T Bone Burnett

T Bone Burnett

T-Bone Burnett is an American songwriter, musician and producer. He was born Joseph Henry Burnett (January 14, 1948) in St. Louis, Missouri and raised in Fort Worth, Texas. He released two albums in 2006 after a 14 year break from solo recordings: The True False Identity, his first album of new songs since 1992, and Twenty Twenty - The Essential T-Bone Burnett, a 40 song retrospective spanning his career.

Burnett’s time away from recording and performing led him to other undertakings. He produced various artists such as Tony Bennett and k.d. lang on the A Wonderful World album and The Wallflowers on Bringing Down the Horse. Burnett won a Grammy award for the O Brother, Where Art Thou? soundtrack. He worked as a songwriter, and was nominated for an Oscar for his contribution to the film Cold Mountain. He founded the record label DMZ, an imprint of Columbia, and was involved with Mark Heard and Tonio K in the short-lived What? Records. He also oversaw the music for the films Walk the Line and The Big Lebowski.

Burnett's songs have been covered by such artists as k.d. lang ("Till the Heart Caves In"), Los Lobos, Sixpence None the Richer ("Carry You"), Tonio K, Emmylou Harris, Mark Heard ("Power of Love"), Arlo Guthrie, Warren Zevon, Peter Case, B. J. Thomas and others.

Early musical career

Burnett released his first album, The B-52 Band and the Fabulous Skylarks, in 1972. In 1975 and 1976, he toured with Bob Dylan's Rolling Thunder Revue. When the Revue ended, Burnett and two other members of Dylan's band, David Mansfield and Steven Soles, formed The Alpha Band. The Alpha Band released three albums, The Alpha Band in 1977, Spark In The Dark in 1977, and The Statue Makers of Hollywood in 1978.

Solo career

In 1980 he released his first post-Alpha Band solo album, Truth Decay, a roots rock album described by the Rolling Stone Record Guide as "mystic Christian blues."

In 1982 his Trap Door EP yielded the FM radio hit "I Wish You Could Have Seen Her Dance". Burnett toured after the release of Trap Door, opening several dates for The Who and leading a band that featured Mick Ronson on guitar.

His 1983 album Proof Through the Night (whose song "When the Night Falls" got some FM airplay) and his 1987 album The Talking Animals were more in the vein of 1980s new wave music, while his self-titled 1986 album was an album of acoustic country music. His 1992 album The Criminal Under My Own Hat tended toward adult album alternative music. All were critically acclaimed but not big sellers commercially.

Proof Through The Night was reissued by Rhino Records' Handmade Music in a limited edition of 5,000 on May 29, 2007, in an expanded version. The double CD also included the EPs Trap Door and Behind The Trap Door.

Production, film scoring, and other professional activities

Burnett has become best known as a music producer. Burnett began producing albums for artists like Counting Crows' August and Everything After, Los Lobos' How Will the Wolf Survive?, Elvis Costello's King of America and Spike, the Wallflowers' Bringing Down the Horse, Marshall Crenshaw's Downtown, Spinal Tap's Break Like The Wind, the BoDeans' Love & Hope & Sex & Dreams, Gillian Welch's Revival and Hell Among the Yearlings, David Poe's self-titled debut, the Roy Orbison tribute A Black & White Night Live, two albums for Bruce Cockburn, and nearly everything released by his former wife, Sam Phillips (previously known as Leslie Phillips).

In 1985, Burnett collaborated with Elvis Costello on a single called "The People's Limousine", under the moniker "The Coward Brothers."

In 1987, Burnett produced Roy Orbison's two-record album, In Dreams: The Greatest Hits. After that, he was the musical director and a guitarist for Orbison's HBO television special, Roy Orbison and Friends, A Black and White Night.

In 1992, he worked some songs with his friend River Phoenix for the movie The Thing Called Love. He was the coach of Samantha Mathis.

In 1997, Burnett created new songs for the Sam Shepard play The Tooth of Crime: Second Dance, which premiered in New York City the same year in an off-Broadway production that featured Vincent D'Onofrio and Kirk Acevedo. A CD of these songs was released in May, 2008.

In 2000, Burnett produced the soundtrack and wrote the score for the Coen Brothers film, O Brother, Where Art Thou?. The award-winning soundtrack featured music from Emmylou Harris, Alison Krauss, Ralph Stanley, Gillian Welch, and others performing traditional American folk music, blues and bluegrass — reminiscent of Burnett's 1986 self-titled release. The album was a smash, garnering numerous industry awards from the Grammys, Academy of Country Music, and the Country Music Association. The album was as much a commercial success as a critical one and has sold over seven million copies according to the Recording Industry Association of America. A documentary film, Down from the Mountain, was made of a benefit concert of the soundtrack performed by the artists on the album; Burnett figures prominently in the film. His production on the soundtrack albums for these two films, plus his wife Sam Phillips' Fan Dance album, led to his winning the 2002 Grammy Award for Producer of the Year, Non-Classical. Burnett went on to produce the less popular gospel soundtrack to the Coen's The Ladykillers.

In 2004, under his name "Henry Burnett", he wrote "I Wish My Baby Was Born", "Like a Songbird That Has Fallen", and "The Scarlet Tide" for the movie Cold Mountain. "The Scarlet Tide," co-written with Elvis Costello and performed by Alison Krauss, was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Song and won the BAFTA Anthony Asquith Award for Achievement in Film Music. In 2005, he composed the score for Wim Wenders' film Don't Come Knocking. He also produced Ollabelle.

In 2005, he worked with actors Joaquin Phoenix and Reese Witherspoon for their singing roles as Johnny Cash and June Carter Cash in the film Walk the Line. He also produced that film's soundtrack album and wrote its score.

In 2006, he was nominated for the BAFTA Anthony Asquith Award for Achievement in Film Music. In April, 2006, he announced that his first concert tour in nearly two decades would begin on May 16 in Chicago at The Vic Theater. Around the same time, jazz singer Cassandra Wilson released an album of blues songs, Thunderbird (2006), which was produced by Burnett. He also wrote one of the album's songs and co-wrote another with Ethan Coen. Burnett also produced music for the remake of the film All the King's Men.

In 2006, Burnett produced Brandi Carlile's The Story album, the title song of which became a minor hit and was featured on a special broadcast of ABC-TV's Grey's Anatomy. Carlile's guitarist and bassist, twins Tim and Phil Hanseroth, respectively, used instruments from Burnett's private collection during the unique "live" recordings in Vancouver, B.C.

T-Bone Burnett on stage at Birmingham's NIA, 5th May 2008 as part of a concert by Alison Krauss and Robert Plant

In early 2007, Burnett earned nominations for two 2006 Grammy Awards, one as Producer Of The Year for his work on Cassandra Wilson's Thunderbird album, the soundtrack to Walk the Line and his own The True False Identity. Walk the Line was nominated for Best Compilation Soundtrack Album for a Motion Picture, Television or Other Visual Media. Burnett earned another nomination for his efforts as Executive Music Producer and Album Producer on that soundtrack.

October 2007 saw the release of the Burnett-produced Raising Sand, a collaborative album featuring Alison Krauss and Robert Plant. Burnett plays guitar on 10 of the 13 tracks.

In early 2008, Pete Townshend announced that Burnett was to go into the studio that fall to help produce an all covers album for The Who.. However, on a May 15, 2008, episode of the NPR radio show, All Songs Considered, Burnett threw that project into question. He stated that in a blog, Townshend had indicated that he was putting all his projects on hold.

In 2008, it was reported that Burnett "started a new venture called Code, which aims to do for music what THX did for movie-theater sound: set standards that ensure the best possible quality." He is opposed to the trend of brighter and more compressed processing, sufficiently so that he essentially retired from the music business in 1995-96 and took up an opportunity to work in theater with Sam Shepard, leading to his work on several films. Code involves the simultaneous release of multiple sound formats, thus avoiding much of the processing which happens when sound is converted from one format to another. Burnett produced John Mellencamp's album Life, Death, Love and Freedom, which will be the first Code album when it is released on July 15, 2008.

Discography

• The B-52 Band & the Fabulous Skylarks (as J. Henry Burnett), 1972
• Alpha Band (Alpha Band), 1977
• Spark In The Dark (Alpha Band), 1977
• Statue Makers Of Hollywood (Alpha Band), 1978
• Truth Decay, 1980
• Trap Door (EP), 1982
• Proof Through the Night, 1983 - Photography by Frank Gargani
• Behind the Trap Door (EP), 1984
• T-Bone Burnett, 1986
• The Talking Animals, 1987
• The Criminal Under My Own Hat, 1992
• The True False Identity, 2006
• Twenty Twenty - The Essential T-Bone Burnett, 2006
• Tooth of Crime, 2008

Compilations

• Where the Pyramid Meets the Eye - Tribute to Roky Erickson Song Title - "Nothing In Return" - 1990
• Until the End of the World Song Title - "Humans from Earth" - 1991

External links

• Official site
• T-Bone Burnett at IMDb