“Music’s always been my first love,” says actor Billy Bob Thornton, one of the most acclaimed actors of his generation. “I’m almost a music geek.”
Thornton’s third album, “Hobo,” comes out Tuesday. Unlike its predecessors—both of which achieved gold–record status—this one has no rock or country songs, focusing instead on dark, smoky, half–spoken narratives.
“In this day and time, you can’t do eclectic records,” Thornton, 50, explains by phone from his Los Angeles office.
“We decided this was the thing we do best. I thought, ‘There’s plenty of people out there doing rock songs, and doing ’em well. But the fact of the matter is that my strength is as a storyteller, so let’s just stay with that.’ ”
The album, which Thornton originally wanted to call “California Possibilities,” is essentially a series of songs about one person’s exodus to the Golden State—similar to the one Thornton took in 1981, from his home in Arkansas.
“It’s really the story arc for everybody who comes out here,” says Thornton. “My other records have been very personal, and this one can literally be about anybody.
“It’s not that I didn’t have all these experiences, but I didn’t set out to write about me. It just kind of came out that way.”
Thornton was drumming for a ZZ Top tribute band when he went west in 1981, looking for work in music, movies or whatever came his way. “Sling Blade,” which he wrote, directed and starred in, brought him the 1996 Academy Award for screenwriting.
Since then, he’s been through the celebrity fodder machine—via his brief but doomed marriage to Angelina Jolie,—and a series of smash films including “A Simple Plan,” “Primary Colors,” “Monster’s Ball,” “Bad Santa” and this year’s “Bad News Bears.”
His next movie, “The Ice Harvest,” co–stars John Cusack, and will be released Nov. 23.
He still, however, considers himself a musician who got lucky in the movies. Indeed, Thornton likes to talk about the Band and the Allman Brothers more than his filmography.
“I still read liner notes,” he enthuses, “and when I’m up at night and my girlfriend’s asleep, I figure out different ways to categorize my CDs and my vinyl. I’m like, ‘Let me put my Porter Wagoner statue over here on this shelf, and I’ll put all my Frank Zappa records right here.'”
New arrivals to the west often are in for a culture shock, Thornton says. “Not all of California is full of swimming pools and movie stars.”
In such songs as “El Centro on $5 a Day,” he assumes the role of a state trooper telling a new arrival about the harsh realities of small–town life in the Golden State.
“Everybody who comes to California has such great expectations of what it is—and what they’re really talking about is L.A.,” Thornton says. “California’s a very diverse place; these towns could be in Kansas, they could be in New Jersey, or Florida or whatever.”
For the record, Thornton says he loves his adoptive home. “The fact of the matter is, my dreams were realized out here,” he explains. “I look at L.A. like that uncle you dread seeing at the family reunion, but at the same time there’s something about him you love.
“I wanted to pay tribute to this great old weird place, and at the same time point out all the miseries and troubles that you deal with.”
Thornton and his band will hit the road in February, playing small theaters on an intimate, living–room stage set, avoiding the big halls they’ve played (and sold out) in the past.
“I think I can tell my stories in that format better than any other way,” he says. “It’s not that I don’t sing rock ‘n’ roll songs—in our live shows, the high–energy, up–tempo songs go over better. Because audiences are out there throwin’ beer cans at each other’s heads; they don’t want to listen to some smoky, moody song.”
@2005 Bill DeYoung (published in Scripps Treasure Coast Newspapers)