Anthony Burbidge Biography (Long Form)

The songs featured on Anthony Burbidge’s latest CD release, “Newborn,” convey an openess and honesty seldom found in the music of today’s popular charts. Burbidge’s heartfelt lyrics, infused with insight and inspiration, suggest a writer who has undergone a deep inner transformation. So it is that, in order to understand the wisdom within these songs, one must delve into the journey that shaped the artist behind them.

Born Anthony Tyler Burbidge in the small town of Kentville, Nova Scotia, on the East Coast of Canada, Burbidge’s mother, Marie, recounts how she and her husband, Robert, came to chose a name for their first born child. “I could picture the name Anthony Tyler Burbidge on the cover of a book and I felt as if he might be a writer one day.” While Anthony has yet to pen his first hardback, he has proven his mother’s intuition correct in that he has blossomed into an adept writer of songs.

While his penchant for wordsmithery may have seemed written in the stars for Burbidge, his musical abilities were all but non existent throughout the would be composer’s childhood. “No one was musical in our family - on either side – so we never expected Anthony would become a musician,” states Anthony’s father, Robert.

Fate would intervene, however, and at the age of eleven, young Anthony was enrolled in his school’s Beginner Band program as a euphonium player (a brass instrument smaller than but resembling a tuba). It was 1982 and the small town of Middleton, Nova Scotia, had recently welcomed a young and enthusiastic music teacher, Richard Bennett, a fresh University Music School graduate to man the helm of the school’s once award winning concert band program. Bennett was interested in returning the school’s band to the world class performance level it had enjoyed years early. In consideration of his motives, it is understandable why Bennett showed little intial interest in the young Burbidge, given the student’s self professed disdain for the art of music in general.

“Oh yes,” relates the songwriter upon reflection, “when I was a kid, I thought music was for girls and sissies and I put the least possible effort into it.”

So it was in this context that, in the Spring of 1983, Bennett, the youthful band director, would invite the prepubescent Burbidge and his mother into his office to deliver some grim news. Anthony had been enrolled in the Beginner Band program for a full year and the time had come for Bennett to select students to be placed in the school’s Junior High School Band program the following year.

At the outset of the decisive meeting, the young euphonium player had little interest in persuing his craft. His mother, however, understood that, in order to be placed in an “academic” home room class for his first year of junior high school, her son would need to be enrolled in the school’s band program. Otherwise, he would be destined to be lumped in with some of the town’s less desirable youths where she feared he might fall prey to the debauchery often born of peer pressure.

As tactfully as possible, Richard explained to the young student and his mother that not everyone was cut out to be a musician. As Burbidge recalls himself, “I think he said something along the lines of, ‘You see Mrs. Burbidge some people are born to be tall and agile and are well suited to be basketball players while others are short, stout and have two left feet. I think it;s the sae thing with music. Some people just aren’t cut out to be musicians.”

Of course, given the evidence before him, Bennett was justified in his assessment. Anthony had showed little interest in music and even less talent. The young music teacher had overlooked one crucial element of the youth’s constitution – his unabashed willfulness. Again, Burbidge reflects in his own words, “Oh when he told me I COULDN’T do music, suddenly I was overcome with a sense that I HAD to do music. There was no way this man was going to tell me I wasn’t worthy of the challenge. Now, of course, a moment before his comment I had no interest in persuing music at all. But once, he said I couldn’t, that was it.”

The composer’s mother reflects on why it was that her son was such a willful child stating, “I’m not sure eactly why Anthony was so obstinate at times. He did exhibit a strong personality at a very early age and I suspect that because he was an asthmatic child and was sick for much of his childhood, may have had a hand in the development of his character.”

Whatever the reason for the child’s attitude, the result was a turning point in both the meeting with the Band master and in Burbidge’s life course. Both Anthony and his mother began to urge Bennett to search for a possible opportunity for Anthony to contribute to the Junior High Band. Upon reflection, Bennett offered up a possible solution. As Anthony recalls, “He said that his tuba player was going to garduate in a year so he would need another to come up through the ranks. He offered to give me a tuba for the summer to try out and, if I liked it, he’d give me a chance in the Junior Band the follwoing school year. Well, I took thae tuba but I don’t think I played it more than once or twice all summer but in the Fall when I went back to school, everything changed.”