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Country Music, Dad Life, Interviews, Raising Girls

Sean Burns Does It All

This week, the Dads sit down with Manitoba’s own Sean Burns. He’s a sideman, a frontman and a radio man — and he’s your new best friend. Sean has been playing bass and touring with one of Canada’s best underground country stars, Corb Lund, for years. He makes time for his own solo career as a songwriter and purveyor of classic country sounds as the frontman of Sean Burns and The Lost Country.  And he’s also the evangelical lover of traditional real country music and as the host of the Boots & Saddle Show, your humble home of honky-tonk and beautiful country music by beautiful country music singers, he shares his takes on what make great country music every Tuesday on CKUW 95.9 FM in Winnipeg, and then on podcast services around the globe. 

Throughout the show, they discuss the balancing act of being a touring musician with a deep passion for the music and being an engaged father to a young daughter. For Sean, it’s all about how the two worlds influence one another and finding the right balance as he navigates his life with his wife and kiddo. 

Show Notes:

2:01 — Sean Burn’s country music origin story. 

6:14 — Dave asks Sean a very easy question: What is the best country music album of all time? He has his opinions, and then he gets into how to define country music — what is and what isn’t country. It’s not as divisive as you might think. 

9:24 — The planning process for the Boots and Saddle Show. 

13:30 — The Canadian Music Rules and how Sean breaks the laws — because he’s an outlaw! But he has great reasons for it. And then Sean goes deep into the history and Canadian infrastructure of country music through the 20th Century. 

21:07 — Balancing the road and the home life: Sean loves being a road warrior and “dadding up,” but it’s a hard balance. 

25:33 — How all the different creative pursuits provide different fulfillment to Sean that makes him a better and more complete person, which in the end makes him a better dad too. 

30:00 — Sean is a true critic and delivers truth without being a jackass. It’s not an easy process but the key is to be honest and keep it about the music, not the people. In the end, it is about what he wants. He also has some strong words about 90s country and the people making it.

36:01 — The clear divide between the road and the home comes down to the responsibilities we all have. But the road and the music influence the home life, which exposes the little one to a bit of the road. And that brings the kiddo into the music life — and gets to meet some weirdos. Driven and independent folks, but weirdos all the same!

41:24 — The Dad Life Sound Check — Sean and the Dads share their songs of the moment. 

Thank you for listening. The best way to support us is to subscribe to the show on Spotify, Apple podcasts, or whatever podcast platform you use. If you want to see new episodes and more content delivered straight to your email inbox, please subscribe to our newsletter: countrymusicdads.substack.com. You can find everything we do on our website: countrymusicdads.com. And we’d love to hear what you think, so send us comments, suggestions, friendly banter on Instagram @countrymusicdads, or via email countrymusicdads@gmail.com.

Mentioned in the Show: 

References:

Transcript

This is Country Music Dads, the parenting podcast with a twang.

We’re driving a highly subjective, comically contrarian, often irreverent conversation about fatherhood and country music for people who have a passion for both.

My name is Dave, and I’m a country music dad.

My name is Donnie, and I’m also a country music dad.

So today’s guest is Sean Burns, and he’s also a country music dad.

I know it’s shocking, but he’s also a sideman, a frontman, a radioman, and as he tells you at the start of his wonderful weekly radio show, your new best friend.

Sean has been playing bass and touring with one of Canada’s best underground country stars, Corb Lund, for years.

He’s on tour with him for weeks at a time throughout the year across the Great White North, the United States and Europe, along with other places that love country music.

He also carves out time and space for his own solo career as a songwriter and purveyor of classic country music sounds as the front man of Sean Burns and The Lost Country.

And perhaps most interestingly for me, as a regular listener, he is the evangelical host of a real country music radio show and the host of Boots and Saddle Show, your humble home of honky tonk and beautiful country music by beautiful country music singers broadcasts every Tuesday on Ckuw 95.9 Fm in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada, and then is on all of those great podcasting platforms for folks around the globe to enjoy.

He’s also a father of a little kiddo.

He joins us tonight from the outskirts of downtown Winnipeg, Manitoba, and he’s here to talk to us about great country music, parenting, and all sorts of other fun things.

So Sean, thanks so much for joining us.

Thanks, fellas.

Thanks for inviting me on.

So Sean, tell us a little bit about your origin story.

How did you get to this point of country music?

I grew up in Oshawa, Ontario, which is about 60 kilometers east of Toronto.

So it’s close enough to the big city where everyone still feels like self-important, because Toronto is what they call in Canada the center of the universe, got the big attitude.

And we’re, it’s a suburbs Oshawa, it’s grown a lot since my folks moved there.

My father was a musician for almost all of his life, and he started playing on the road in 1976, and he went hard till 84, and then took a bit of a break, and went back in early 90s until about a year or so before he passed away.

And he was mostly playing country music.

In his early days, he was exclusively playing country music.

And as a byproduct of that, he had a wonderful record and cassette collection when I was a kid, and some of the earliest memories of music I have are country music, or Johnny Cash and The Highwayman and Merle Haggard, and it was like the late 80s, so Steve Earle.

When Steve Earle came out, it was hot, it was fresh.

So those first couple Steve Earle cassettes, I remember.

And that was sort of the introduction for me by the time I was a teenager.

I got into it real deep by virtue of a Merle Haggard Greatest Hits collection.

And then Robbie Fulks, who my dad brought a Robbie Fulks record home, and he still tops for me.

So that’s the short version of what I could have given you a very long answer.

So how do you start playing?

So I had this conversation the other night, like I have distinct memories of being about eight years old and watching something on TV with my dad, some music thing, and being super locked into the bass player.

I was like, that is the coolest guy, even though I could tell he was definitely the least cool guy.

I was like, that’s the coolest thing.

Like that feels like such a responsibility.

Like you are really dictating all kinds of stuff as the bass player, even though you’re playing, you should be playing the least amount of notes.

But then my dad was a musician and I have a complicated, I had a complicated relationship with him.

So the last thing I wanted to do is be like my dad.

And everyone would say, you should play guitar, like you should play guitar, your dad could teach you.

I was like, there’s no way I’m doing that.

Like I don’t want to play with guitar.

I don’t want to hang out with my dad.

I don’t want to be my dad.

And then I got to high school in 1997 and all these kids played guitar and drums and they were all super shitty.

And I thought I could be this shitty right away.

So I met a couple guys and they were playing together.

I was like, yeah, yeah, I want to do this now.

I went home, I told my dad, I was like, I think I want to play bass.

And he is smart enough to know like he’s not just going to run out and buy me a bass.

So he called one of his friends who was a bass player who had lots of basses and said, you know, this kid’s interested in playing bass.

Can you lend him a guitar for a while?

And if he takes to it, I’ll buy him one.

But if not, then there’s no no financial loss for me.

And this guy Stewart lent me his old precision bass and it was great.

And I started learning.

I really took to it, really loved it.

And a couple months later, my dad bought me a bass and that was it.

That was 1997.

And I was gigging by 2001.

And that’s I’ve been gigging as my usually soul, but always my primary source of income for 24 years.

Wow.

So despite your best efforts, it was a family tradition.

You did follow in your dad’s footsteps.

I did.

Yeah.

Do you expect your kid to also pick it up?

How old is your kid?

She’ll be three at the end of July.

And she’s 100 percent cursed with the same need and desire for attention and an audience as me and my father, and his mother was a singer.

So she’s, you can tell, I feel like I can tell.

Like I told my wife, I was like, it’s a good thing we’re probably not going to have any other kids because we’re going to have to send her to some expensive theater school or something.

She’s the center of attention.

She commands.

It’s wild.

She can retain for lyrics and stuff.

And it was country songs when she was smaller.

And now she’s gotten older and she can verbalize what she wants.

It’s like, you know, all the kids movies and stuff.

So she’s got a few she’s really locked into and she knows all the songs.

And it’s pretty cool, actually.

I’ll start with an easy question.

Sure.

What is the best country music album of all time?

I read those questions earlier.

Thank you, by the way, for sending that.

That was cool.

That was really good.

That’s tough, man.

Like, that’s tough.

But I really I thought about it a lot.

Like the best is a hard thing.

I don’t always like to say the best, but like probably Nightlife by Ray Price.

Oh, the night life ain’t no good life, but it’s my life.

I would say is just like just perfect almost, like beautiful record sounds great.

He’s singing on real, the band is outstanding.

A close second would be Roll Truck Roll by Red Simpson.

That’s quintessential Bakersfield sound, like sub-genre country music, the truck and stuff.

Red is not a gifted singer per se, but the songs are great and the playing is unreal.

That’s a nice mix of Bakersfield and truck driving altogether.

But yeah, Nightlife by Ray Price.

It’s pretty hard to beat that as far as I’m concerned.

So within that, your definition of the best, is that how you also define Country Music?

Is that your greatness, is that time period, the Ray Price period of time, is that the pinnacle of Country Music?

Like for me as a listener, and I try to say it on Boots and Saddle a lot, like I’ll say like the kind of Country Music that we like to play, or the kind of Country Music that I like.

Because Country Music is such a polarizing term, and like you could go back 60, 70 years and people are gonna say, that’s not Country Music.

And I don’t want to say what is or isn’t Country Music, because if it’s on Country Radio, is it Country Music?

Even if it’s like Morgan Wallen or whoever’s on Country Radio, like I don’t know if it’s for me to say, because that’s Country Music to a lot of people, to millions of people.

But the kind of Country Music that I like and that era, for sure, early 60s, like for me, yes, that’s my favorite kind of Country Music, that’s traditional Country Music, that’s it for me.

I think that’s an important distinction.

And I think sometimes, especially when folks have strong opinions about what is and isn’t Country Music, you get kind of in the way of your own self when that happens.

So it’s nice to hear that.

Yeah, I mean, I get frustrated more with media outlets.

Like, you know, you get the email like every month, the best Country Music on Bandcamp, and you go listen to the music.

I’m like, who’s calling that Country Music?

I don’t know.

It sounds like indie rock to me.

Or like they’ve listened to a little bit of Country Music.

But yeah, I try not to say, like, and I’ve had this conversation with Don Stickle a little bit, too.

It’s like, I try not to say what is or isn’t Country Music, but it’s like, it just keeps going further and further away from the kind of traditional Country Music that I like.

And I don’t know, maybe things will turn around.

I doubt it, but…

I feel like it’s important to have somebody like yourself who hosts a radio show that’s pulling what the mainstream radio DJs aren’t going to be pulling.

Yeah.

Mainstream country radio.

What goes into when you’re planning out one of your shows?

Like way more time and energy than it should for a one hour show.

And I hope that’s reflected in the quality of the broadcast.

I usually sit down like one day midweek and sort of hammer out the like loose plan for the show.

I think it’s important that I play some new music from people that are sort of playing the kind of country music that I like or similar to it.

I think it’s important to play new music, especially being on campus and community radio across Canada here.

It’s like you got to play some stuff that’s underground for lack of a better term.

And then traditional country music, the stuff that I like, whether it’s a regionally based thing or just classic names, you know.

So I try to do like a set of traditional country music and then a set of newer stuff.

And then the last set is kind of up for debate.

Usually it’s a bit of a theme.

Like for a while, I was doing sort of real, like regional municipal Canadian country music from the 60s or 70s.

I like to do that sometimes, but those are hard to find if you don’t have the records.

I spend a few hours probably hammering out what I’m going to play, whether it’s stuff I’ve heard, you know, while listening to music or on the shuffle on the computer or seen some clips on Instagram or something, a video.

I’m like, that’s a great song and find that one in my catalog or people I’ve talked to or stuff that we’re playing in my band or that we’ve heard in the clubs in between sets and craft that together.

If there’s something I’m going to pay tribute to someone or something, I like to do some research.

I do love to do a backstory research on a lot of the material.

So all that takes time.

Then I usually come down here on Monday nights and bang out the show and that takes, it takes a couple hours anyway to do it right and make it tight.

You know, I started pre-recording the pandemic when I hosted the program originally.

And it’s like, if I’m going to be doing this at home on my own time, like there’s no excuse for it not to be as good as it can be.

So if that means I have to like edit something or redo a whole four minutes of talking or something, I don’t usually have to do that.

But like I can instead of doing live radio, which can be pretty clunky.

But it’s live radio and that’s, I mean, romantic in itself.

But you know, I’m at home.

It’s like I can really do it and really make it tight down to the second and the transitions from song to song and give some backstory.

Like I just try to do what I would want someone to do, what I would want to hear on the radio.

And got a bit of an audience.

So it’s going well.

On the radio show, do you have an inspiration?

Is there like one DJ out there from, I don’t know, Tuscaloosa or, you know, Ontario, or I’m showing my American-ness by not knowing the right cities to call.

But like, you know, is there some guy who used to rock the airwaves in Manitoba that you were like, damn, this guy can rock my province any day?

No.

You guys familiar with my friend Skinny Dick?

You know, his music?

Yeah.

So his name is Ryan.

And he lives in Lethbridge, Alberta, which is, you know, if I just go to the end of my street and turn right, I’ll be there in like 12 hours.

I just have to turn once.

That’s not it.

I’m not even kidding.

He had a show a long time ago, well, a long time, 10 years ago, called The Chin Up Record Club on CKXU 88.3 in Lethbridge, Alberta.

I’m the country show there now on CKXU.

He hosted that show for a while.

And I kind of took a lot of cues from him early on.

I think he stopped like 2019 or something, but he had a good run.

He had an hour program on Monday nights.

And I learned a lot from him.

He’s a lot more laid back than I am.

So I’ve learned to like try to use the space, try to talk clearly, you know.

So I learned a lot from him.

You know, I usually end up talking for four or five minutes off the top, sort of recapping, you know, what’s been going on or whatever.

That’s very like, that’s like Mark Merrin shit.

You know, he’ll go on about, it gets personal.

And at first it’s like, who cares?

What, you know, get to the interview.

And I’m like, no, no, I’m using this platform.

Like this is it.

It makes it feel personal.

I think it gives some kind of connection with the people, especially people I don’t see in the community that are living elsewhere.

It’s like, they know what’s going on.

And if they don’t want to, they can fast forward if they want.

It’s only five minutes.

It’s a great balance.

And the thing that I personally really like about it is that it’s, it is very regionally centric.

I think there are legal reasons for that.

In Canada, if you’re on the air, you have to have enough Canadian music on your air to make it OK, which I think is one of the interesting things about Canadian radio.

But what I really like about that is that I get to know a lot of artists that I wouldn’t hear otherwise.

And so that’s one of the reasons I really like tuning in is that I expand my country music encyclopedia and I hear about people I never would have heard about, singing about places and themes that I wouldn’t hear.

And so as a Canadian, do you feel an obligation beyond the legal one to really dig into the great history of Canadian country music on your show?

The laws for Canadian content, like the CRTC laws for Canadian content, I think that’s actually not been beneficial, because what you end up having on the radio and commercial radio is the same few acts getting all of the spins.

So it’s designed to have this Canadian content.

I don’t know what the percentage is, but it’s designed to have that.

And then what ends up happening is on classic rock stations, you just hear like fucking rush all the time.

Or on country radio, it’s like they’ll just play like Shania Twain or whatever, because not a lot of the Canadians will cross over into America.

And then whatever number of current bands are on the radio or legacy acts, because in Canada, you can do nothing relevant for 20 years and still have a solid career and be played on the radio and sell out theaters.

It’s not good.

So I used to follow those rules.

I hosted Boots and Saddle from 2016 to 2022 before I took a two year break.

And I used to follow the rules.

And the second I stopped following the rules, the show got way better.

I do not follow those rules, but I do like to shine a light on the artists here in Winnipeg sometimes, especially because this is home base.

And if there’s people playing in town, people that I like, I like to play their music.

And it’s nice to introduce these people to outsiders, you know?

And then as far as the playing The Lost, kind of call it lost Canadian country, like trying to find all those local, regional municipal records from the 60s or the 70s even.

I like to share that because it’s a reminder that there was once infrastructure for traditional country music in Canada, which is very hard to find now.

When I read that question, it was like the great history of country music.

I was like, I don’t know that it’s great.

A lot of it’s not great, but it was there.

And I don’t know what it was like in California.

I don’t know what it was like throughout the United States.

But in Canada, from the early 60s to the early 90s, just about everywhere you went, big cities, small towns, they had country music bands playing six nights a week, Monday to Saturday.

And it was all tiered, like A, B, C, D rooms.

You know, the A room bands made the most money.

They played the nicest clubs.

And then, you know, you could be, like, not very talented in work almost every week of the year.

Smaller towns would have a six-nighter, like big cities.

You didn’t have to leave Winnipeg or Calgary or Edmonton or Toronto or Vancouver.

You could just stay there and rotate through six or eight rooms six nights a week all the time.

You had this middle class of musicians that existed.

And that sort of died in the early mid-90s.

It lasted here in Winnipeg a little longer, but we’re still like ten years behind normal society here.

Toronto is the big city.

It’s the biggest city in the country.

It’s a great city.

It really is.

People give it a lot of shit.

But a lot of people went there, like anywhere, they’re a big city.

You get people flocking there for work, for employment, to find people that look like them or are from where they’re from.

So you had all these people that moved from the Maritime Provinces in Eastern Canada, that moved there for work, and they brought their music with them, and then they played country music too.

So you have this whole infrastructure for country music all across the city, and from that built a ton of great musicians and some songwriters.

Most of them are just playing hits.

Then these little record labels, Arc Records, which is my favorite label.

There’s Marathon and Paragon, and then a couple of others, Boot Records, Quality, Rodeo, Bantf, all these labels.

They’re releasing records from these people that are just playing in the clubs.

Even the greats are recording the same song sometimes within the same year, like Ray Price and Buck Owens, same song, same year, different version.

But it’s like, I want to hear my favorite singer who plays at my favorite bar sing Oki from Muskogee, and then he’s going to record it on this little record, and they’re going to sell it at a department store or drugstore.

So this infrastructure for country music existed, and I think that’s super cool, and I knew a lot of these names from my father, because he was going to see them or playing with some of them when he finally broke into the scene.

All that to say, there’s some good stuff there.

There’s some really good stuff there, and it’s overlooked because that existed in the United States everywhere.

The same thing, just everyone was a little bit better.

But we did have that.

The history is great in that it was there and it’s no longer here.

It was there.

People loved Country Music, it was important.

And in these big cities where it’s not like that anymore, they’re playing Country Music differently than they used to.

I think it’s cool that someone’s trying to find that and to play it on the radio.

That’s something worth recognizing as far as we’re concerned as Canadians and people who might like Country Music here.

Where do you find those albums?

Are you like digging through?

discogs.com.

Yeah.

I spend a lot of money.

Big shout out.

Yeah.

Or any number of these thrift stores and secondhand stores and all across the country wherever I go.

Here in Winnipeg, there’s one up the street I usually get quite a big haul from.

But it’s tough, man.

It’s tough and there’s a great record store here in Winnipeg called Dooley Records.

They know to give me a call if there’s anything from Ark Records in there and I’ll buy it.

I’ll just go down and buy it.

No question.

Yeah, and then I’ve just spent hours on the Internet looking up all the Ark Records releases and the numbers and then searching and trying to find something.

Not usually, sometimes someone will put the whole record on YouTube.

Not usually a great recording, but you can hear this whole record that you can’t find anywhere.

There’s another guy named Brian Saunderson in Kamloops, British Columbia.

He hosts a show called Hurtin For Real, and he and I have shared a lot of stuff, and he’s a real good digger for records, and he’ll share a lot of stuff with me too.

I was racking my brain to see who I could think of beyond Shania and Culture Wall from Canada, and the one person I could think of was Tom Cochran, and it was because of my son.

Yeah.

My son’s favorite movie was Cars, and so his favorite song was Life as a Highway.

Yeah.

And I found out that he was the original for Life as a Highway.

He had some huge hits.

Yeah, Life’s a Highway.

There’s a country band that did one, like Rascal Flats did one of his songs.

Rascal Flats, yeah.

Yeah.

I was so happy to find an alternative version, to Rascal Flats’ version to play.

Yeah, Tom Cochran and Red Ryder, they were a great rock band.

And Tom Cochran, I don’t know how old he is, but he’s not young, but he still plays an awful lot of big gigs in the summertime, because like I said, in Canada, you can do that stuff.

My son thought the name of that song was Lightning on the Highway for a very long time, because it came from that movie.

We did not correct him.

That’s just one of the things you do.

It’s like, yup, that’s definitely the name of the song.

You’ve mentioned a bit in those five minute intros, when you’re out on the road and kind of the life on the road, and then the coming home and kind of getting back into it, and it kind of, it’s sometimes a little bumpy.

How do you balance that out, especially as a guy who wears a lot of different hats?

It’s really hard.

My wife and I, we’ve been together for 12 years, and we still don’t have this dialed in.

It’s the few days before I leave, and then a week or so after I get back.

That transition time is difficult because a few days out, I’m instantly thinking about all the stuff that I have to do before I go, and all the stuff I need to pack, and how long I’m going to be gone, and all the things, and all the sort of interpersonal dynamics of the band.

Like, got to get in that headspace, and then things around the house start to slip.

And all that has increased since having a child, because as you know, the responsibilities are much greater than they used to be, like when we used to just be two people pretty free.

And then when I get home, it’s like, okay, you’ve been gone now for a few weeks, and my little girl, she’s a handful.

She’s got a lot of spunk.

She’s got a lot of energy.

And it’s exhausting to spend that much time with her, I’m sure.

And with no one else, with no buffer.

So it’s like, when I get home, it’s kind of like, I don’t really care how tired you are or what you’ve done.

Don’t expect applause just for walking down the stairs.

Like now it’s time to dad up.

That’s tough.

That’s tough, like mentally and physically.

But it’s also, I love both things so much.

I love being here.

I love like being woken up at 630 in the morning.

She comes into the room and is like, I’m ready to go.

And I’m like, I’m the one that gets up and does it all with her usually.

I love all of the sort of mundane shit like driving her to daycare and picking her up at daycare and like repeating myself a hundred times for her to do a simple task, you know?

Like all that stuff.

I love being here.

And I love like the domestic stuff that I never thought I was gonna love.

But I also love sitting in a van for hours at a time and going into shitty gas stations and like experiencing all that, like all the stuff about the road that musicians complain about.

Like I love that shit.

Like I actually do.

And I have a good gig with Corb.

Like it’s a good job.

And we get our own room every night.

I got my own hotel room every night.

90% of the time, it’s a nice one.

And the privacy and the peace and quiet that I get as a result of that is also just amazing.

That’s, you know, there’s some conflicting things there.

Because I’m, you know, it’s like, okay, great, I’m gonna go on the road now for a little while.

It’s gonna be awesome.

But then it’s tough.

And now my daughter’s old enough to look at me on the FaceTime and be like, are you coming home tonight?

And I’m like, no.

And that’s really tough.

But yeah, getting home, that’s hard.

And we’re getting better at it.

But yeah, there’s some push and pull and some tension.

And as soon as I get home, like I still got shit to do.

I’m still gigging like crazy when I’m at home, doing the show, I’ve got responsibilities.

I do some regular stuff every week when I’m at home that I need to keep up on.

So it’s tough, it’s really tough.

Sometimes it’s easier than others.

Like summer is a bit easier because my wife also travels for work.

So we’re just coming and going so often.

It’s like we’re both in our own routine and we can sort of be more understanding of it.

But when it’s me going for weeks and weeks at a time, for months, that’s tough.

And I’m slowly learning to think of others before myself, which is a tough thing.

I feel like it was said, like a true parent in the trenches, that you get peace from the hectic life of life on the road.

That’s where you find your peace and quiet.

I can definitely identify with that.

But it’s great, man, like when things are calm here, and you put my daughter to bed or just sitting there, quietly eating breakfast, it’s like, those are beautiful moments.

Obviously, if I had to choose, if it was gun to your head one or the other, I’d be home with my kid.

It’s amazing, as you guys know.

But I mean, yeah, I also, this is my job.

This is what I’ve always done.

This is what I’ve, I was gone for seven weeks when she was like two months old.

And when we’re on the road with Corby, like we do six shows a week, and all of them are meaningful.

And he’s got, you know, devoted fans, whether we’re playing to, you know, 150 or 1500, it’s like, they’re there for it.

It’s really easy to get up for that.

That excitement, the connection with the people, that energy, the adrenaline of it all, you lose that as soon as you get home.

Yeah, we talk about it on the show too.

We’re all about active, engaged parenting and being active, engaged dads, but you need the time to do stuff for yourself too and pursue your passions and pursue your work.

And you front your own band also, in addition to playing bass for Corb Lund.

Does that scratch a different creative itch for you?

Yeah, fronting Lost Country, playing upright bass and singing all the songs, and it’s a five-piece band, and they’re all very talented, but they’ve all got a certain amount of things that they need to say musically.

And policing that while trying to control the stage and the room and focus on making sure that I’m locked in with the drummer and that I’m, you know, I’m satisfied with how I’ve run the show and how I’ve, the banter and the connection with the people, like that’s the hardest job I have.

It’s mentally exhausting.

The end of a lost country night is like, I’m like, I’m wiped out.

It’s a lot of work.

But that is like the most fulfilling thing that I do because I’m playing, not just playing my own songs, but playing the kind of country music that I love.

And it’s like, we’re playing a ton of classic country music, a lot of shuffles.

I’ll say a lot of things like, any respectable country music band should be able to play Crazy Arms or Pick Me Up On Your Way Down, or Invitation To The Blues or Swingin Doors.

And it’s like, we do all of them.

It’s like, I just want to make sure that this band can do all that.

And that is a lot of work for me.

But like I said, it’s like, it’s really fulfilling.

I get to play what I want to play, how I want to play it, when I want to play it.

And then playing with Corb is like, that’s a big boy job.

That’s like, that’s serious business.

Those guys are unbelievable musicians and everyone’s listening to everything that everyone’s doing all the time.

And you can’t get away with any bullshit and there’s no room for error and it’s like, if there’s a mistake, it’s addressed.

If there’s a thing that like could maybe be better, we’re going to try it a different way.

Corb doesn’t like, he wants to know what it’s going to be like.

It’s not, yeah, try it this way.

It’s like, no, let’s try it five ways before we actually do it.

And then we do it and he knows what’s coming and it’s like going to be good.

And he’s concerned about how he’s presenting his show and he’s very serious about it.

And I love that.

I love, it’s like the most serious business I’ve ever been a part of.

And I’ve always wanted that because when we do it and we’re killing it, it’s like, yeah, it’s a good band with good songs.

Like he’s got really good songs.

So yeah, two totally different things, and it’s heads up with Corb, we don’t have a set list, we don’t know the first song until we’re walking out there, and I’ve got upright bass and electric bass, I’m like, what am I doing?

And it’s like, we’re switching on the fly, you gotta watch him, you gotta watch him, because he’s gonna tell you, because he’s not gonna tell you on the mic, he’s gonna tell you, we’ve got hand signals, like a third bass coach, it’s like, you watch for the hand signals, and then you know what the song is.

And the guitar player, Grant, he’s got a Telecaster and a Baritone and a Mandolin and a lap steel and a steel string, like a National, well National, and he’s got a nylon string, sometimes a banjo, he’s got hand signals for all that shit, so we’re constantly, you gotta be paying attention, you have to be fully present, and I really have come to love that, not knowing what’s gonna happen.

And the way that he structures, the way Corb reads the room is like, I’ve learned a lot from that guy, about like, wow, you can do that, and it could still work, and 99% of the time, I’m like, wow, he nailed it, like he called the right song.

That’s really cool, being in that supporting role, playing bass on really some great songs, it’s like, that feels really good.

That’s what I dreamt of doing when I was a kid, I was like, I’m gonna be the bass player for someone who’s awesome, or someone that’s got good records and some fans.

And then as, of course, things went on, I was cursed and, you know, something fundamentally wrong with someone who wants to do this for a living, who needs the attention of strangers, I guess.

But yeah, no, man, totally different things, and I love doing them both, for sure.

So you love doing them both, and you were talking about reading The Room, and I guess it’s kind of hard to read The Room when you’re doing the radio show, but you’re pretty critical of yourself sometimes on those shows, especially when you feel like you kind of missed on one of your shows.

I remember one, I was like, damn, man, it couldn’t have been that bad because I’ve heard your music, and it’s like, if you just show up and play it, it’s going to be good music.

And the songs that you also play, those are good and you have folks that can play them.

But you’re really critical of yourself sometimes, but you’re also willing to talk a little bit of truth about some songs.

You’ll allude to poor behavior of other artists over time.

I write about music and Dave writes about music, and we try to be pretty positive.

If we don’t like something, we tend not to talk about it too much.

But you’re willing to play this song, be like, everybody wanted me to play this song, and I still think it stinks.

Here’s the five reasons why.

How do you balance that out?

How do you find the right way to do it without being a jackass?

I just try to be honest, I think.

It’s not personal.

It’s like I just don’t like it.

It’s not that I don’t like the person usually, it’s that I don’t like the song.

I guess you’re talking about when I was real harsh about how we had a bad show and I told everyone I had given their money back.

Yeah, that was true though.

Like we were sloppy.

It was sloppy.

It was embarrassing.

Like it was fine.

It was fine.

But that’s not good enough.

You know, they’re good musicians.

We’re good enough to have done a better job.

That’s just, you know, that really bothered me actually.

And it had been a long time since there’d been a Sean Burns show that wasn’t like as up to snuff as I’d like it to be.

It’s some of the things that I’m not a fan of.

It’s definitely unpopular and people have told me.

Like one time I said something about not really enjoying Rodney Crowell records and I had like three people stop me the next week, like in town, like, what are you talking shit about Rodney Crowell?

I was like, I’m not talking shit about Rodney Crowell.

I understand he’s fantastic.

It’s just like, not for me, you know, I just don’t like the way that sounds.

I guess it does come across pretty critical and perhaps I’m more critical than I think I am, but I think I just know what I like and I just know what I don’t like.

Yeah, is that a good answer?

I think you answered it enough to not really go deeper than we need to, right?

You came down pretty hard on Jesse Daniel, which actually kind of surprised me, because I don’t know if I put him in the kind of that 90s space.

I think part of him is that 90s space, but I think he also kind of lives in that amorphous California Murrell Haggard space, too, which is why it actually surprised me.

Yeah, okay, so that’s like, like I love Tommy Dettimore, steel player.

He plays steel guitar with Jake Hooker, who’s like my guy.

He’s my favorite guy, upright bass player, and he’s like Jake doesn’t give a shit about anything that’s going on.

He’s like vocal about, he’s way worse than me.

He’s like, I hate that stuff.

That’s offensive.

You know, he’s like aggressive.

He just wants to be like Bob Wills and Ray Price music all night long, and he does it great, and I love it.

And Tommy’s the best steel player, like one of the best.

But his records are like pretty big.

They sound big and they’re clean.

And like Sonny Sweeney’s new record is with him.

That was what I was talking about last week.

And he did a couple Jesse Daniel records.

And it’s just like big, it’s like big drums, rock and roll drums and like rock and roll piano and rock and roll guitar kind of masqueraded under this country thing, which is exactly what the 90s country stuff was.

It was that it was, you know, and Jesse, like I’m not super familiar with the guy, and I’m sure he’s a great dude.

Like it’s not again, not personal, but there’s some stuff of his that I heard that I was like, it’s just like 90s country to me.

It’s just like 90s.

And then I actually heard his new record, which is like not even close to that.

Like kudos to this guy for doing something different and something he wants to do.

But yeah, there’s definitely some shades of that for me.

And that just like it’s a turn off for me, because I never liked that stuff so much.

You know, and I had to play a lot of it when I was coming up.

And some of it was fun to play.

But I just don’t really like it.

And as I’ve gotten older, I’ve liked it even less.

And there’s this resurgence of it.

And it’s really popular.

And there’s people that are doing it, people that are having a lot of success with it.

Like if I had to take, I’ll take Zack Top over like Jelly Roll and shit like that.

You know what I mean?

I’m not going to listen to Zack Top.

But like I’ll take that over like what’s commercial country radio any day of the week.

But yeah, it was just like a production choices that’s just big.

It’s just too big for me.

It’s like rock and roll, which is like if you just fucking play rock and roll.

But yeah, and I get suspicious of people’s motives.

Like, do you really like that?

Like, do you really like 90s country or is it like fashionable?

Is this your way in?

I don’t know.

And I try really hard to like to not let that consume me.

Like, just take it, just believe it.

If that’s what people are doing, then they love it, then sure, they love it.

Not everyone’s, you know, got these greasy motives or wants to be famous or whatever.

But it’s just that sort of big production that I don’t love.

But I mean, I played that Sonny Sweeney song.

Got a lot of respect for Sonny Sweeney.

It’s a good song and she works so hard, man.

Yeah, I agree.

It’s a good song and it’s catchy as all get out.

It’s the diamonds and divorce decrees, right?

That was the one that you played.

I found it to be just fun.

There’s no doubt that’s a huge sound and a lot of it.

Which is wild to me that Tommy makes records like that because he plays in this hard country, Texas shuffle, dance hall, country music band and then he makes these big records.

And it’s like, okay, cool man.

If that’s what the client wants, then great.

I’m sorry, Jesse Daniel.

I know you’re not going to listen to this.

I’m sorry, man.

He’s not a dad, so it’s not really a target.

He’s not listening to this.

He’s not in our demographic yet.

Yeah, yeah.

Dad-centric.

But he could listen if he wanted to.

We’ll tag him.

We’ll tag him.

Yeah, we’ll tag him.

That’s cool.

We’ve kind of talked about your creative life.

We talked a little bit about the home life.

Do you see a clear divide between the two?

Or do they kind of balance each other out and inform each other?

There’s a divide.

I have pretty low responsibility when I’m on the road with Corb.

I just got to be on time in the morning, and I got to be on time for a couple of things.

And I got to be fully present and engaged and do my job well.

All that’s pretty easy.

All of the responsibilities at home are different, and I’m responsible for this child and making sure she’s not going to grow up to be an asshole.

But she’s got an interesting life.

We don’t have a lot of friends with civilian employment.

There’s not a lot of people in her life that she sees that go to work from like 9 to 5 or 8 to 3 or whatever.

Like there’s not many of them.

There’s people that do all kinds of weird and different shit and artists and just people living on the fringes of conventional society.

And that’s who she’s around a lot.

So she gets to see that.

And a lot of that is because these are people that are connected to us from playing music or from, you know, having worked at the bar for so long in town, like my wife and I both.

So there’s a divide, but my daughter’s been to like so many shows and sound checks.

And she’s like the little kid that shows up at the sound check for any out-of-town band.

So like any out-of-towner that I know that comes through town, I still have keys to the Times Changed High and Lonesome Club here in Winnipeg.

And it was like, yeah, what time is it?

Six o’clock, we’ll be there.

And she’s been there and she loves it, you know.

And if there’s afternoon shows for families, she’s at the shows.

And she’s like, you got to stop her from walking on the stage or festivals.

She’s there.

She’s up late and watching the band.

And so she might not be exposed to all that if we were living more civilian lifestyles, I think.

It blends in together.

She knows what I do.

She knows what I do.

She knows I’m gone.

I’m going to work.

You’re going to go play the big bass.

She says, you’re going to play the big bass.

Yes, I’m going to work, play big bass.

Gonna go watch a FaceTime or from the end of sound check.

She sees the stage, sees the guys, says hi to the guys.

So she’s exposed to all this stuff that she otherwise wouldn’t be.

She’s a part of it.

She understands that, I think, as much as she can, we listen to a lot of music.

I play a lot when I’m at home.

We’ll come down here and I’ll play the bass and she’ll smash with some markers on the desk.

Can we play Jammin?

I’m like, yeah, let’s go play Jammin.

I need to keep her busy for a little while and I can work on some songs while she’s there.

But I do have to leave that whole thing.

I’m no longer the most important person or the person I think of first when I’m here.

I’ve got to be present with her and make sure that she’s got everything she needs and she’s comfortable.

I’m conscious and aware of how I’m treating her and everyone around us at that time.

All that’s really great and fulfilling and learning so much about myself and the things that try to remember what I didn’t get when I was a kid.

I needed this and I didn’t get it or I was met with this resistance from mom and dad, when all I needed was this and it’s like I see her acting a certain way and I’m like, that’s exactly what I was doing.

What did I need?

I got to make sure she gets that.

So then everything’s out the window, then there’s no more thinking about the gig or the set or the drive or the flight.

But I love that she’s able to see all the stuff and meet all these weirdos.

It’s important for the kids to meet some weirdos.

Yeah, she’s a lot of fucking weirdos, man.

Yeah.

It’s cool.

She’s getting her fill.

She’s getting her fill.

But she also sees driven and independent people and people doing what they love and what they want to do and doing it respectfully.

And my wife’s got a real good friend.

We got a friend named Andrina Turen.

She’s a mostly French singer here in Winnipeg.

And she’s great and she works super hard.

And you see this woman who’s chasing her dreams and doing her thing and independent and strong and talented.

It’s like these are great people to expose her to.

My drummer, Joanna, she’s the best.

She plays with everyone in town.

And Violet, my daughter, loves her.

She sees Joanna plays the drums, like Auntie Jo plays drums.

I’m like, yeah, she does.

You can do that too.

You can do anything you want.

And my wife is intense and super strong.

And she’s got a great role model.

And then I’m like the pushover guy.

You can’t let her do that.

I’m like, yeah, I can.

She needs to.

She needs to do it.

You may think that you’re a weirdo and you’re completely outside of it, but it sounds pretty much like most homes that we hear.

Yeah, I think it’s just like some minor exceptions, but that was hard for me, man.

I never thought I would want that or I would do that.

And then, I remember right before she was born, I was looking around her house.

It’s not very big.

I was looking around, I was like, soon this is just going to be filled with shit, like kids stuff everywhere.

Like in the bathtub, I was like, I remember I was in the bathroom, this is it.

This is it.

This is not going to last long.

There’s going to be stuff here.

And then it is exactly like that.

There’s stuff everywhere.

Some of it lasts for a few months, some of it is still here from a couple of years ago.

It’s like, yeah, all that stuff is gone.

I never thought I would be like so into it, but I just love it.

And I think maybe it’s easier to appreciate that stuff for me because I get all that time where I’m away in the hotels.

And then when I’m out there after a few days, I’m like, what’s going on?

Where’s all the stuff?

Yeah, I think I’ve really kind of fallen into it a lot quicker and easier than I ever thought I would.

On to our recurring segment that we call The Dad Life Sound Check.

In The Dad Life Sound Check, we share a song that’s hitting us as dads at the current moment.

Sean, do you want to let us know what song is hitting you at the moment?

I’m going to go to the latest Garrett T.

Capps record and his song, For You and I.

Which is a song about his dad.

I have my own complicated relationship with my dad.

This one really hit for me.

I think I said it on the show, I was listening to it in the car and I pull up to the house, and I was crying in my car.

I’m like, oh my God.

I hope this is a real story.

If it’s not, Garrett T.

Caps is the fucking greatest songwriter on earth.

This one really hitting me, man.

I just think it’s great.

Again, it’s like this reminder for me of how I can do things a little differently.

My dad was cool and it was just tough.

It was a struggle.

It was like my best pal and my biggest enemy all at once.

He was a hard man and I don’t want to be like that.

That’s a great song, I think, and it’s a great story.

Garrett’s songwriting is simultaneously absurd and so simple.

I think there’s some incredible beauty in the way that he tells such a straightforward story with deep undertones of almost like a Dada-esque experience.

There’s something about the way he tells a story, and maybe it’s his voice, maybe it’s the meter that he uses and the way the words flow into each other.

There’s something about it that all of those songs, because that’s a really personal album all the way through too.

But that song in particular is like, well, you’re sharing a lot of information about where you’re from and why you do what you do.

His ability to so simply tell something so complicated, it’s a real gift and that song is heavy to say the least.

Well, he’s got that South Texas thing, which is inherently cool, but it’s also calm.

I wouldn’t call him a gifted singer.

So with all that and with the truth of the song comes this vulnerability, which is I think relatable as a listener, but also he’s getting very personal.

It’s not a traditional sounding country music song, but that’s all the elements, that’s all the ingredients in the soup for country music.

I don’t know, I think it’s a great song.

All the elements in the soup.

Yeah.

The song that I picked, I almost feel bad about this because that was very beautiful.

Your pick and the reason behind it.

I picked a song, it’s like throwing a bro country grenade into our conversation about traditional independent country music.

Because as Donnie knows, I got my first exposure to country music through radio country in the US and bro country.

One of my favorite artists is Hardy, who was a bro country songwriting hit maker for a long time before he started doing his own thing.

I actually just saw him a few days ago.

I like to see him every 18 months or so.

In previous iterations of the podcast, I even described myself as the West Coast premier Hardy apologist.

So I would defend Hardy’s songwriting and musical abilities, even when I knew I’d probably lose the argument.

Honestly, I’m finding it harder to defend him lately.

He’s had so much success commercially.

He’s got this huge fan base now.

It almost seems like he’s mailed it in with new stuff.

I was a little bummed because one of my favorite songs is called Signed Sober You, and it was one of his early songs off, I think, his first EP.

He writes a letter to himself.

I love the song.

At the show, he teased it and said, hey, we’re all my OG Hardy fans.

Of course, I raised my hand really high and I screamed.

Then he didn’t play any of the old songs, he just played all the new stuff.

So it was like a tease.

I thought, all right, he’s going to go back to when I first appreciated him, and then he didn’t.

I was a little offended by it.

But that’s the song I picked.

It’s not for a deep personal reason, but more just because I wanted to talk about Hardy again.

I hadn’t in a while.

That’s fair.

I don’t even know who that is.

I’ll breathe a sigh of relief then, because I was prepared for whatever you might say.

Hey man, I don’t know your life.

You like who you like.

I’m not going to judge you.

Thank you.

I’m not here to judge.

I just know what I like.

I’ll do that for you.

Donnie, you can have that one.

Donnie’s done plenty of that.

I’ll take that.

I had to listen to this.

I mean, I had the opportunity to listen to this song.

I’ve got to say, it is actually…

What I will give Hardy is that his songwriting structure is pretty good.

He gets it.

He’s a good songwriter with the structure and the plays and the hooks and all that stuff that he does.

Again, not my cup of tea, but he’s a hit maker and there’s something about that that I can appreciate.

And he has a really good sense of humor about a lot of it, especially the older stuff.

The newer stuff really is reminiscent to New Metal with a U and an umlaut.

It’s not good.

Got to put the umlaut in there.

But there’s a reason why New Metal is universally hated is because it sucks.

So does Hardee’s New Music.

I mean, it’s unequivocally horrible.

It’s just mad.

And every once in a while, I will go and listen to country radio, either we’re traveling and the aux cord doesn’t work and we can’t get the Bluetooth to work or we’re out in the middle of nowhere and some clear channel country station on.

And we’ll listen to three Morgan Wallen songs, a Hardee song, a Jason Aldean song.

There’ll be a woman once an hour, and then we’ll listen to some other crap three times over in the two and a half hour drive.

It’s unfortunate because so much of that music doesn’t have that sense of humor.

And I think that’s a huge part of Country Music, is the sense of humor, and that gets me to my pick.

And in honor of Sean, because I was doing research to go back into a little bit of Corb Lund’s catalog, I gotta go with Cows Around.

Oh, everything is better with some cows around living in town.

Because that song is, I love that song.

I think it is the most ridiculously awesome, silly song.

There’s a little bit of seriousness to it too.

There’s a real kind of country western feel to it that’s all about like, hey, you know, this actually, there is a reason why this is great.

And it also is my absolute go-to song for anything having to do with cows on the internet.

So if I find a funny picture of cows, I post it with that song.

Recently, I saw this collection of photos that were ridiculous.

There was this one where it was, you know, warning, you know, like, there’s cows around, so don’t like drive your car into it.

So the car kind of crashed into the cow and it was, you know, a really bad image of a cow and like a little small European style car, all right?

And in the foreground is a cow with a Fisher Price little Tykes car stuck on its head.

So the picture is actually warning you of the exact thing in front of you.

And I was like, this is the best because this is exactly what this is about.

Because like these big ridiculous animals that are mission critical to agriculture in the West are funny, funny and ridiculous animals.

And there’s this great song from a great artist having some fun with it.

And so that one just came up and I was like, oh, I really like this song.

And I put it on, my kids were like, this is kind of funny.

And my kids are happy about the music I put on.

I see it as a win.

So I like the sense of humor in it.

I like how much fun it is.

I also like that there’s some seriousness to it.

The live versions are particularly hilarious in my opinion.

Oh, yeah.

I mean, he’s got other verses too.

Like he’s got verses that aren’t on the record that he’ll pull out and change and stuff.

And like kids love that song too, man.

It’s pretty funny.

You know, like my kid likes it.

But if we’re ever doing an all ages type of thing, which happens, it’s like these kids, like they all know all the words of the song, you know?

And he’s, Corby grew up, grew up in the country, grew up, you know, his father was a vet, big animal vet.

And his mom always had had horses and they grew up super rural.

He comes by all that really honestly, but you know, he said one time he’s like, started playing guitar because he fell in love with Black Sabbath when he was like 17.

He’s like, you fast forward all these years like that, I would be reciting cow breeds to strangers, like I never would have believed it.

I’ve seen it happen in Montana, in a bar in Montana where like, because he lists all these cow breeds in the song, right?

In the bridge, people are like, well, you forgot this one, you forgot that one, you forgot this one.

He’s like, whoa, whoa, whoa.

They don’t rhyme.

Exactly.

Yeah.

It’s perfect.

He’s got a great sense of melody.

It’s a catchy tune.

It’s a great song.

Great hook, man.

It’s a really funny.

It’s just such a fun song.

I think that everybody should know that everything is better with some cows around.

Yeah.

I mean, we play in the West, man.

That one hits hard.

It really moves people.

I’m sorry.

I’m so sorry.

Yeah.

It’s a dad show.

It’s okay.

Oh, God.

I’m so sorry.

Please keep that in.

I’m so sorry.

You can’t help themself.

I can’t.

No, it’s good.

It’s good.

Sean, where can our listeners find you?

Find me in all the usual spots.

The official website is SeanBurns.ca.

On Instagram and Facebook, it’s SeanBurnsMusic on the places where you listen and stream and steal and borrow music for a nominal monthly fee.

I’m all there too.

When I have the band, it’s called Lost Country.

Sometimes it’s Sean Burns and Lost Country.

Sometimes it’s just Sean Burns, but it’s all there.

What about your radio show?

The Boots and Saddle Show.

That’s available on Spotify and Apple podcasts.

Updated every Tuesday at 3 p.m.

Central and we broadcast in five or six different markets across Canada, the United States, but for most of you folks listening, I would say Spotify and Apple podcasts and search The Boots and Saddle Show.

You can follow and subscribe and you can leave a glowing review.

I appreciate that.

And we also have a monthly newsletter at substackbootsandsaddle.substack.com.

I try to sort of tell longer stories and more backstories and then try to find some cool video clips and pics.

And I make the show so often on the road, if you want to take a picture of where I recorded the show, it’s getting a little boring down here in the orange walls of the basement, but I’ll be back on the road soon.

So I do try to do that every month, too.

The newsletter is a pretty good spot for, you know, if I play a cover song, it’s like try to share a video of the original version or something like that, you know?

So that takes a little while to craft, but I like doing that, too.

Thank you for listening.

The best way to support us is to subscribe to the show on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or whatever podcast platform you use.

If you want to see new episodes and more content delivered straight to your email inbox, please subscribe to our newsletter, countrymusictads.substack.com.

You can find everything we do on our website, countrymusictads.com, and we’d love to hear what you think, so send us comments, suggestions, friendly banter on Instagram at countrymusictads, or via email countrymusictads at gmail.com.

Tune in next time when we discuss a growing trend in country music and on the faces of men everywhere, myself included.

We’re talking about the magic of the mustache.

You don’t want to miss it.

So until next time, whether you’re at the dance hall, the playground, the schoolyard or just folding some laundry, thanks for tuning in.

We’ll talk to you soon.

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