“…But the guitarist always writes the songs…” That’s what they said in Gary’s first band. So, following in the footsteps of his heroes John Lennon and Roger McGuinn, a writer was born. After years of hard work and hard writing, he got his first break in 1982 with Juice Newton’s “Love’s Been a Little Bit Hard on Me.” With a hit under his belt he started writing in earnest, getting cuts from such talents as the Oak Ridge Boys and Conway Twitty. After a brief time on a solo career and album, Gary took over for Vince Gill as the lead-singer for the band Pure Prairie League. In the late 80’s, feeling that he’d done all he can from Connecticut, Gary decided to move to Nashville, and a better move is hard to make. It didn’t take long for Gary to become one of Country Music’s most sought-after writers, having hits with Randy Travis, LeeAnn Rimes, Patty Loveless, George Jones, and many more. Burr has been awarded ‘Songwriter of the Year’ on three separate occasions by three different organizations: Billboard, Nashville Songwriter’s Association International, and ASCAP. He has also received over twenty of ASCAP’s recognition awards for radio play activity, and CDs featuring his songs have sold more than 50 million units world-wide. With his successes in Country Music, Gary’s ventures in Pop have been equally stellar. He has written and performed with Ringo Starr, appearing on VH1’s ‘Storytellers’ series and many talk shows. He had a world-wide hit with Ricky Martin’s duet with Christina Aguilera “Nobody Wants to be Lonely,” granting him his first #1 on the Latin charts. Gary garnered a #1 on the pop charts with his collaboration on the platinum selling single “Before Your Love” by American Idol winner Kelly Clarkson, and a #1 selling single with American Idol runner-up Clay Aiken’s song “This Is The Night.” Gary collaborated on Ringo Starr’s album Ringorama, released on Koch Records in 2003, and continues in the pop world with his recent participation at a Desmond Child hosted “diva’s camp” targeting many of today’s superstar female artists and by also attending a Sir Cliff Richards hosted writers camp for his upcoming album. Gary continues to write great music with great people: Desmond Child, Ringo Starr, Carole King, Mary Chapin Carpenter, John Levanthal, Richard Marx, Michael Bolton, and Ed Robertson of Barenaked Ladies just to name a few. From producing to singing, Gary does it all, and is progressively getting to do it all more often, producing an album for Disney in 1995, and part of Olivia Newton John’s album “Back With A Heart” in 1997. He has vocals as well as multi-instrumental performance credits on dozens of albums. Gary has no intention of slowing down in the future, and plans to get his name on a lot more albums, and maybe not just writer’s credits. <a href="https://www.last.fm/music/Gary+Burr">Read more on Last.fm</a>. User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons By-SA License; additional terms may apply.