Perpetual Vacation
Brent Burns was born in Seminole, Oklahoma, and moved to Phoenix, Arizona in 1958. While attending high school and Community college sports were important, but music was in his blood. Brent soon strapped on an electric guitar and was fronting a rock-n-roll band. Life soon changed when he volunteered for service in Vietnam. Several months after entering combat, Brent was wounded and received the Purple Heart. After a three year recuperation in and out of military hospitals, he returned to his love of music and hit the road performing all over the United States. Later on he felt compelled to take a year off from music and hit the college lecture circuit. Offering honest, insightful, and a humorous look at life as a combat soldier, Brent was able to help others troubled with the effect of the war on their day to day lives. In 1979 Brent wrote a song entitled "Cheaper Crude or No More Food" and recorded the song with a Phoenix disc jockey named Bobby Butler. Paul Harvey, never having played a record on his show, played the song three times on his show. "Cheaper Crude" sold 200.000 copies the first day it was released. Appearances on all three major networks followed as well as articles in the New York Times, Chicago Tribune, Los Angeles Times, and Billboard Magazine. The last fifteen years have found Brent living on the gulf coast and performing from 250 to 300 shows a year. One thing he hadn't done much of was writing. A "ten year writers block" as he likes to call it. Well fortunately for all of us this block has passed. Brent completed a couple of dozen tunes in 1998, nine of which found their way onto his CD, "Livin' the Life (Jimmy Buffett Only Wrote About). His latest CD "Perpetual Vacation" was released May 11, 2001.