The Makers Josh Burnett - Musical Storyteller Recently, 38-year old singer/songwriter and rancher Josh Burnett recently spent a little time in the Redlands Ranch studios where he talked about life, music, and why he does what he does. Here is his story is his own words: Tell us about yourself. I grew up in East Texas. Royce City is what I call home and rode bulls out there through high school and part of college and then became an Ag science teacher for 10 years and now I'm a rancher and singer/songwriter. We raise cattle here just outside of Childress in a little town called Carey. I also write music and have a band called the Josh Burnett Band I've got three kids and have been married almost 17 years. How long have you been involved in music? Yeah I got started in music in my first year at Texas Tech, I taught myself how to play guitar. And I've always wanted to write music because that's my therapy. So I started to write music, taught myself how to play the guitar and since then I've written 20 to 25 songs. I also taught myself how to play keyboard as well. Many people are happy just playing music. Why did you want to write? It was a self-expression for me. It's how I express myself and it’s how I get my thoughts on paper and share them with others. I started with cowboy poetry and then once I taught myself how to play guitar, I moved on to songwriting. I grew up a little rough and have a story behind everything. So all my songs are based on pretty much
things that I've gone through in my life and it really relates to people. What is your niche? The way I base my songwriting revolves around the things I've been through. As a teacher I saw a lot of kids that went through the same things I did when I was a kid. I take those feelings and those emotions and I write songs about it. When I write a song that's a very emotional song, many people contact me and say, …”hey that's exactly how I feel. I just didn't know how to say it or I can relate to that.” I've got songs about domestic abuse. I've got songs about special needs. I have a daughter with Downs syndrome. So that's dear to my heart there. I've got a song called, "I Back the Blue" which brings awareness to police officers. And you know the importance of backing our heroes that put their lives on the line everyday. You know I try to write with emotion and things that I feel. And it just tends to relate to people. So some of my songs sounds a little Western Swing-ish, others sound a little country and then some are just flat rock and roll. How does your day to day job relate to your music? Being a person of the land and being someone who lives in a rural area. Does that play any kind of influence on the kind of music and your sensibilities that you put into your music? I write a lot of music about being an underdog or an underdog situation. We get up every day and we do drive tractors and work cattle and we know what hard
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