Billy Bob Thornton Returns to Music With the Boxmasters
Long before he became a major Hollywood actor and an Academy Award winner, Billy Bob Thornton was once a roadie for many musical acts such as the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, Johnny Paycheck and Blood, Sweat and Tears. While he took part in some partying as a roadie, Thornton remembers that time as being all work.
"I was this skinny longhaired kid that can barely lift a cabinet," he tells Spinner. "But I did it anyway. It was a hard lifestyle but you can imagine being that age and being close to something that you love so much, it didn't matter."
For those who are familiar with Thornton's career know that he had already recorded several solo albums and appeared on Warren Zevon's farewell work 'The Wind.' Thornton's latest musical endeavor is the Boxmasters, a band featuring himself on drums and vocals, and J.D. Andrew and Mike Butler on guitars.
The idea of the Mod-attired group began when Thornton was listening to a British Invasion album. "I was telling J.D., 'This stuff is really just hillbilly music if you get right down to it. They just sing it like English guys.'" A fan of hillbilly music and '60s British and American rock and pop, he says, "I think really what the Boxmasters is my realization this many years later of exactly what kind of music I love to play, which is all of them put together."
Their new self-titled debut, slated for release on June 10, is a double-CD that features original compositions such as '2 Bit-Grifter' and 'The Work of Art'; and cover songs of artists as eclectic as the Beatles, Mott the Hoople, and Chad & Jeremy. The band employs some of the studio techniques found on the Beatles' adventurous albums like 'Sgt. Pepper,' and the sound of traditional roots rock with humorous and dark lyrics.
"The reason those
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