WINNER 2015 Best Singer/Songwriter Westword Music Awards
Finalist 2014 Songwriter Serenade Competition
WINNER SW Region 2011 Mountain NewSong Competition
WINNER 2011 Kerrville NewFolk Competition
WINNER 2010 Rocky Mountain Folk Festival
Finalist 2011 Great American Song Contest
A few years back, Megan Burtt hit on something that fundamentally changed her approach to songwriting. It wasn’t so much a new method as giving herself permission to get even closer to the truth. In short, she allowed herself to stop dancing around what she really wanted to say.
“I discovered a side of myself that I liked in terms of songwriting,” says the Colorado-based performer, who’s been named a winner at the Kerrville NewFolk Competition and the Rocky Mountain Folks Festival. “Like, ‘Whoa, this is different.’ It’s become a sensibility that I know how to rest in. It’s almost like an instrument in and of itself, like I’m learning how to play my honesty.”
That change is evident on Burtt’s new album Witness, her first solo release since 2015’s The Bargain. The 12-song project had been underway for years, but was delayed by false starts and illness. Burtt also took a hiatus to form the all-redhead roots group Gingerbomb before getting back to her main project. It’s been a long time coming, but it is worth the wait. With Burtt serving as her own producer for the first time, the album showcases a singer-songwriter who has a deep understanding of how to mix serious pop instincts and groove with honest songwriting.
The song that unlocked this new era for Burtt was “Drugstore Brand,” which opens Witness. Written while she was still residing in Brooklyn, it features Burtt taking stock of her aspirations and wondering why putting them aside or lowering the bar even slightly feels so scary. “I gotta say, I thought it would be different by now,” she sings, enveloped by a swirl of electric guitars and loose-armed drumming.
“We make these goals for ourselves and measure our worth on whether we’ve made it to the goal line,” Burtt explains. “It’s about ladder climbing. If I intentionally get off the ladder or purposefully stay on any particular rung, can I still call my life worth something? It’s an exploration into what is success?’ It’s probably a function of me getting older and my expectations evolving that this is shifting—you sort of learn to become okay with where you’re at.”
There’s a feeling of movement in the songs on Witness, of rhythms that uplift and convey a sense of progress. “Slow Motion” comes off slyly funky with its single-note guitar riff and restrained drumming, with vocal melodies that turn in unexpected ways. “Electricity” is all slow-building anticipation from a warmly spacious arrangement that finally gives way to a shuffling breakbeat in its final vamp—mirroring the embrace of desire she’s describing in the song. Burtt sees this rhythmic approach as drawing on a family tradition.
“My grandfather was a big band drummer in the Forties and Fifties in Kansas City’s jazz scene,” Burtt says. “It’s quiet, understated groove in my case, but it’s a very important part of my enjoyment in songwriting. That probably came from genetics.”
Even when Burtt explores more difficult subject matter in her lyrics, these moments are almost always buoyed by groove on the bottom end and an array of melodic hooks—a little spoonful of sugar to help the medicine go down, if you like. For example, “Family” looks at a fractured relationship with pointed honesty—“I didn’t pick you, you didn’t pick me,” she sings at one point—but the funky drumming and slippery bass line in the chorus give it more a sense of hard-earned resignation than outright acrimony. Likewise, “I See You” has a lyric about reminders of a painful relationship, but cleverly chops up its rhythm with syncopation and then drops an earworm chorus hook on top. “Everyone’s got a metronome inside their bodies,” Burtt says. “It’s primal. It’s doing a service to people’s humanity to provide rhythm, because everyone has a heartbeat and knows it instinctively.”
Several songs on Witness take stock of a relationship that ran its course. In “Unfinished Business,” which inspired the album’s title, Burtt asks for closure that’s been denied. The surprisingly breezy “Other Woman” and gentle “Good for You” mine the complexities of dating someone with kids, and then suddenly no longer being able to see them when the relationship is over. “Good for You” offers a message of support from afar.
“We all remember people in our youth who were older than us and had an influence,” Burtt says. “I just hoped that their memory of it was positive. It’s like, I’m still thinking of you, even though we’re not in each other’s lives.”
"Family" also figures into one of the most searingly personal songs on Witness. “Little Girls,” which touches on Burtt’s relationship with her mother, looks at generational trauma. “We just pass down our bullshit from generation to generation until someone decides to look at it,” Burtt says. “That song is almost embarrassing for me. It’s like saying ‘I have issues,’ and that’s not fun to admit. But it’s also a way to say there’s a problem and it’s bigger than just me.” Rather than lean into bitterness, Burtt opts for empathy.
Close listening to Witness will reveal an abundance of hope—not in some unrealistic, borderline-toxic way, but in the sense of being curious to see how things play out and even being willing to cheer for a good outcome. “Dare You” entreats a would-be suitor to keep wearing away at her defenses, and “The First Time” describes letting someone go gently in sincere hopes that they’ll both find their way to the right person. Even the album’s closing song, the piano ballad “Alone,” finds quiet acceptance in the idea that, ultimately, we are all alone inside ourselves.
“To me, these songs are real because hidden within them is the belief that there’s a silver lining,” Burtt says. “I’m not ignorant to the shitstorm you have to endure to get there. I am a little jaded, but I am really hopeful too. I enjoy the pursuit of it all.”
It took a longer time than she had planned, but completing Witness kicked off a prolific period for Burtt. There are more new songs and album projects already in the works. When she decided to stop treading lightly and live in her truth, Burtt’s artistic voice was liberated.
“Witness feels like I’m becoming a witness to my life in a way that I never have before,” she says. “I’m willing to see things for what they are. It’s about looking at things dead on, and telling the truth about what you see.”