This category is where you will find background information on songs, mostly those written and/or performed by Tony Burt.
Get the inside story on what prompted them, maybe hints at the meaning of some of the mysteries contained in the song. What events triggered the creation of the song? What is most meaningful to the author?
You’ll also find lyric sheets and recordings. Some of these are rare to the point of never having been made available before or since finding their way onto this blog.
Most songs are available to download in high quality mp3 format for free. You can also hear lots of Tony’s songs on Soundcloud.
One of the best received songs on my People Watching CD is Monica Is Taller Than Me. I wrote a blog post with some info on the writing of the song a few years back and a minimally updated version can be viewed below. This includes a very early demo version of the song and […]
This is the opening track on my new album “People Watching”. When I wrote it I’d been listening to lots of early Bert Jansch and think I detect a bit of hommage to him in the structure of it. I’ve always played it with an acoustic guitar plus maybe a bass and fiddle. But this […]
The Village, track 7 on my People Watching album, was inspired by the story of Freddy Spencer Chapman, a little known hero of WWII, sometimes referred to as “Lawrence of the Jungle”. Freddy was a well known naturalist, explorer, mountaineer and all round “good egg” who was enlisted in the British Army to build a […]
People Watching by Tony Burt JJ’s Bar is track 8 of Tony Burt’s new record People Watching. It relates to a music venue of the same name which was until recently in the village of Karnak to the North of Luxor in Egypt. It recently moved, although under the same name, to the west bank […]
Bringing It All Back Home by Bob Dylan was in many eyes (including mine) one of the most important and influential albums of all time. Half the songs had an electric band backing and the lyrics were personal, surreal and poetic and couldn’t have been further from protest song. It was released in March 1965 […]
In October 2014 The Tony Burt Band performed at the Granary in Leominster for one of Norrie Davies’s famous curry nights. We managed to record most of one set and although it’s not of pristine quality it is quite listenable. I’ve decided to share a few of the tracks as they give a good idea […]
I am a big fan of many well known songwriters including, of course, Bob Dylan, Richard Thompson, Leonard Cohen and many more. But there are also several less famous songwriters I enjoy just as much as the legends. One of these is Canadian Bruce Cockburn. He’s been releasing albums since the early 70s and his […]
There’s a bit of a story about this song as it resulted from a songwriting technique I learned from Christine Collister in 2013 at Moniack Mhor near Loch Ness. I was attending my first ever songwriting workshop and Steve Tilston and Christine were our guides. Steve concentrated on the musical side of things and Christine […]
Although I mostly perform songs I have written myself these days I still have a few covers I trot out when in the mood. I’ve always been a massive Dylan fan but first got to know this Dylan song via Brian Auger & Julie Driscoll. This was in the 60s and of course their recording […]
Here’s a song for the coming season. I find a lot of my songs refer to the seasons or weather or the passing of time. I guess they are classic topics for both songs and poems so shouldn’t really be surprised. Between 1973 and 2005 I only wrote two songs although I was busy making […]