Before you judge Billy Bob Thornton for releasing “Beautiful Door,” his most recent roots-rock outing, the Oscar-winning screenwriter, actor and director has a few things he wants you to know.
1. Thornton was a musician long before he was an actor – this is his fourth full-length release as a solo artist.
2. And, no matter what the haters say, music is not a vanity project for him.
“If I were gonna do a vanity project, I would certainly write different songs than the ones I had,” Thornton said in a recent telephone interview, advancing his show at the Bluebird on Monday. “If you’re going out there to sell a bunch of records, you write a pop hit. You don’t write about suicide.”
Sure enough, Thornton is obviously not out to make an FM radio hit with any of the songs from “Beautiful Door.” The music is kissed with the blues as it pays tribute to Americana’s simple structure and understated elegance.
The songs are a definite improvement from Thornton’s previous releases, but while his influences are obvious – Kristofferson, Prine, Zevon and Cale – his lyrics aren’t as solid as his music. Thornton’s singing voice sounds every bit as nuanced as his ever-familiar speaking voice, and that’s very cool from the perspective of a fan, but he’s still finding his footing as a lyricist. For example, the new track “Always Countin”‘ tackles Thornton’s obsessive-compulsive disorder in a sometimes-poetic, sometimes-clumsy way.
“OCD is really easy to make fun of,” Thornton said. “It’s one of those disorders, like Tourette’s, where it’s easy to laugh at it, but it actually takes a lot of energy out of you every day. You’re just exhausted about what you go through in your head on a daily basis. So we did this song in a kind of humorous way.”
But that’s also part of the reason Thornton finds himself so comfortable in Americana. You don’t need to be a great singer or a tremendous lyricist. If your music is honest, it will thrive in this plainspoken subgenre. And while Thornton isn’t quite thriving yet, it’s clear that if he keeps at it, he’ll be playing to larger audiences in no time.
“The bands I grew up in were all rock bands, and I’m a classic rock freak and a big fan of old-fashioned country music,” Thornton said. “I’m not as big on modern-day country music. I call that stuff hair-band music with a steel guitar. And it’s not my bag, as a songwriter.”
As a songwriter, Thornton is unsurprisingly inspired by Johnny Cash – the person and the performer. Thornton was moved in the early ’90s when he got a request from Cash for an autographed copy of the 1992 movie “One False Move.”
“I was like, ‘Are you kidding me? You want my autograph?”‘ he said. “But later as I got to know them all, I became really close with them, and Cash and June were like an aunt and uncle to me. I knew all those guys, the Highwaymen guys, and Willie and Waylon and Cash and Kristofferson were guys who took me under their wing over the years. I used to stay at Johnny’s house.”
Outside of his personal relationship with Cash, Thornton remains moved at the late country singer’s ability to write songs about everything under the sun.
“He didn’t try and be politically correct always,” Thornton said. “He didn’t just want to sing happy songs. He wrote about pain and hard life and murder and everything else, and I always dug that about him, that he wasn’t trying to make pop hits. He was just telling stories.
“You can say that Whitney Houston is a great singer and Kris Kristofferson is not. But I look at it differently. When I think about the best singers, I think about who tells the story the best? It’s not just a voice that’s empty, and I’m not saying Whitney Houston has that kind of voice. But there are these people out there with these incredible voices, but you still don’t care. With Cash, you’ll listen to every word.”
As much as he’s found comfort in Americana and roots music, Thornton doesn’t play exclusively that style. With a name like Billy Bob, there’s gotta be some hillbilly music in there somewhere – and sure enough, the singer-drummer-guitarist’s other band, the Boxmasters, are opening for Thornton on this tour.
“It’s full-on hillbilly music, played by guys who are obviously in a rock band,” Thornton said. “Actually it’s somewhere between hillbilly and rockabilly, and it’s exactly the same guys from my original band. But we look and dress different, with a ’60s vibe, and sometimes we’ll wear old Porter Wagoner suits.”
Pop music critic Ricardo Baca can be reached at 303-954-1394 or rbaca@denverpost.com.
Billy Bob Thornton
AMERICANA|Bluebird Theatre, 8 p.m. Monday with the Boxmasters|$25|ticketmaster.com, 303-830-8497
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– Ricardo Baca
