“You might say ‘Second Best’ was a song 30 years in the making,” says Aaron Burdett of his new single for Organic Records — his first release since 2022’s “Denver Plane,” which dropped shortly after he joined the award-winning Steep Canyon Rangers. Listeners with good memories will recall that the Rangers were name-checked in that humorous song, recorded just months before Burdett was offered the gig. Following this life-imitates-art moment, he set his solo work on the back burner and devoted the next two years to finding his place in the high-powered sextet.
Still, the singer/songwriter/guitarist had no intention of entirely subsuming his distinctive creative voice within the Rangers’ unique sound. When the opportunity came in early 2024 to participate in Mountain Home Music Company’s Bluegrass Sings Paxton, a multi-artist tribute to the Lifetime GRAMMY-winning songwriter Tom Paxton, Burdett seized it, offering a compelling take on “The Same River Twice.” Just a few months later, he returned to the studio with a fresh batch of songs. Producer and bassist Jon Weisberger assembled a group of backing musicians that included Mountain Home’s award-winning Kristin Scott Benson on banjo, Carley Arrowood on fiddle, ace mandolinist Tristan Scroggins (Missy Raines & Alleghany), and harmony vocalists Wendy Hickman and Travis Book (Infamous Stringdusters). Together, the team quickly crafted a collection of well-crafted originals.
“Second Best,” the first fruits of that effort, showcases Burdett’s way with words from its opening line. “I took the fifth,” he begins, with a long pause before delivering the rest: “she took the furniture.” From there, the story unfolds in a characteristically literate yet down-to-earth style, as its narrator wryly contemplates the breakup of a long marriage and his uncertain future. After a bridge that fills in the relationship’s backstory and recontextualizes the song’s irresistibly catchy chorus, Benson and Scroggins dive into energetically rhythmic solos before the singer returns to take the song to its gloomy yet resigned conclusion:
She’s busted out, gonna get what she wanted all along
You can get what’s second best,
You can get what’s second best,
You can get what’s second best
But it’s hard to get enough
“I've had this line from an old David Wilcox song rattling around in my head since the ‘90s,” recalls Burdett. “It always struck me as a phrase that could be interpreted in many different ways. So I eventually started playing with that idea and bouncing it off various scenes and situations. About a year ago, I landed on the one (or two) that ended up in the recording, along with the original Wilcox line that inspired the chorus. Some songs arrive quickly, and some arrive much more slowly!”
Listen to "Second Best" HERE.
About Aaron Burdett
Aaron Burdett’s lyrics are soul-touching, intelligent, witty, and poetic, while his musical style is a seamless blend of Americana, country, blues, bluegrass, and folk.
Named one of the top 10 most important musicians of western North Carolina by WNC Magazine, alongside such greats as Doc Watson, Steep Canyon Rangers, and The Avett Brothers, Burdett has earned critical acclaim as a songwriter. He recently won the Chris Austin Songwriting contest at MerleFest for his song Rockefeller in the bluegrass category. His latest album, Dream Rich, Dirt Poor (2021), debuted at #8 on the Billboard bluegrass charts and has produced four top 10 radio songs.
In 2018, Burdett won the grand prize in the folk category of the USA Songwriting Contest with A Couple Broken Windows and previously won Our State Magazine’s Carolina Songs Competition in 2012 with Going Home to Carolina. His song Magpie took third place in the bluegrass category of the Chris Austin Songwriting Contest at Merlefest in 2013. Over the years, Burdett has been a finalist in numerous other songwriting contests, including The Mountain Stage Songwriting Contest, The NC Songwriter’s Cooperative Songwriting Contest, and the Hank Williams Songwriting Contest.
As a child, Aaron discovered John Hiatt, Bob Dylan, Cat Stevens, James Taylor, The Rolling Stones, Grateful Dead, The Beatles, The Band, and Rickie Lee Jones on vinyl records in his parents' living room in North Carolina. A budding guitarist and songwriter, he was drawn to communicators of the era like David Wilcox, Tracy Chapman, and John Gorka. In his late teens, he discovered John Prine on a cassette dug out of a workshop drawer filled with rusty nails on a Wyoming ranch. He rediscovered the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band on that same trip in a second-hand store in Riverton, Wyoming.
In his 20s, he was introduced to Doc Watson, who he saw perform in a farmhouse near Boone, North Carolina. That experience led him to Norman Blake, Tony Rice, David Grier, Tim O'Brien, Darrell Scott, and Gillian Welch.
Mix those influences, add seven full-length albums, thousands of live performances, and time and pressure, and you have Aaron Burdett, the artist you hear today. Drawing heavily on Appalachian folk traditions as well as national songwriting influences, Aaron’s music gives voice to the rural Blue Ridge Mountains while resonating with working men and women across the country.
