On the road where the light splits the gatherin’ dark
Like the sound of Paradise falls upon the damned of heart

I have an extremely long and shameless history of discovering songs that mess with my head and heart, then listening to them on repeat eighty or so times before ever playing a new track. In the past year, that’s included songs by guys like Ryan Adams and the Turnpike Troubadours, historically folks like Steve Earle, Jeff Buckley and the Gaslight Anthem, and my iTunes most played list could probably get me institutionalized.

Somewhere around 2003 however, at the age of 19, I heard a song by a painfully honest writer named Doug Burr. It must have come in one of those “up and coming” CD inserts Guitar World and other magazines used to slide in, though that’s no certainty. Either way, it was the first obsessive-repeat song I’d discovered after learning how to play, write and sing songs myself.

Pitifully tone deaf, barely able to tune a guitar, I found this Doug Burr guy’s website and emailed him, describing how his song had worked me over, and begging for the chords. They’re simple chords; any idiot could figure them out, but I didn’t realize that at the time. I was just freaked out by my desperation to learn a song for reasons other than the bribery of female attention in my college bedroom.

So you can imagine how miraculous it was when, a day later, I get a reply from Mr. Burr, giving me the paltry handful of chords that, experience has since taught me, were all I and any other lyrical songwriters have ever needed to know.

I’ve been playing and listening to this song for 12 years now, and music still hasn’t gotten any better.

I mention this, not because I want to thank him for being too cool, but because Doug Burr just released a new album called Pale White Dove, and it’s absolutely awesome.

…Dark As The Night, track no. 3 from The Sickle & The Sheaves, 2002, by Doug Burr.

…White Night – Black Light, track numero uno from Pale White Dove, 2015.