Ben Burgess on whiskey, songwriting, stardom and 'Tears the Size of Texas'

Ben Burgess stands at the white marble kitchen island in his sparsely appointed Nashville home, sipping a small glass of 12-year-old Yamazaki single malt whiskey.

The 37-year-old singer-songwriter hasn't been home in a month. His debut album, "Tears the Size of Texas," arrives Friday, and the Dallas native has been opening for fellow Texan Koe Wetzel on a run of nationwide tour dates in preparation.

A week before The Tennessean stopped by his home for a conversation and photo shoot, tadpoles were swimming in his backyard swimming pool, which is currently filling with fall foliage.

"I need a new pool guy, do you know one?"

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Burgess is asking questions of a world that, if you read liner notes, you'd believe he was making spin with the touch of his pen.

"I used to shoot guns in East Dallas, now I get shot by my swimming pool," he says. "Life moves fast, man."

From 2018-2021, he paired with fellow breakout artists and singer-songwriters ERNEST and HARDY to write songs like his 2020 BMI Song of the Year winner "Whiskey Glasses" for Morgan Wallen. Those songs have contributed to two albums – 2018's "If I Know Me" and 2021's "Dangerous: The Double Album" – that have achieved primarily via country radio and streaming platforms the equivalent of 5 million album sales and six Billboard Country Airplay chart No. 1 singles.

Burgess' life leading to his incredible star-making acclaim reads like a modern outlaw fable. However, look at the bags under his eyes and the scruff of his 10 o'clock shadow. Whatever he's saying suddenly rings stunningly accurate.

Burgess was born in East Dallas to a guitarist father and disc jockey mother. He describes being inspired by a multicultural existence that he places, location-wise, between the Lyndon B. Johnson Freeway and downtown Dallas' Booker T. Washington High School for the Performing and Visual Arts. His high school is a hotbed for famous alumni that influence his self-proclaimed "cowboy songs and murder ballads." They include R&B legend Erykah Badu, jazz icon Roy Hargrove and soulful folk stars Edie Brickell and Norah Jones.

One day into his first year at Booker T. Washington, he realized that his desire to break free from his parent's roots in music wasn't in the cards.

"I was sitting next to my friend Edwin Villarreal, and I, thinking I was going to be a visual arts guy, decided that Edwin and I would draw each other. So I drew something that looked like, well, not art. Edwin captured my essence. Right then and there, I decided that music was (a better alternative)."

In his 20s, Burgess played in Austin's famed Sixth Street bars and clubs that were haunted by everyone from South by Southwest has-beens, hopefuls, maybes, and never-weres to a run of iconic country-and-roots-driven superstars, including Janis Joplin and Willie Nelson. His notoriety in that music scene led him to Los Angeles and song placement in the Jonas Brothers' 2010 "Jonas L.A." Disney film soundtrack.

Los Angeles proved difficult for Burgess. The city's pop-aimed star-making vacuum removed the "strong, collaborative, and supportive" elements that he feels lend themselves to "generational music" that does more than preserve the industry's financial goals.

"Knowing how to create songs that everyone – high school jocks, kids, prom queens – everyone wants to sing," Burgess says, sighing and staring into his glass of whiskey. "That's taken me from Dallas, to Austin, to Los Angeles, to Nashville." He arrived in the latter in 2015, first signing a deal with Warner Chappell Publishing, and then Big Loud in 2021.

"I'm patient," he continues. "Sometimes, I realize that I've been picking up guitars and strumming songs for my entire life. So I get into the studio with some guy, and say he's picked up the instrument and started writing songs with it (five years ago). I take that and mix it in with my experiences, and some great things come from it."

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His experiences, which have led to songs that he's achieved success with for others, like "Whiskey Glasses" and Diplo's "Heartbreak," offer a sense of his diverse interests.

"I'm really a hook guy, man," he says, name-dropping artists like his current tour-mate Jelly Roll and the Americana Music Association's 2022 Emerging Act of the Year winner Sierra Ferrell. "I've got music [that I wanted to record with] Mo3 that I would love people to hear. I'm really open to working with anyone."

Mo3? He's a legendary Dallas rapper who was slain in 2021.

Burgess is unlike most any country star emerging in the genre.

"Tears the Size of Texas" comes after what the artist describes as a "37 year dress rehearsal for the perfect job." Songs like the title single and its follow-up "Heartbreak" are accompanied by dusty, wind-swept videos that feature the artist being shot dead in the case of the former. It turns the song from a radio-ready cowboy ballad into an homage to "Kill Bill" takes on grindhouse cinema and spaghetti Westerns.

"Those 'Tears the Size of Texas' are real tears. That album is full of real stories," Burgess says, noting that they're more inspired by love gone sour than whiskey sours.

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Fifteen years of "life's yin and yang" and influences "from Dallas to the world" influenced an album and career that Burgess says – after a long pause and with a tremble in his voice – is for "me, you, them, us, and everybody."

The statement resonates in a way that makes one of the most earnest elevator pitches for pushing play on an album from an artist streamed millions of times feel honest in a manner most bizarre.

"Cheers," he says, punctuating his final statement with the offer of a fresh pour of Yamazaki.