You are awesome Ed, We can't wait for you to come to Abilene. I think my uncle Eli needs to do a little more than sit around and drink beer, something like sing a song or do something. Thanks for the drum stick!!!!
TPG
Pure country music at it's best. The beat, swing, fiddles, steel guitar...all sounds to make you feel great and take you away whether driving down the road or just hanging 'round. If these songs had the air play that some of the pop artists disguised as country musicians get, Ed Burleson would no doubt be as popular as any of them. Everyone I play this disk to wants a copy. I look forward to future albums and hope that in the process the music stays as pure as it is and never gets Nashvillized. Bravo from New Jersey, Ed.
Exceptionally cool guy. Saw him in Gainesville earlier this year, and he blew me away with his pure honky tonk sound. I didn't know that it even existed anymore, but Ed proved me wrong. I had already bought the CD way earlier, and his live show just bolstered my opinion of the CD. Excellen stuff. Check it out!!
Feb. 21, 2000 - Nashville Scene - A sixth-generation Texan and former rodeo competitor, Burleson represents much of what down-home Lone Star country music should be. As revealed on his debut album My Perfect World--the first release on the late Doug Sahm's Tornado Records--his laid-back, barroom country tunes have more in common with George Strait or Clint Black's Killin' Time than with fellow Texas honky-tonkers Dale Watson and the Derailers.
Watson and the Derailers, for instance, draw heavily on the Bakersfield sound, and Watson's songs are riddled with references to truckers and grease monkeys. Burleson is more of a slow-drawling, close-cropped, thank-you-ma'am cowboy type, with starched jeans, pressed dress shirts, and molded Western hats--like a lot of Nashville singers these days.
But Burleson is not a careful revivalist. Instead, like Strait, he's that rare artist who uses traditional music forms to speak about who he is and what matters to him in an entertaining, earthy manner. For example, his song "Wide Open Spaces" laments the loss of undeveloped countryside, and when he puts down Nashville in "Going Home to Texas," it's with a gentler, more joyous feel than, say, Watson's "Nashville Rash."
Although Burleson is a distinctive songwriter, My Perfect World features a few choice songs written by others, including a couple of Jim Lauderdale tunes, a couple of honky-tonkers by his mentor Doug Sahm, and another by his producer, Lone Star club favorite Clay Blaker. However, the most telling songs on the album are the tender weepers written by Burleson. In the title track, his heart bursts as his wife suggests they married too young. In "Dreamworld," he silently observes his wife putting on a party dress and preparing to spend yet another night in bars without him. And in the sweet "No Closing Time," he wishes a night on the town would never end--not because he wants to keep partying, but because he doesn't want to stop dancing in the arms of the woman he loves. Burleson has quickly made a name for himself in Texas, where he's been championed as a real-deal country singer. He deserves such praise--as well as the attention of Nashville, which would benefit greatly from bringing back the kind of genuine sentiment and naturalness that Burleson instills in his music.