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If
that ain’t country: Brand New Opry’s Jeff
Burger. Photo: Joe Putrock
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Stand
By Your Man
With his own band, Jackinany, his radio show on WRPI and
his Brand New Opry series, area music advocate Jeff Burger
spreads his alt-country message
By
Erik Hage
‘Well,
I woke up Sunday morning with no way to hold my head that
didn’t hurt/And the beer I had for breakfast wasn’t bad, so
I had one more for dessert . . ./On a Sunday morning sidewalk,
I’m wishing, Lord, that I was stoned./’Cause there’s something
in a Sunday that makes a body feel alone.” So goes “Sunday
Morning Coming Down,” Kris Kristofferson’s ode to the proverbial
soul-wrecked, emotionally hollow morning after, sung most
memorably by Johnny Cash. And there’s no doubt that Sunday
can have a certain ache about it, whether you’re simply waiting
it out for Monday or piecing back together a psyche plundered
by Saturday night.
Local radio host Jeff Burger has adopted the “Sunday Morning
Coming Down” moniker for his weekly country-music show, which
he’s been hosting for almost three years on WRPI in the ungodly
8-10 AM slot. “The first two weeks it was called ‘Garth-less
Country,’ ” he admits a little regretfully.
Sunday has a history of providing a nice canvas for writers
trying to evoke a certain quiet desperation—whether it be
mope-song-king Morrissey’s “Every Day Is Like Sunday” or WASP
laureate John Cheever’s story “The Swimmer.” (“It was one
of those midsummer Sundays when everyone sits around saying,
‘I drank too much last night.’ ”) And when defining
the mix of country music he plays—i.e., traditional, Americana,
underground and alt-country—Burger gets a bit writerly himself.
“There’s no attempt at poetry,” he says of the stuff that
moves him the most. “It’s just poetic on its own. Hank Williams
is like, ‘Here’s life.’ ”
Burger talks about the music with the enthusiasm of a wine
connoisseur addressing a favorite vintage, but don’t get him
going on mainstream country. “It might as well be Celine Dion
or Justin Timberlake; it’s just pop in a different mask,”
he says. “I mean, you see people like Shania Twain, and the
drummer has ski goggles on—I mean, what the hell is this?!”
Burger is working the local scene on other fronts besides
radio: He has also taken it upon himself to bring country
music to the Capital Region through the Brand New Opry concert
series at Valentine’s and through a venture called Sunday
Morning Coming Down Presents, which has brought to town acts
like the Pernice Brothers and Songs: Ohia. (Neither pursuit
is affiliated with WRPI, Burger says.) “My production company
is a Commodore 64 and a telephone,” he jokes. “It’s been doing
pretty well. I think that, since we started doing this, the
crowds for this kind of music have gotten bigger.”
Things must be going well: Since the Opry debuted in February,
Burger and Valentine’s owner Howard Glassman have changed
it from a bimonthly to monthly event that usually showcases
both out-of-town Americana acts and local talent. As for the
crowd, Burger says, “The mixture is the radio show [listeners],
devoted local ‘alt-country’ people and then the freak show
where 120 people show up and you’re like, wow. You
never know in this town.”
On any given night, the Opry includes a bunch of 30- to 40-year-old
folks, a crowd you don’t typically see at a rock club. “I
think people are intimidated by places like Valentine’s because
it’s, like, a hipster crowd. But for these shows it really
isn’t. Pretty much every [guy] looks like me: beginning to
get a pot belly—well, I should say ‘beer belly’—and starting
to lose their hair.”
He says the Opry is about bringing together a community of
people drawn by both the lure of Americana music and a scene
free of pretense. “I always meet the coolest people there.
Everybody is just in a good state of mind . . . the crowd
is as authentic as the music.”
As a kid growing up in the Buffalo area, Burger first fell
in love with “authentic” country through his grandfather.
“He was an incessant yodeler,” Burger remembers. “He worked
in the steel plant in Buffalo; he was, like, the ‘man of steel,’
and I looked up to him. . . . The music is what kept him going.
Well, that and Genesee!”
Burger further developed that love while living in Seattle
during the ’90s. He remembers a huge, diverse Americana scene
that included a mix of everyone from “the Hank Williams greaser
crowd” to the hipsters to the old timers. This provided inspiration
for the Opry. “I saw the possibility of a [diverse] crowd
happening. So when I moved back to Troy, I hooked up with
Howard and just said, ‘We’ve got to do this.’ “
Another pursuit is Burger’s own fun bar band, Jackinany, who
have played many an Opry. The group will host a “Christmas
Extravaganza” tomorrow (Friday) at the Garden Grill.
As for the radio show, despite his long hours as a public-school
teacher, you can count on Burger to be on the dial every Sunday
morning. “Even when my band plays,” he notes. “We’re basically
up very late. . . . I use that energy in the radio show.”
(You might occasionally detect a surplus of gravel in Burger’s
radio voice, which dips a few octaves on certain Sunday mornings.)
Burger’s on-air presence is unassuming and charmingly unpolished;
he comes off like an amiable buddy turning you on to new tunes
in his den. And that unobtrusively mild demeanor is all part
of the “coming down” experience. Another part is trying to
find the right assemblage of tunes to provide emotional salve
for another damn Sunday. “I wake up at, say, 7, and I go to
my collection and I just sort of feel the show out,” Burger
says. “I have two young children, so getting up for the show
is . . . well, I get away for two hours and I get to listen
to music. It’s sort of my Zen period.”
The next Brand New Opry is Dec. 27 at Valentine’s.
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