HILLBILLY HEAVEN

BILLY BOB THORNTON ON HIS BURGEONING MUSIC CAREER

Say whatever you want about Billy Bob Thornton, but the man has clearly led a more interesting life than most of us will ever dream of.

By his own admission a bit unstable in his early adulthood, he didn’t achieve much in the way of fame until he was 40. In the years since, he’s won an Oscar as the writer-director of Sling Blade, been married to a certain goddess by the name of Angelina Jolie, worked with legendary directors such as Oliver Stone (U-Turn) and the Coen brothers (The Man Who Wasn’t There), and established himself as a formidable country-rock singer-songwriter.

Now he’s got a new band, The Boxmasters, and is touring the United States with the energy and enthusiasm of a man half his age. He recently took time to speak with us for this exclusive interview.

When you were growing up in Hot Springs, Arkansas, did you actively dream of a career like the one you have now, or was it just something you gradually fell into?

I kind of knew from the beginning that this was all I wanted to do. It was between that and baseball, and I did play baseball for a long time, but I got injured. I’d always been in bands since I was a teenager, and I started taking drama classes in high school to meet chicks and get something above a C. (Laughs) I eventually came out to Los Angeles with the intention of doing both music and acting.

If your early bands had really taken off, do you think you would've ever become an actor?

If we were having the kind of success when I was 19 that I’m having with The Boxmasters now, I probably would’ve just stuck with music.

What did you learn about the music biz from your time on the road with groups like Nitty Gritty Dirt Band?

Well, I was basically a grunt for this sound company, so as a result I got to work with a lot of different bands. I learned that you’re up all night, you eat when you can, and if you don’t love it it’s a real hard life. I’ve never met a roadie who didn’t complain every minute about everything, but there’s some reason why they keep doing it for so long. What’s astounding to me is that a lot of young bands who are really popular, making it on the Billboard charts and performing on Letterman, are still traveling around the country in a van. It’s not like the old days, when you used to get all this tour support. The purse strings are real tight in the record business now, and some of these kids are out there eating at McDonald’s and sharing hotel rooms like we did when we were 18 and unknown!

You were 40 by the time Sling Blade made you a star. What were the positives and negatives about not becoming famous earlier in life?

Well, the negatives would be the constant longing and dreaming and being in a state of poverty all those years! (Laughs) But the positives were that, if I’d become famous when I was 20 I might not be alive now, because I wasn’t real stable at that point. I could very easily gone the way of a lot of these guys who don’t make it, not as an actor but as a human. I think you just handle yourself better [when you’re older], though I’ve been an idiot sometimes and shot my mouth off. But by the time I became famous I was– I wouldn’t say grounded, because I’m still not that today– but I was ready for it. You’re never fully prepared for it, because it’s a big, big monster to handle. Anonymity is what I long for these days.

What do you get out of music that you don't get out of acting, and vice versa?

That’s a good question. They are very different in so many ways, but similar in others. My songwriting and screenwriting are coming from the same mind: It’s not like I write a screenplay, then go get a lobotomy and then write a song. But I think the main difference is that music is more immediate. When we’re making a record we can work every night and don’t need anybody else to do it, and when we play live our fans are right there in front of us. There’s a big thrill in that sort of personal connection. But when me and the crew make a movie, there are no fans around, and when they see your film it’s not like you’re sitting in the audience watching it with them. There’s more of a distance between actors and their public, at least in a creative way. But what I get from acting that I don’t get from music is a very cerebral, solitary experience: It’s kinda nice when you’re becoming somebody else for three or four months.

Do you feel more accepted by the music community than the Hollywood community?

It was hard in the beginning, but these days I do. I hang out with more musicians than I do with anybody from Hollywood. That’s not my bag. But I’m old friends with the guys from ZZ Top, John Prine when he’s around, Tom Petty, Dwight Yoakum… of course, Dwight’s probably done more movies than I have lately!

Tell me a little bit about the origins of your new group, The Boxmasters.

It came together when I was working on my last solo record. J.D. Andrew was working on the mix and I found out he played guitar, so we started messing around and, the next thing you know, we’d cut “Yesterday’s Gone” by Chad & Jeremy, hillbilly-style. It was what I’d always dreamed of, which was to marry the pop-rock of the ‘60s with the hillbilly music we grew up on. J.D. knew Mike Butler, who’s amazing, and when we all got together for the first time it was amazing. We developed into a “modbilly” lifestyle, and started writing songs about the lower middle class life we’d all grown up with.

You're working with guys who've worked with everyone from Kanye West and the Rolling Stones to Death Cab for Cutie and Fleetwood Mac. Is that indicative of your own diverse musical tastes?

Yeah, I am all over the map as far as musical taste, but I don’t know much about the music of today. All we do is record and rehearse, so we don’t have much time to listen to anybody else’s music. We’re touring to promote this record, but in the meantime I just finished making a movie with the Polish brothers in June and we’ve already recorded a Christmas record for Vanguard. Somebody was asking me recently who were some of my favorite new bands, and I was like, “I really like Cake.” They looked at me like a pig staring at a wristwatch, as my old friend Jim Varney used to say, because Cake’s been around since the late ‘80s. But to me, that’s new! (Laughs)

Aside from the obvious collaboration aspects, what do you think separates the Boxmasters from your solo work?

On my solo albums I had so many different influences and wanted to try so many different things that I didn’t pay much attention to making a cohesive record. As a result, prior to my last album I would have a rock song, then a country song, one right after the other. In the ‘60s and ‘70s you could do that– you could have an eclectic record– but these days they want something that sounds like the same 12 songs. I never knew where that place was for me until we started doing to this, then it occurred to me: Wow, this is what I really like, hillbilly music and British Invasion music combined. I’m thinking there probably aren’t a whole lot of hillbilly bands that cover Mott the Hoople. (Laughs)

You've got two movies coming out between now and the end of the year. What can you tell us about Eagle Eye and The Informers?

Eagle Eye is a big, smartly-written action-thriller produced by Steven Spielberg and starring Shia LaBoeuf, who’s really a cool person and who seems to have his head together. He’s probably the best actor I’ve ever seen for his age. I play the head of the FBI’s anti-terrorist task force. You know, every few years I’ve gotta pay for the house, but it’s really good. The Informers is based on a Bret Easton Ellis book and set in the ‘80s, and I play the head of a movie studio… so basically I dress and act like my agent. It’s also got Kim Basinger, Winona Ryder and Mickey Rourke. I don’t know if you ever saw Love, Actually, but it’s kind of like that in the sense that it’s got a bunch of different stories about people who are ultimately linked together. I think it’ll turn out to be pretty interesting.

Between those two films, touring with the Boxmasters, recording the Christmas album, and starring in two movies slated for release in 2009, do you ever find time to take a vacation?

You know, I’m not good at vacations. If I went to Hawaii, I’d be there about 20 minutes before I’d be itching to go back in the studio…