories.  But it has also worked well as a metaphor for the storms we all face on a day-to-day basis.  There are many struggles, disasters, heartaches, and catastrophes within this soundscape, but most importantly, there is victory... the ultimate triumph of the human spirit over any and all adversity.  We’re just the way we’ve always been.

The influences that I have put to work on Heavy Weather are various and sundry.  Obviously, it is my most rhythm-oriented project (I recommend using the loudest tolerable setting on your hi-fi set).  I honestly lost 11 pounds completing the drum tracks during the first half of 2003.  There is a healthy selection of the ballads and historically based songs that have been integral to my music over the past few years, but I wanted to spread my Irish roots a little bit, so there is also an underlying Celtic flavor… and my first instrumental.  There is a bit of Texas country.  There is a bit of folk (but without the smugness).  More than anything else, there’s a bunch of Brian Burns… Heavy Weather is just an hour-and-ten-minute slice of where I had come to by the beginning of 2004.  I hope you enjoy it!

During the time since my last CD release, The Eagle & The Snake: Songs Of The Texians, I have drawn inspiration from incredible people too numerous to mention in these liner notes (please visit my web site).  Many of the educators and school administrators of our great state of Texas invite me into their schools to use my music and stories to inspire their students.  I don’t think they realize quite how much those kids inspire me.  I am ever grateful to the talented radio professionals throughout Texas, the U.S., and the world at large who include my music in their play lists.  For the many venue owners, festival promoters, corporate planners, and party animals who believe in me enough to invite me to their stages and events with my guitar and my songs, it is so very sincerely appreciated.

I have received the gift of musical inspiration from many rich sources during my lifetime; I have, in essence, ate, slept, and breathed music from my earliest age of recollection.  How blessed I am, then, to have an incredible wife who so wholeheartedly and unselfishly supports my every musical endeavor, even though it almost always means less time for her.  Veronica, I love you with all my heart and this album is dedicated to you.

The companion web site to this CD is www.brianburnsmusic.com.  There you will find the material that wouldn’t fit into this package: personal notes on each song, images, historical, musical, technical, and bibliographical notes and links.

And before you go out today, grab an umbrella; it might rain.

--BB