(NASHVILLE SKYLINE is a column by 
CMT/CMT.com Editorial Director Chet Flippo.)

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By Erik Hage

Ed Burleson is a baby-faced, sixth-generation Texan who works construction by day and crafts traditionally minded 
honky-tonk by night. He has counted among his supporters the late Texas legend Doug Sahm, who served as Burleson's 
manager and co-produced his My Perfect World album. For that effort, Burleson was also joined by such elite Texas players 
as Bill Kirchen (Commander Cody) and Lloyd Maines, among others.

Burleson, a descendant of General Edward Burleson, a war hero from the Texas independence Battle of San Jacinto, 
was born on June 10, 1969. Burleson's father was a salesman, so Burleson grew up in various locales around Texas —
 Garland, Denison, Conroe, El Paso — as well as in Tulsa, OK. Burleson eventually settled in Lewisville, TX, where he 
was on the high school rodeo team. It was traveling to rodeos and listening to small-town radio that introduced him to 
Texas music. Burleson won a rodeo scholarship to Hill College in Hillsboro, TX, and it was there that he first started 
learning guitar. Upon graduation, he acquired a knee injury that needed surgery. While recovering, his love for playing 
country music grew. He first started playing at a newcomer's showcase at the Three Teardrops Tavern in Dallas. The owner 
told Burleson if he could put a band together, he could play every Thursday night. (The drummer for that band was his 
father, Richard Burleson.) Burleson's first CD was 1997's Comin' Around. One night at the Broken Spoke Saloon in Austin,
 Burleson gave a copy of the album to Doug Sahm, who was so impressed that he became Burleson's manager. Sahm also 
polished up the CD and released it on his fledgling Tornado Records label. That effort, 1999's My Perfect World, hit number 
four on the Americana charts.

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Ed Burleson hits the Honky-Tonk Highway with The Cold Hard Truth

He’s spreading his traditional country sound via land, sea and airways.

AUSTIN, TX (PRWEB) April 8, 2004 -- 
The venues and horsepower may be different, but former rodeo cowboy Ed Burleson is happily riding the tour circuit again, this time in 
support of his April 24 Palo Duro Records release, The Cold Hard Truth.

Burleson and his band roll into the Longhorn Saloon in Fort Worth’s Stockyards National Historic District on April 30 for a special 
album-release celebration and show with fellow label-mate TC Taylor opening.

In addition to the clubs and festivals he’ll visit this spring, the Denison, Texas, native has been on a tour of radio stations across the 
Lone Star State behind The Cold Hard Truth, with stops in Dallas, Houston, Kerrville and New Braunfels. This fall, he’ll perform on 
Palo Duro’s Texas Music Cruise.

He won’t have a hard time pleasing old fans and winning new ones with his Palo Duro debut, a 14-song collection of honky-tonk and 
bluegrass tunes delivered with a genuine Texas twang and complete honesty – just like his last release, 1999’s My Perfect World (Tornado Records).

The Cold Hard Truth displays Burleson’s writing and singing abilities and pays homage to his mentor, the late Doug Sahm, who can be
 heard introducing a song he co-produced before his death, “Heartbreak Highway.” Burleson also gives a nod to Loudon Wainwright III 
with a decidedly different rendition of “Dead Skunk,” which can be heard in daytime rotation on DFW stations KPLX (The Wolf) and 
KHYI (The Range).

Burleson showcased the new CD at the annual Country Radio Seminar in early March in Nashville. And March 21 he played KHYI’s 
Texas Music Revolution VIII at the Mesquite Rodeo to a crowd of around 10,000 music lovers. KHYI-FM Program Director Bruce Kidder 
says, “Ed Burleson continues to be what Texas Country music is all about. To all the posers, Ed offers up The Cold Hard Truth, a belly rubbin’ 
Texas masterpiece.”

Burleson’s “The Way You’re Treatin’ Me” will be part of Palo Duro’s Texas Unplugged compilation, an all-acoustic recording featuring originals
 from Terri Hendrix with Lloyd Maines, T.C. Taylor, Larry Joe Taylor, Eleven Hundred Springs and others, slated for release in August.


For more information, go to www.edburleson.com, www.palodurorecords.com and www.texasmusiccruise.com.

 Jill McGuckin, McGuckin Entertainment PR

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.

Comin' Around
Tornado Records
Tom Geddie - Buddy Magazine

This is Burleson's first national release, and it's solid, straight, down-home nasal country. Two of the songs are about his love of Texas. 
"Wide Open Spaces" - the same name, but not the Dixie Chicks' hit - and"Going Home to Texas." They leave no doubt about Burleson's 
love of a time and a mythical place that's rapidly fading in city sprawl.

The other eight songs are about the heartbreak of love. Burleson is a solid writer, with enough sense to also include two Jim Lauderdale songs 
("It All Started and Ended with You" and "Might Seem Like a Loser") and one by each of his producers - Doug Sahm's "Clinging to You" and 
Clay Blaker's "Going Home to Texas."

The title song (cowritten with Roy Ashley), "Staring Out the Window," and "No Closing Time" may be the album's best cuts, expressing universal
 angst within the existential confines of a dark bar with a good jukebox and a small, dusty dancefloor.

Many of the songs were on Burleson's locally released debut in 1997. He, Sahm, and Blaker added a couple of new songs, reworked a few 
of the old ones, and left a few just as they were.

Sahm, who died of a heart attack on Nov. 18, was one of Burleson's big supporters. One of the Texas legend's final performances was at 
Burleson's CD release aprty at Sons of Hermann Hall, when he sat in with the all-star band that also included Bill Kirchen on lead guitar, 
Clay Blaker, (Texas Honky Tonk Band) on rhythm guitars, Alvin Crow (Pleasant Valley Boys) and Bobby Flores (Ray Price's Cherokee Cowboys) 
on fiddles, Ronnie Huckaby (George Strait's Ace in the Hole Band) on piano, Mike Buck (Fabulous Thunderbirds) on drums, David Carroll 
(Tracie Lynn Band) on upright bass, and Tommy Detamore (Texas Honky Tonk Band, Moe Bandy, Ronnie Milsap) on pedal steel.