Jason Tyler Burton is a wanderer, a soul searching adventurer who writes songs about the journey. Originally from Kentucky, he is now a nomad in the American West where he works as a seasonal park ranger. His songs and stories are heart felt, reflecting a search for meaning and home, with a voice and lyrics that invite you to lean in a little, and really listen. From living rooms to music festivals, his live show engages audiences with excellent songwriting and stories and a compelling voice. His sophomore release, Headwaters was released in 2014 to great reviews and airplay, including syndicated shows such as Out of the Woods and NPR’s Fresh Folk.

In the woods, just across the Kentucky River from Daniel Boone’s fort, a boy leaves his log cabin home and follows the path of a creek running through his family’s land. Jason Tyler Burton goes searching for the spring that is the source of Calloway Creek. That search for the source of things has driven him throughout his life, now culminating in the release of the aptly-named HEADWATERS, Burton’s second original full-length album. In 2007, he and his wife ventured west from Kentucky to the Utah wilderness, leaving behind the security of a career in higher education, with a desire “to take some risks and live a better story,” living out of their van and working with the National Park Service and other seasonal jobs. The idea for the album came to him while searching for the source of the Green River in the mountains of Wyoming, recalling his childhood pastime. The songs on Headwaters were born out of the stories he encountered while living this nomadic life in the heart of the American West, stories about the search for meaning and belonging.

From a young age Burton learned the fiddle, his love of music growing as he did. Raised in a religious family, music was mostly limited to hymns and old folk songs, but he’d occasionally sneak off to listen to the radio. Burton says he knew, from growing up singing in church, that music was powerful, but it was upon hearing Paul Simon’s Graceland as a teenager that he realized that songs could really inspire people with rhythm, poeticism, and story. It had all the “raw emotion and power of those hymns,” says Burton. “It was the first time I truly realized that music on the radio could be so much more than a pop song.” A song can resonate with something much deeper than the listener’s ear. It can tell a bigger story. On Headwaters, this sense of resonance runs deep. The songs ring “true” in the way a carpenter fits one angle to another with precision and skilled detail. Burton’s guitar, mandolin, and harmonica lay a sonic foundation of true Americana, and his lyrics put a finger on the pulse of contemporary issues. He also incorporates elements like David Tate’s electric guitar, washy and open, swelling like storm clouds on the horizon. Ryan Tilby’s banjo and dobro makes it clear these songs flow from the heart of a true Kentuckian. Lush arrangements of cello and violin from Jessika Soli Bartlettand Lynsey Shelar and vocals from Katy Taylor fuse these sounds with the lyrical rhythm and poetry of personal stories with such depth and honesty that you could play them in almost any genre or age and they would still feel at home. Read more on Last.fm. User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons By-SA License; additional terms may apply.