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Billy Bob Thornton’s psychobilly surf rock band The Boxmasters coming to Las Vegas

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.

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