Also this issue: Underdog Night DJ Cosmo Baker's hip-hop Remedy night turns 5. -Sean O’Neal Indie Blastoff -Ainé Ardron-Doley Beat Box -Ainé Ardron-Doley Very Emergency Facing illness and boredom, The Promise Ring changes its pace. -Chris Parker Groovin' and Pickin' -Mary Armstrong

May 23-29, 2002

music

Billy Bob Thornton

by A.D. Amorosi

With mad tales of isolated lives and oppressive specters, you wouldn’t think Billy Bob Thornton’s Private Radio (Lost Highway) is redemptive. Upon first listen, you may even find it unapproachable; not, as his honky-tonk hero Ray Price would say “for the good times.” Spend time with it and him, the Oscar-winning actor/writer/director, and there’s an unsentimental blossoming that takes place; a musky Arkansan-gothic with smarts and heart. It ain’t a country record. Rather, from a messy Beefheartian “Beauty at the Back Door,” the Bukowskian howl of “Starlight Lounge” and the desperate noir of a romantically focused troika of tunes, Radio is a tactile reptilian epic -- touchy, slow and low. Ultimately what comes forth from Radio is that Thornton is an always-curious listener and speaker; a lightning rod. That we had a genuine personal conversation -- little of which I’ll repeat -- never having met, tells you about his level of intensity. He phoned from Burbank, while rehearsing with old friends and preparing to perform at the Jam on the River this weekend.

City Paper: Since you started this tour abroad, do you have any concept of how Europeans view you, the persona that is Billy Bob?

Billy Bob Thornton: I don't know. Over there, I'm -- how do I put this? -- a pretty big deal as an actor, you know? Because I do independent film. They respond to that. Those audiences are more interested in hearing me, listening to me, hearing what we have to do than Americans who're probably out to see the actor. Now, in Philly it'll be way different because they're just coming to be at the festival (laughs). They probably don't even know I'm playing. They're there to eat and see the Radiators. God bless 'em. Musically things are so product driven here, I think I have a lot to overcome.

CP: More so maybe due to the fact, that, like my favorite records, Private Radio’s not immediate? Every listen offers something you haven’t witnessed on previous listens.

BBT: Wow. That’s exactly what I wanted. The same thing happened with Sling Blade. It was a weird phenomenon at first but then viewers made it iconic in that people found different or newer meanings within it. Same with The Man Who Wasn’t There. Since I’m already working on a second record by myself, and a little with Daniel Lanois, there you may get a better idea of what I do or am musically. I’m freer of people watching me. I mean, Private Radio is me, singing honestly, but.

CP: Was that a concern? That, as with actorly tricks, you could fake an emotion if one wasn’t immediately conjured?

BBT: No. I get you. But I think I just let it all hang out there. If I felt it, I sang it and it got recorded. It’s a plus too that many of the tracks are demos. I’m a first-take kind of guy. Same with acting.

CP: There’s something really noir-sensual about this record. A hot wind blows over this as would a James Cain novel.

BBT: That’s my nature. In the small circle of friends I have, I’m seen as the storyteller. Maybe that comes from the Southern traditionalism of my youth. This may sound weird or new agey, but I’m haunted. I really am a haunted guy. Always have been. Had a lot of loss in my life, a lot of time in as a hobo. That made me really love life but the beauty and pain of it all is still very mixed together. You never get one thing from me -- a good thing -- without getting the undertones.

CP: Do you know who or what haunts you?

BBT: Mostly family, people I lost early on haunt me. In a good way sometimes. Most of the men in my family died early on.

CP: So then there’s a lust for life that drives you to greater touch sensitivity.

BBT: Definitely. That’s it. If there’s any richness in my voice it comes from that. My interest in life and those of my characters. … I mean, I can talk to you for five hours. I bet if we hung out, we could become great friends. Sometimes we become friends for life; sometimes there’s weird troublesome situations.

CP: This record is intimate. Take “My Blue Shadow” and “Forever” they feel like vivid, important pictures of several different lives intertwined with one woman. What emotional hell did you go through to get that right?

BBT: A long road, man. And it’s not to say there haven’t been influences in those songs from several women. Something that set me on my road to heartache, that made me strive for what I have now with my wife, happened when I was 11: I was told I wasn’t good enough for someone in public but she’d still see me privately. … Ever since that, my life’s work has been about convincing people I’m worth a shit; maintaining a friendly outgoing exterior while inside being very lonely. My inside, honestly, is much like The Man Who Wasn’t There. It doesn’t help that I feel, deeply, that my music and my films have messages and that we operate in a world, like high school, where popularity and marketing reigns.

CP: Now that you’re part of the music biz too, what’s the difference between given industry-assholes?

BBT: Record business execs do not care. They will knock you down; no shame. It’s like walking into a den of cobras. You stay on the other side. The movie biz -- they’re all over your ass, smiling, back patting.

CP: You’re certainly not someone we think of as frivolous. What’s the difference, in how you’re served spiritually, between lyric writing and script writing?

BBT: They’re both intensely personal. In movies, people rarely think you’re actually talking from your own POV. But, songs? Every word counts. My ass is really on the line in my songs. People ask me how I can write so personally about my wife. How can you not? Sure, there’s lines within that only she knows what I’m talking about, but why not tell people how you feel? I was overjoyed when I finished it because, I wanted to make clear that despite how dark a life has been and could be, you can find happiness. “Private Radio” is about suicide. Now, if I can stand on the bridge, stare into the water and decide there’s something wonderful to live on for, then anyone can.

CP: If so much of your work is about that which haunts you and keeps you lonely, is there a fear of final happiness?

BBT: Boy… there’s a line in a song I’ve just written: “hoping to be sleeping when the house burns to the ground/but hoping on the other hand that somehow you’ll be found.” I feel that life, now -- my life, everyone’s I hope -- is 50/50; a simultaneous balance of total happiness and total sadness. If it ever tips any one way.

Billy Bob Thornton appears Mon., May 27, 12-9 p.m., $15 in advance, with Little Feat, Radiators, BR5-49, Terrance Simien, Doc Gibbs & Picante as part of 17th Annual Jam on the River, May 25-27, Festival Pier at Penn’s Landing, Columbus Blvd and Spring Garden St. For more information call 215-922-2FUN.