Songwriting can be achieved by almost anyone. All you need is a piece of paper, pen or pencil, and some time thinking about an old story, life experiences, and/or a form of message delivery and expression to an audience via sight and sound, but distributed to the listener through feeling. Great songwriting, and the ability to spend 300 or more days on the road traveling from city to city, cannot be achieved by almost anyone. The great ones include Kris Kristofferson, John Prine, Steve Goodman and currently one of the best songwriters on the road, Josh Morningstar.

Country music songs are traditionally about cheating and broken love affairs, and are often placed in the context of the mythic honky-tonk lifestyle of drinking, dancing, hell-raising, loose morality, and loneliness. A great country song can also be a good spoken word story like “Giddyup Go,” co-written by Tommy Hill and Red Sovine. A few of the most underrated and maybe underappreciated songwriters in the business include Dallas Moore, TJ Hernandez, Tim Allen, Lyman Ellerman and Billy Don Burns. The last two recently made a country song together.

I first wrote about Lyman Ellerman back in October of 2018 for the Country Music Armadillo. He had just released his album, “I Wish I Was A Train,” and it was my first attempt at writing about music. That record and that article mean a great deal to me and I will link it at the end for further reading, but more importantly, go listen to that album. Ellerman provided me with a better understanding that great songwriters and songwriting is alive and well. You might not find it on the corporate channels at the moment, but you will in the future. So, here we are again in, 2020, and Lyman Ellerman has written another fantastic song about another great songwriting troubadour, Billy Don Burns.

Ellerman and Burns crossed paths a few years ago after Billy played a gig in Nashville. Lyman told me that Billy came and stayed the night with him at his studio. “Billy and I met via the efforts of our dear mutual friend Jeb Brown. Billy came and spent the night out in my studio one evening after a performance in Nashville. We stayed up into the wee hours of the morning playing songs and getting to know one another. We reached a common ground and discovered each other on a level that not everyone gets to experience,” said Ellerman.

Although the lyrics in “World of Song” do not directly mention Billy Don Burns, Ellerman has stated that the tune is about Billy. “This song just came about one sleepless night when I woke up pondering the long path I’d travelled for so long and then thinking about how many more miles and memories Billy had trekked.” Billy said that Ellerman “…sent me a copy and asked me if I would record it with him. I think I was in Iowa headed for Wisconsin, maybe it was Oklahoma, I get confused out here anymore. It ripped my heart out of my chest. None of my songs ever hurt me more than this one did. I’m talking “Stranger,” “Dark Side of the Spoon,” “Memories Cost A Lot.” None of them hit me more than this one.” You can feel that when Billy comes into the song with spoken word, telling his story. Ellerman went on to say, “I wrote the song. Billy and I have both lived it. Without the living, there is no real song.”

Billy Don Burns | Photo By Sofia Chesney

Lyman Ellerman’s new single, “World of Song,” is available now on all media platforms. The tune was written by Ellerman, and co-produced with Grammy award winner Chuck Turner. “World of Song” was recorded at Cash Cabin Studio with Dennis Crouch on upright bass, Smith Curry on the pedal steel, Rick Lonow on the drums, Justin Moses on the fiddle and mandolin, Ryan Wariner on the acoustic six-string guitar, Lyman Ellerman and Billy Don Burns on vocals. The song is perfectly described by Larry Brake of Elephant Rock Music & Management as, “A gut-wrenching lament about the life of a songwriter, who does what he does, in spite of the toll it takes.”