Billy Bob Thornton’s psychobilly surf rock band The Boxmasters coming to Las Vegas
April 6, 2017 - 10:45 am
Updated April 6, 2017 - 10:46 am
Billy Bob Thornton’s been acting since the mid-’80s, winning awards and acclaim for his big- and small-screen performances — along with an Oscar for his 1996 “Sling Blade” screenplay.
But he’s been playing music all his life, as he’ll demonstrate when he and his bandmates in the Boxmasters bring their “Tea Surfing” tour to The Smith Center’s Cabaret Jazz Sunday and Monday.
Thornton’s come a long way since his musical debut at age 10, when he played at an elementary school classmate’s birthday party back in his native Arkansas; his second gig was at a school PTA meeting, performing “The Ballad of the Green Berets.”
Boxmasters co-founder J.D. Andrew — a Grammy-winning recording engineer who has worked with (among others) the Rolling Stones and Kanye West — also has been singing since his Kansas schooldays, where he would assist his music teacher (who also was a union stagehand) “dragging speakers” onto stages.
Interested in the technical aspect of making music, Andrew became a recording engineer and “never thought I’d be a musician as a career.”
That is, until 10 years ago, when Thornton was recording his fourth solo album and needed a guitarist for a cover version of “Lone Highway,” destined for Canadian TV.
Thornton asked Andrew, “ ‘Hey, how well do you play guitar?’ ” Andrew recalls. ” ‘I’m real rusty,’ ” Andrew replied, but their first collaboration “just had a thing to it.”
That thing inspired both to start working on ideas, Thornton adds. “And that became the Boxmasters. Ever since we started, we haven’t stopped.”
With singer, piano and harmonica player Teddy Andreadis — who’s shared the stage with legends from Chuck Berry to Carole King — joining the group, the Boxmasters specialize in “old psychobilly, combined with the British Invasion,” Thornton explains. Not to mention a heaping helping of jangly, jaunty surf music, reflected in such tunes as “Summertime in L.A. Again” and “Easy Summer.”
But listen to some of their lyrics (“push finally came to shove — I’m callin’ off the search for love”) and you’ll detect a downbeat undercurrent beneath the “upbeat and catchy” music, Thornton adds.
“We’re kind of known for that,” he acknowledges, noting that the album’s humorous odes to non-beach-adjacent Southern California suburbs (“Bellflower,” “I Got Glendale”) reflect similar sensibility, singing about “garden spots that really aren’t.”
The Boxmasters co-founders are influenced by the ’60s, Thornton notes, rather than “chasing what’s current that might sell to whatever pop star is out there.”
Yet Thornton’s old on-screen pal Dwight Yoakam (who’s appeared with him in everything from “Sling Blade” to Thornton’s Amazon series “Goliath”) helped sequence “Tea Surfing” — and has hinted he might be interested in recording their song “Easy Summer.”
Thornton returns for another season of “Goliath” June 1. The Boxmasters tour ends May 9. In that three weeks in between, Andrew says, he and Thornton will finish the next record, due in the fall.
“The two of us can make a record that has a live feel,” Thornton adds. “We don’t use gadgetry. All our equipment’s vintage. We’re like a garage band that goes in and records.”
Read more from Carol Cling at reviewjournalcom. Contact her at ccling@reviewjournal.com and follow @CarolSCling on Twitter.
Preview
■ Who:Billy Bob Thornton and the Boxmasters
■ When: 7 p.m. Sunday and Monday
■ Where: Cabaret Jazz, The Smith Center for the Performing Arts, 361 Symphony Park Ave.
■ Tickets: $39-$75 (702-749-2000, www.thesmithcenter.com)
Billy Bob Thornton: The Vegas Connection
Billy Bob Thornton’s filmed two movies in Southern Nevada. One you’ve heard of (1993’s “Indecent Proposal,” in which he played a supporting role) and one you haven’t: the 2000 short “The Last Real Cowboys,” directed by Las Vegas-based filmmaker Jeff Lester.
But the latter is a link to Thornton’s entire acting career — because Thornton credits Lester, a former actor, with helping him discover acting.
Thornton and his writing partner Tom Epperson (their collaborations range from 1992’s “One False Move” to 2012’s “Jayne Mansfield’s Car”) had just arrived in Hollywood from their native Arkansas and looked up Lester — who, at the time, was dating someone originally from back home. (Lester and performer Susan Anton have been married since 1992.)
“We didn’t know anybody else in L.A.,” Thornton recalls, so they asked to have lunch with Lester, who suggested Thornton should try acting. (“I was in drama in high school — I took it to get something better than a ‘C.’ “)
Lester in turn introduced Thornton to his acting coach and Thornton joined their class, Lester recalls in a telephone interview. “We did scenes together and socially became good buddies.”
Lester and Thornton lost track until the latter’s success as star and Oscar-winning screenwriter of 1996’s “Sling Blade,” at which time they reconnected.
And when Lester needed someone to play a taciturn cowpoke sitting around a campfire, trading philosophical observations with a pard, Thornton filled the bill. (“I learned three things: never smile when you meet a stranger, be ready to kill at the drop of a hat and never trust a soul ’til that trust is proved …”)
“The Last Real Cowboys” played 30 international film festivals; Lester’s now working on a rewrite, expanding it to feature length.
As for Thornton, “Where I grew up, I didn’t know anything about movies,” he says. “I accidentally became an actor when I moved to California.”
Once he discovered it, however, “I grew to love acting,” Thornton acknowledges. “It worked out OK.”