30 Billy Bob Thornton, actor, Bad Santa, singer, joins us on Mr. Media! - a podcast by Bob Andelman

Today's Guest: Billy Bob Thornton, actor, Bad Santa, Monster's Ball, Sling Blade, singer, "Beautiful Door" Order by clicking the CD cover above (JULY 2007) You just can’t pigeonhole Billy Bob Thornton. Think about the movie roles he’s most famous for and see what, if any, connection there is: Carl in Sling Blade; Hank Grotowski in Monster’s Ball; Morris Buttermaker in Bad News Bears; Coach Gaines in Friday Night Lights, and my favorite, Willy in Bad Santa. Who would figure that the guy who portrayed so many varied and somewhat disturbed characters had a musical soul too? But, this month, Billy Bob Thornton’s fourth CD, Beautiful Door, will be released. It’s a collection of original, contemporary songs with a touch of country, all written and sung by Thornton. He also is the drummer on the album’s tracks. And just like his choices as an actor, no two songs on the album are easily matched and categorized. You’ll recognize his deep voice instantly on the somber opening ballad, “It’s Just Me,” but be surprised that it’s also him on the rockin’ “Hope for Glory.” BILLY BOB THORNTON audio excerpt: "Probably the funniest story that ever happened on any movie was on a movie called Pushing Tin that I did with John Cusack up in Canada. The story is way too long to tell here, but let’s just put it this way: we played a pretty decent practical joke on John, who has a weak stomach, and we got him good. It was a very elaborate plan, and about two weeks later, he got me back. We’ll just say it involved a sheep, a real live sheep, and some lingerie."  BOB ANDELMAN/Mr. MEDIA: Billy Bob, this was my first exposure to your music, and I’ve got to admit, I was a little surprised at how gentle and calm most of it is. BILLY BOB THORNTON: Yeah, it’s kind of a vibey record. When we play live, we’re a little bit more of a big rock show. On the records, we tend to do kind of somewhere in between J.J. Cale and Johnny Cash kind of stuff. But I’ve always been into real moody records, and that’s what we try to do. Like you said, we’ve got a couple of tunes that are a little more raucous, but for the most part, it’s a real vibey record. ANDELMAN: It was a little against type from what I was expecting, I guess, or what I thought the type was. Obviously, I was wrong. Is this album very different from the three that preceded it? THORNTON: Well, it’s pretty similar to the first one, Private Radio, as well as the third one, which was called Hobo. But the second record we did was called The Edge of the World and it was kind of all over the map, that record, our second one. It had everything from rock songs to country songs on it, and you can’t do that anymore. These days people want records that kind of sonically and lyrically all fit the same vibe like it used to be in 1968 or 1970. You could have a record with all types of songs on it, but I’m not sure if it’s the people or record labels, but they want to put it into a category. I suppose a lot of that is because of the radio. When I was a kid, you would hear James Taylor and Black Sabbath on the same station. There’s the contemporary country station, and then there’s the pop station, and everybody has to be in a category. ANDELMAN: Plus, with the downloading of music, people can just pick the songs that they want, so if it’s not all of a type, they may pick one particular song that they like, but if the next one doesn’t sound like it, they’re only going to take that one song. THORNTON: Right. Exactly. ANDELMAN: I guess the Billy Bob I was expecting was the one in the song “I Can Tell You,” the guy who says, “I can tell you some crazy stories, I bet they’d make you run away.” Not so many of those kinds of stories in there. THORNTON: It’s funny when people say something seems to be “a personal record” or “Is it autobiographical?” It’s always a little of both. Most things you write about, they’re stories that either you’ve observed or been involved in or are yourself. I think the best way to write is from personal experience. Like, for instance, I wouldn’t make a very good science fiction writer. I pretty much have to write about stuff that I’ve either observed or been involved in myself. ANDELMAN: You haven’t been in outer space? THORNTON: Well, in some ways I have. ANDELMAN: Okay. THORNTON: No question about it. ANDELMAN: Thank you for clarifying that. You’ve been playing music an awful long time. You’ve got your chops, but what drives you to keep making music now? Certainly, you’re not in it for the income. THORNTON: Well, I’m not in movies for the income, either. If I didn’t love it and want to do it, I wouldn’t. If I wasn’t having fun at it and didn’t get fulfillment from it – there are a lot of jobs you can make money at. I could have gone into the oil business or something else maybe, but I doubt they would’ve had me. It’s kind of funny. I end up answering a lot of questions about that. I guess the answer to that would be, my answer would be the same answer as Tom Petty or Fall Out Boy or Jack White or Ozzy Osbourne. I’m not sure what they would answer if you asked them that question. I would imagine it would be, “Well, what else would I do?” ANDELMAN: Are you more likely to hang out with musicians or actors? THORNTON: I hang out mostly with musicians. I have a few actor friends, not many, and most of the ones that I have are not very famous ones. They’re guys that I came up in the theater with mostly. Frankly, I don’t hang out with many famous people at all. I’ve got all these kids, so I kind of just stay home and don’t do much of anything. Play with kids and record music and then when I go away, it’s usually to make a movie or to go on tour with the band. ANDELMAN: I suspect, without getting into it, that you’ve had enough exposure to being very famous and very visible, and you could certainly choose one or the other - to be famous and visible, or not to be. THORNTON: Oh yeah. That part of it is not my favorite part, the old going out in public part. I’m still embarrassed by it, frankly. ANDELMAN: Really. THORNTON: Oh, yeah. ANDELMAN: Does the musician in you make different choices than the actor? THORNTON: No, it’s pretty much the same thing. I guess there have been choices as an actor that have been slightly different than doing music. If I were playing music to sell 5 million records, I would certainly write different kinds of music than I do. I don’t exactly write commercial music. I have, however, as an actor a couple of times, done bigger movies, Armageddon, for instance, stuff like that. I doubt you’ll ever see me making some kind of pop or hip-hop record or a contemporary country record, either. ANDELMAN: You haven’t made the musical equivalent of Bad News Bears yet, either. THORNTON: No, although we’ve got a few coming out pretty soon on another record that could be a little bit Bad Santa-like. ANDELMAN: Really? Got to pause there and tell us more about that. THORNTON: My band is called The Boxmasters, and we are making a record under just the band name, which will have my name on it, but it’s the same exact people. The record’s gonna have an explicit lyrics sticker on it, but it’s kind of a hillbilly/punk record which is something we do live a lot. Order from Amazon.com by clicking the DVD cover above ANDELMAN: That should be very interesting. THORNTON: In fact, we’re opening for ourselves on tour. ANDELMAN: Is that right? THORNTON: Oh yeah. ANDELMAN: Do you get paid double when you do that? How does that work? THORNTON: The Boxmasters only get like $200 bucks a night for the whole band, and they have to ride another bus. Even though it’s the same band, we still treat ourselves really bad when we’re The Boxmasters. ANDELMAN: I was gonna say… THORNTON: We treat ourselves as an opening act. ANDELMAN: My old days of covering music years ago, I think the attitude was you always had an opening band that was never as good as the headliner? THORNTON: Right. Exactly. We try to be just as good, but we still treat ourselves like crap when we’re the headliner. ANDELMAN: Have your music and film careers ever met? Has any of your music accompanied a film, for example? THORNTON: Well, actually, I’ve cut a couple of songs for TV shows that are not out yet that are coming out. I was asked to do a Hank Williams cover for a Canadian television show that’s gonna be on this coming year, and then there’s another show on Showtime that we did an opening credit song for. So I’ve done that, but I haven’t done anything for my own movies. I tend to be more willing to do music for a movie that I don’t have anything to do with really. I try to keep the two as separate as possible. ANDELMAN: I understand. Let me ask you this: could you pick out a song or two from Beautiful Door and maybe tell us a little about them? THORNTON: Well, the song “Beautiful Door,” the title song, is an anti-war song, really. Normally, I haven’t put real political songs on my records. This whole record, really, the theme of it, is life and death and how important life is and how we need to treat it and about having to face death. It’s both on a personal level and a global level. There is a song on there that’s about not judging a book by its cover. There’s three sort of anti-war songs as well as a couple of songs about suicide and how that affects the people you leave behind because of your choice. So it’s really a record about life and death. The song “Beautiful Door” is about religion being mixed with war and politics so much and how it seems that the people that die are the people who don’t really care. It’s like the people who aren’t involved in it are the people that usually get it, and the big chiefs are the ones that live except for in a couple instances recently. It doesn’t point fingers at any particular group. It points a finger at everybody, the East as well as the West and everything. So the song is as much about our system as it is anybody else’s. It’s just saying, “If you think there’s some magical answer on the oth

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