"Stop Me If You've Heard This One Before ..." is the title of a Gary Burr album I purchased about 6 months ago from the Bluebird Cafe's on-line store. Great album. I bought "Marianne's", another Burr cd, at the same time. "Stop Me ..." was released in 1997 and includes 18 of his best songs up to that point in his songwriting career. I wrote an article called "Favorite Songs by Favorite Songwriters: Gary Burr" which appeared on www.Countryuniverse.net on April 11th of this year. I posted it here on June 3rd. Of the 25 favorite songs discussed in the article, 14 were from "Stop Me..." and 2 from "Marianne's" so there's no real need to review the former album here. The two from Marianne's were "Up and Flying" and "I Will Not Be a Mistake", originally recorded respectively by Reba and Cliff Richard. Most of the songs on this album released in 2004 were unfamiliar to me but not any more.
"Stop Me ..." was recorded "live" at the Bluebird Cafe. I mentioned in the CU article that if you purchase the album you may find, as I did, that you prefer Gary's version for quite a few of the songs. This man can sing, better than many current and former very successful recording artists. Often when I've played "Stop Me ...", I thought that it would have been great to have been at the Bluebird the night the recording was made. In a way I did just that this past Friday evening, August the 6th. Gary and his band featuring Randy Hart on keyboards, Bruce Bouton on steel guitar and, and - I can't remember the other names - were back at the Bluebird. Sorry guys because I like to give credit and the entire band was great as was Georgia Middleman singing backup.
Gary opened with "In a Week or Two" and by the end of the evening had played 9 other songs from "Stop Me ..." including "What Mattered Most", "Sure Love", "What's in It For Me", "One Night a Day", "I Try to Think About Elvis", "She Can't Be Really Gone", "To Be Loved By You", "A Thousand Times a Day" and "Love's Been a Little Bit Hard on Me". From "Marianne's" he sang "Salvation", a song John Berry covered. Other songs performed that he wrote or co-wrote included Lorrie Morgan's "Watch Me", "Nothing 'Bout Love Makes Sense" by Leann Rimes, Sarah Buxton's "Outside my Window" and "Too Busy Being in Love" by Doug Stone, the last written with Victoria Shaw. Gary said that when he and Vicki collaborate, the lyrics usually include the names of dead people. In this Doug Stone song, Hepburn and Tracy are mentioned in addition to Shakespeare.
Songs I hadn't heard before included Chely Wright's "It Was", Ricky Van Shelton's "Still Got a Couple of Good Years Left", John Michael Montgomery's "That's Not Her Picture" - which Gary mentioned was written with Whispering Bill Anderson - and "Faster Gun" by Great Plains, a group I only know of from reading the Discography on Gary's website. Their highest charting single in a short-lived career was "Faster Gun", the song reaching #41 in 1992. There were also 4 or 5 brand new songs, one performed by Georgia Middleman. Unfortunately, I can't remember any of the titles. Gary mentioned that Georgia co-wrote Keith Urban's current hit "I'm In". Her co-writer was Radney Foster.
In a humorous vein there was a song called something like "Betty Learned to Yodel" and the "2 word country song", sort of a comment I guess about today's "I'm country" country music. The lyrics: "country, country, country, country, country, country, country, country, country, country, tractor". Between songs, Gary's commentary had about everyone laughing including my wife and her two sisters. I'm sure there are a few songs I'm forgetting from the over 20 songs he sang in a great 2 1/2 hour show.
The first two times I saw Gary were as part of the Meldiburpho (See my post of December 21, 2009) and I haven't seen any of his "in the round" acoustic shows yet. I don't know how often he gets together with his band at the Bluebird. I'm hoping that this time it was sort of a rehearsal for recording "Stop Me If You've Heard This One Before ..., Volume 2". Hope it includes "In Front of the Alamo".
Comments