Features
Big Break For Burgess
Burgess and his wife, casino talent buyer Jackie Ferraro, are cleaning out their desks and heading for their new home in the Kootenai National Forest of rural Montana, where he’ll record guitar in his 32-track studio, fish, chase bears and tinker in his woodshop.
“Life’s too short to not enjoy the fruits of my labors,” the old Koot told Pollstar.
Ferraro, who will now have to put up with him 24/7 at their remote Northwest outpost, will maintain her sanity by continuing to buy talent on behalf of some of her clients.
That’s not to say Burgess won’t return to the business if the “right opportunity arises” – including another gig playing guitar during the CIC.
An alumnus of the William Morris Agency mailroom in New York City, Burgess has been an agent for 32 years, the last 20 of which he has spent at APA.
Burgess was introduced to the Montana wilderness by fellow APA agent Troy Blakely, who has owned a vacation home there for several years. It was during a boys’ weekend in Montana last year with Blakely that Burgess saw a for-sale sign on the old Ted Kaczynski place, which would soon become the Bar Burgess Ranch.
The area is so remote that the property is not even connected to the electrical grid. That’s not to say that Nat will have to toss his guitar amps. The previous owners upgraded the property and put in an elaborate, totally self-sufficient power-generating system to go along with the bomb shelter.
Burgess vowed that once Blakely makes a permanent move to his Montana spread, the two of them will form the front line militia of our nation’s defense against an invasion from Canada