Billy Bob Thornton: Slinging a New Blade With ‘Hobo’ (INTERVIEW)

Aside from the academy award, established acting career, esteemed directing work, acclaimed screenwriting, notable pitching arm and the enviable Angelina Jolie connection, Billy Bob Thornton also happens to be a lifelong musician and songwriter. And that’s not just some side project to keep an actor entertained in the off-season. In the midst of another busy movie year, his third album, Hobo, is due this fall. It’s the long anticipated follow-up to his previous two efforts which earned him a gold record and a headline spot at last year’s SXSW. So yeah, this isn’t David Hasselhoff doing remixes, this is a serious musician who just happens to also write and direct feature films. It’s quite a resume, but he’s quick to note the absurdity of making the distinction between careers, or as he puts its, worrying if an album is made by a plumber or an actor, and just let it stand on it’s own. Fair enough…I suppose it really doesn’t matter he almost played for the Kansas City Royals before going on to win the Oscar for Sling Blade. It’s still one of the greatest movies of all time.

And for all his successes, Thornton somehow remains humble and empathetic. Hobo is a storyteller’s album, offering vivid tales of the pilgrimages made every day to the land of swimming pools and movie stars. It’s a path he knows well, but only one of the many he’s taken so far.

You’ve obviously developed as an actor over the years, but now that you’re releasing your third album, how have you developed as a songwriter?

Well, I think actually the songwriting gets better every time. I think this is really my best record…and a lot of the reason is because it’s a little more cohesive. What we’ve done on our past records, we’ve had sort of an eclectic mix of songs, which would have been ok in 1969, but now, its hard for people to listen to more than one sound on a record. It’s a little bit different now. So this record, its got sort of a thru-line in terms of the vibe, and sonically. And the whole record was made but just me, Randy Mitchell and Matt Laug, just three of us.

It was all recorded at your home studio right, which used to be Slash’s place?

Yeah, it used to be the Snake Pit, now its called The Cave.

What’s the set up down there, is it totally digital? You seem like you’d be into analog.

Well, I really am. We’ve always cut on RADAR, which is so warm and fat, people never know its not analog. But this is the first record that we used ProTools. And I was always against it, but the thing is, its so fast, and so handy – particularly when you’re making a record with only a couple of you.

What we did was, Randy and I would write songs and then put them down, just with an acoustic guitar and vocal, but we did them all to a click [track]. Sometimes we’d find a [drum] loop to put in there, just for the time being, and that way, at the end of it, when we’d written everything, and everything was down – we had all the guitars, all the vocals, everything – then Matt Laug, our drummer came in, and in two or three days played drums to every song. And some drummers are not as good at that, and some are great at it, Matt happens to be really good at it. Anyhow, that’s the way we made it. And since Randy always used ProTools, we gave it a shot.

We have a Trident 80 board down here, so we cut in ProTools and mixed it through the Trident board to 1 inch tape. And when you hear it, the record’s very lush, very warm sounding. So its really got an analog sound. I think mixing to 1 inch tape really did something.

We had an amazing time on it. I’m real proud of the songs, I’m proud of the lyrics, the melodies…everything. And I’m proud of the other records too. Private Radio, it was a fairly critically acclaimed record – it’s not like we sell a lot of records, but for the most part anyway, the critics liked that record – on the second one, it wasn’t so much that way. And I think a lot of the reason is ‘cause we start the record off with a bunch of rock songs, and by the end of the record, its mostly like, country stuff. And I’m not sure people are geared these days to wrap their heads around that.

On this latest record, the running theme is California, and the land of dreams, and people naively coming to L.A. with stars in their eyes. Of course most of your characters go through the ringer, but in the end, they seem to have some sense of resolution. Is it safe to assume that these are loosely autobiographical?

Yeah, I mean for the most part it is. They’re not all stories about myself necessarily, some are stories about people I’ve known or whatever, situations I’ve observed, but it’s just a collection of stories about success, failure, fear, joy, sadness – kind of everything that goes into trying to get somewhere, trying to make it – and California being the final frontier in a way. And it still is, a frontier. There is still a pilgrimage here all the time by people. Some people end up on the street, some people end up successful, some people end up like on the song “Gray Walls,” kind of shut behind their wall, even though it seems on the surface they have the perfect life. And then the story of the hobo guy, the homeless person, isn’t necessarily, in a spiritual sense, any different then the guy behind the walls. They’re both kind of shut off from society in some way.

These characters are all quite vivid. I assume you use the same skill set to develop characters on screen as you do lyrically?

Yeah, its not any different. As hard as people try to separate music from movies, its really the same thing. I mean there’s not much difference between a sculptor and a painter. But for some reason prejudice doesn’t go both ways. Like the movies don’t traditionally shut out musicians. The music world tends to shut out movie actors, or at least place a great burden to succeed, because you start with a strike against you. It’s like “oh, an actor is making a record.” Well, I don’t even know what that means (laughs). I’m mean, I’m not sure how that was ever defined. People can talk, “oh, Travolota made a pop record” or whatever it is, but the fact of the matter is, there have been plenty of musicians in movies who were shitty too. But there are plenty of actors who are shitty who have never been musicians, and vice versa. There are plenty of bands out there that just suck, and none of them have ever been in a movie. But when their record is reviewed, even if the critic doesn’t like the record, they still judge it based on it’s musical merit. They just go, “well, the Doorknobs have come out with another turkey,” or whatever. “This time the guitar playing is not up to snuff, blah, blah, blah.” They never say “oh, here we go, another group of plumbers from Cincinnati trying to make a record” (laughs). But if its an actor, they say that.

I think the music business is a very closed off, jealous business. More so now than ever. And maybe a lot of the reason is, it’s so hard these days to get in the music business, and actually get a record deal, sell records, all that kind of stuff. If you’re not one of the top pop people, top country people, top rap people, then you’re screwed. So there’s not a lot of room, and everybody else ends up…well, let me put it this way, I can talk to somebody who’s 25 years old, or 19 years old or whatever, probably 35, and mention John Prine or JJ Cale or somebody like that, and they’re like, “who?” But they know Ashlee Simpson.

John Prine needs a reality show.

Exactly (laughs). That’s right. Put him in an apartment with some other songwriters for six months to see which one of them gets married to the other one…

Do those preconceived notions concern you at all? “Actor makes an album.”

Not as much anymore. I like making records so much that…well sure it bugs me when it comes up, but it’s not something I spend time thinking about just when I’m hanging around or when I’m making a record. But when it comes up it bugs me.

They throw the term “country” around when they describe your sound, but this record is really about as country as Tom Waits is. So what does that say about the state of country music, or the industry as a whole for that matter?

Well its all mixed up out there. But first of all…I’m glad you said that, because I rarely get somebody saying what you just said, which is I’m as country as Tom Waits is. If I weren’t from the south, lets say I was from Connecticut, and my name was, I don’t know, Chad Worthington, or something like that, I probably wouldn’t have my music called country. But the fact that people sort of think of Texas or Arkansas, and because of my name, I think they automatically throw that on there.

But I think country music, really now, is not what country music was initially. When I was growing up…it’s almost like the guys who really are country, like Merle Haggard or George Jones or somebody like that, its almost like they’ve been put into some “old guy” category, like they’re folk singers like Woody Guthrie or somebody. Like it’s this whole different kind of thing. And people say, “yeah, I listen to old country sometimes,” instead of just calling it country. Because what country has become, in Nashville anyway, its really 80’s pop ballads, 80’s rock ballads. You throw a cowboy hat on some guy and have a steel guitar in there, and yet you’re playing a song that may as well be Def Leppard. And a lot of those cats that produced those 80’s ballads are producers in Nashville now. So that’s where it comes from. Its like, “oh well, the bottom fell out of this, we’ll go do this thing for a while.”

Yeah, I think commercial radio country music these days – it’s really suffering. You got a few people out there, well Dwight [Yoakam] always stays true. And then you got other guys like Steve Earle or Pat Green, or Steven Bruton, a good friend of ours who tours with us some, they’re like alt-country, or “Americana” or whatever. So they’re having to create categories these days for real music (laughs). Its like they had to invent some [new genres] because you can’t be in those other things anymore. Whereas when I was growing up, you turn a radio station on, you could hear Johnny Cash on a station that you heard JJ Cale on. Or a better example, you’d hear Deep Purple and James Taylor on the same station.

When you were younger you had a band called Hot ’Lanta, named after the Allman Brother’s song, and you’ve praised their Fillmore East album – but that was an originals band, you weren’t just playing Allman covers?

No. We would play an Allman Brothers song from time to time, but it wasn’t like an Allman Brothers cover band or anything like that. I think the only song we did was…well we did “Stormy Monday” and we did more their version of it. [That] was in the early 70’s.

You also directed Widespread Panic’s Live At The Georgia Theatre documentary back in ‘91, and then followed up years later by doing their video for ‘Aunt Avis.”

[Live At The Georgia Theatre] was the first thing I ever directed. Back in the 80’s, I was managed by a guy…who wasn’t really in the movie business (laughs). I had my theatrical agent, but I was managed by a guy who’d been a big record producer, record executive, had his own label forever, who was one of my heroes named Phil Walden. And Phil’s the guy that had the Allman Brothers and Marshall Tucker…was Otis Reddings manager early on. And he and I got to know each other, and he became my manager, and the only actors he managed were me and Jim Varney…so I used to hang out with him and Varney all the time. And when Capricorn [Records] got back on it’s feet again he signed up Widespread Panic. And he said, “would you want to direct a long-form video on this band Widespread Panic?” And when I thought about it, I said “yeah, might be nice to make it also just kind of a flavor of Athens, Georgia maybe too, as opposed to just a concert film.” Looking back on it, that was in my formative years as a director, and maybe it could have been better, but it’s actually pretty good. I look at it every now and then…we did ok for people who didn’t know what we were doing. Yeah, I love those guys, I always did. You know, they lost Mikey [Houser], their guitar player a couple of years back and that was really sad. A great guy, I tell ya…

Yeah, that was a terrible loss. And you’ve actually directed musicians quite a few times over the years. In Sling Blade, you cast Dwight [Yoakam], Col. Bruce Hampton and Vic Chestnutt as the band. How well did you know them before casting? Because aside from obviously being a great film, that musical element, and those band scenes in particular are classics.

Yeah, I didn’t know Vic that well, I knew him, but not that well. I knew Bruce very well…(laughs) Bruce is a whole different cat man, I love him. Also, Ian Moore was in there and I knew Ian a little bit…and Mickey Jones was the drummer.

It’s funny, cause those scenes, you know, we all went through that growing up in bands. You were always in some garage band that wasn’t really worth a shit, and you had one guy in the band that was an asshole and thought he ran things, and there’s another guy who thought he was a poet (laughs). It’s just taking the experiences we all had and just throwing them in there. But I have to say, I did sort of make that poem that Colonel Bruce recites in the movie, I actually wrote that sort of specifically for Bruce, cause that’s kind of the way he talks anyway…so when other people heard it they thought it was hilarious and bizarre, and Bruce, he just thought it was normal (laughs).

Have you thought about combining the two arts, and doing soundtracks?

I’d love to. I work very closely with the people who do music for my movies, Daniel Lanois in particular. I’m going to be directing another movie next year, and Dan and I are gonna collaborate on that one.

With all the success you’ve had, how do you remain grounded in Hollywood?

Well, I don’t really hang out with people in the movie business. I gotta couple of friends who are actors…I would consider John Cusack a friend and Matt Damon. But I don’t really go anywhere, so I don’t have to get involved with it too much. I mean, when I have to go do press for movie I gotta go, but other than that I’m home with the kids or down in the studio, so I just kind of stay out of it.

What changed after you won the Oscar? At that point, you could have gone any number of directions with your career.

Well, you just have to keep making good choices. One of the keys to being a good actor is making good choices. And every now and then you’ll do a movie – it’s not that I’m opposed to doing a commercial movie, a big movie if it’s a good one, I’ve done a few, but you just have to keep picking roles where you can play a different person every time. You can’t all of a sudden just want to play the hero guy that’s kind of one note throughout the movie…that’s a mistake a lot of people make. The lead role is not always the best one, I’ll put it that way. So when something pops up where you’re the only move star and everybody else is just incidental to you, sometimes those aren’t the best roles.

It’s been said you’re rather particular about things, so I’m curious, is your music collection strictly organized?

Well, I’m anal to a point. I want to know where they are. If I’m missing a record, I can’t get it off my mind. I have to either go out and buy it or find it. I’ve got a lot of them…I mean I’ve got thousands of CDs and they’re all over the house. No, I’m not one of those guys who’s built his own special drawers and everything’s in perfect alphabetical order, all kinds of cleaning rags everywhere and shit like that. I’m not like that, I’m too lazy for that. But I do collect records. I have my own sort of system. And I’ve got records of all kinds. On any given day I’ll listen to Jim Reeves and Johnny Cash and Captain Beefheart and Frank Zappa and the Bonzo Dog Band and Bruce Hampton and Deep Purple (laughs). And Dean Martin is a big one for me, I listen to a lot of Dean Martin. Mel Torme, stuff like that.

You’re also an avid sports fan…you almost ended up playing pro baseball, so I wanted to ask you about your favorite team – you think the Cardinals will be back in the Series this year?

I sure hope so. It’s funny, a friend of mine, my co-producer and engineer Jim Mitchell is from Boston so he got to gloat quite a bit last year. And I told him the other day that I’m hoping the Red Sox get there again, have the Cardinals kick their asses. But the thing about baseball, like right now, the Cardinals are hard to beat, and they don’t even have some of their top guys in the lineup. Scott Rolen is still out, Larry Walker, guys like that, and yet they still keep winning…you know, 12, 13 games out in front. And a lot of my friend’s who are Cardinal fans, they get upset [like the other week when] we lost 3 out of 4 to the damn Cubs. And it annoys me…telling my friends, “you know what, that’s ok” – if they’re going out there, maybe they’re lackluster a little bit right now sometimes, and they go let like the Royals or the Rockies or somebody like that beat them…“don‘t worry about it, because we want them to get that shit out of their system now and not in [late] September or October.”

Well football season starts this week…any predictions for this year?

Well, I’m an Indianapolis Colts fans, so I would hope the Colts are gonna get in there, but the Colts are one of those teams that…they’re kind of like, remember Susan Lucci on the soap opera? You know, she would get nominated for an Emmy every year and never win it.

So Peyton Manning is the new Susan Lucci? (laughs)

(Laughs) Well I don’t know about that. Peyton Manning, that guy is so amazing, that guy is so good..I don’t think it’s anybody’s fault. They could use a little something defensively, but its such a powerful offense, they’re passing game is so great, but it just seems like, I think its more about, you know, once you lose something like that, you lose a big game, I think psychologically it does something to you. So I think it’s more of a psychological thing than anything else. But also it doesn’t help any that you play inside a house with a carpet and then you go over to Boston every year and play with these guys in like 5 below weather where the ground is hard as a rock and there’s snow in your face (laughs). That doesn’t help any.

That’s the other thing, Jim Mitchell, every night in the studio he’s got a different Patriots shirt on, and it just annoys the shit out of me. But I guarantee you this, the Patriots are not winning the Super Bowl this year. Not gonna happen. If I could predict anybody actually winning the Super Bowl this year, I would say the Steelers. I mean, I hope it’s the Colts. But I think last year, [Rothlisberger] got a little too popular, went on a few too many tv shows, and its like, “hey man, you’re still a rookie, you’re in the big time now, you better go out there and play.” (laughs).

Lastly, Happy Birthday…you just celebrated a big one. So with everything you’ve got going on right now, is 50 the new 30?

Absolutely! Brown is the new black and 50 is the new 30.

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