Bureau of Reclamations

A ballad of Minneapolis music writer and news journalist Burl Gilyard

May 22, 2025

Burl Gilyard loved music.

Burl loved country and he loved soul. He hipped me to the great roots, soul and R&B songwriter Dan Penn (“Do Right Woman,” “Nobody’s Fool,” “I’m Your Puppet”), to “LA Freeway” troubadour Guy Clark, to the deepest deep cuts of countrypolitan soul pianist Charlie Rich, who really wanted to play jazz.

Burl loved hip-hop too, somewhat surprisingly. A million years ago he had the entire Minnesota Daily newsroom lit up with LL Cool J’s “Milky Cereal,” from Mama Said Knock You Out.

I remember the interoffice computer memo system just flashing the words in stark DOS.

“Milky”

“Cereal”

“Milky!”

“Cereal!”

Over and over, from Burl’s workstation to the rest of the newsroom.

I last heard from Burl aloud when he called me to tell me Kris Kristofferson had died. This was apropos because Burl was the one who hipped me to Kris in the first place some 35 or so years ago.

This was not a prime time to be hip to Kristofferson.

Kris was touring venues like the bar in a Riverplace strip mall in Minneapolis where we also saw a solo act version of Flock of Seagulls that was just a sad, floppy-haired Mike Score and his keyboard.

Later, when I would produce a Kristofferson tribute album, album notes by Gilyard, the Midheaven music distributor’s catalog entry on the release said, simply, “So it’s come to this.”

I don’t have a lot of good photos of Burl. I looked through my wedding pics, hoping he’d be in there. There’s still 10 rolls of undeveloped film from 25 years ago.

What was Burl like?

He was funny. Stolid. Firm in his beliefs. Insistent on being treated no differently than anyone else, despite his obvious physical infirmity.

Boisterous sometimes. I remember an afternoon at the Green Mill in Minneapolis with Burl and Dave Schimke, another Mpls writer and former editor in chief of the Utne Reader, and our friend, writer and teacher Chris Slater. Slater was on a tangent talking about a historical book he was reading. Something set off Burl who insisted on announcing, throughout the rest of the afternoon, “BUREAU OF RECLAMATIONS!”

The late David Carr, Gilyard’s former boss at the Reader, and author of a sobriety memoir, The Night of the Gun, once said of Gilyard, “a laconic and funny writer.”

Laconic in personality, genuinely funny in conversation, clear-headed in his writing.

I love the way Burl sums up Kristofferson in this excerpt from his liner notes: “Kristofferson’s themes were not new—carnal lust, the noble hangover, unraveling relationships, starving artists, disillusioned dreamers, persecuted rebels, lovable screwups. ‘The devil,’ in various guises, was a frequent character. And at times, his post-Dylan poetic verbosity got the better of him. Yet Kristofferson had the gift that any great artist needs: He found new ways to write about old problems.”

And then, to curb the haters, “After hearing his debut album, Robert Christgau dismissed him as ‘the worst singer I’ve ever heard.’ In 1972, a Rolling Stone reviewer trashed his ‘torpid, beer-sodden monotone.’ But as a kid, listening to my folks’ Kristofferson albums, | thought Kristofferson had a wonderfully evocative, lived-in voice.”

Burl taught me my first real, hardcore writing lessons. Focus. Cutting chaff. Relentless attention to detail.

He would probably have a lot of edits.

Burl Gilyard was sober.

That sobriety could tend to define him, if you lived your conversational life with him thru the lens of drinking vs not drinking.

Gilyard famously wrote a cover story about his battle with depression, and his experiences with Prozac, back when such things were not discussed in polite company.

It was a rare soul-baring moment for Burl, at least to my ears.

I wrote him a note — an actual letter, this was just barely email territory, and he and I had gotten into the habit of sending each other care packages of records we dug or things we found that the other might like.

Gilyard did this with several friends, sending Chris in DC unsigned packages of goodies, sharing an email thread of discoveries with fellow Twin Cities journalistic literati as Jim Walsh and Jim Meyer.

But so I wrote him a note, the first outreach I’d made about my undiagnosed, unadmitted, undercover depression and anxiety.

He responded immediately with a phone call and encouragement to try anything.

I wouldn’t, for years.

But when I got stone cold sober for 7 months, Burl was a big supporter.

He was not a supporter when I revealed to him that I was trying moderation, that I didn’t feel like AA was the right trick for me.

He didn’t like that at all. He was firm in his convictions.

Burl couldn’t get around well — he used a walker or a wheel chair, earlier a cane.

He didn’t let that get in the way, and refused help at occasional lunches, prideful and determined to be like everyone else.

When we threw a memorial for Doug Jones in Minneapolis, Burl couldn’t make it because the joint wasn’t handicap accessible. I tried to work with him on it but he was steadfast. Probably because I didn’t know his condition had worsened; I don’t want to presume.

He was private and determined to do things himself.

His wife Nicole had let me know he was in the hospital. Mutual friends told me he was admitted to hospice last week. On May 15, Dave Schimke texted me to tell me Burl had passed.

Burl in the TC Reader newsroom. Photographer unknown, from a social media post by Claude Peck. www.claudepeck.com

I don’t know as much about Burl’s life as I would have liked to, mostly because his outreach was often one sided, I was too busy, too mired in my own life’s muck.

I see that now.

I probably wasn’t there enough for my late friend, LA film programmer and my best man, Doug Jones either.

Not that I know how that would have manifested.

I did not have the chance because I did not make the time. Or have the time. Take your pick.

Let’s not paint a victim’s picture of me here.

Burl had adrenomyeloneuropathy and Addison’s Disease.

Like my friend, writer Mike McGuirk who fought a degenerative neuromuscular condition that eventually beat him, his body was rebelling against itself.

He didn’t have a choice

But I also did not and do not know if Doug Jones had a choice in suicide.

The loss of his wife in a car accident while he was driving. The profound grief and guilt. Maybe therapy would have helped. Maybe I could have been a better friend. I don’t know.

Could I have saved my friend, Posies and Oranger and Ian Moore bassist Matt Harris, who fell while drunk and caused traumatic damage to his brain, by trying to convince him to get into rehab?

Or did all of these people follow their path where fate and health and alcohol and grief and shame led them

Why am I still the one here?

I say this to not write the same “may their memory be a blessing,” “thoughts and prayers” platitudes.

I want to understand why a lot of the people who knew me best are all dead.

I probably don’t really want to know. Fate? Luck of the draw? God’s grand joke?

Is this just survivor’s guilt?

As we get older it’s going to happen.

I feel well informed that the law of averages states that some percentage of my friends will die before I do.

Possibly early.

I ran with some tough crowds

But not really. More like poseur nightclub toughs.

When the world got too crazy you reeled it in and got a cozy dot com job.

Or married rich.

Or had kids and started working on that path entirely unknown to me.

I wasn’t prepared for the roll call of death to hammer quite so close to home.

Producer Ed Ackerson, taken by pancreatic cancer, Matt, Doug, now Burl.

Mavens the bunch of them. Resources of deep dark knowledge. Encyclopedic masters of their domains - movies, psychedelic rock, country, weird shit, whatever floated their boat, and mine.

Cancer, suicide, drink, and now adrenomyeloneuropathy and Addison’s Disease

A real four horsemen of causes of death.

Warning signs? No more for me, please, I’m full.