T Bone Burnett_A Life in Pursuit

by Lloyd Sachs

  Of these releases, Giddens’s has created the most excitement. As we have seen, Burnett has done some of his best work with female vocalists. Among the ones I haven’t mentioned are Brandi Carlile, whose career-making 2007 album The Story benefited from his surprise move to have her band record its road-tested songs with vintage instruments; the Canadian-born Australian Wendy Matthews, whose 1992 album Lily went double-platinum Down Under; Natalie Merchant, whose 2001 album Motherland is one of the best of her post–10,000 Maniacs efforts; and the sleekly harmonizing neo-traditional country duo the Secret Sisters, who got to complete a Dylan demo, “Dirty Lies,” on their 2014 effort Put Your Needle Down. One of the reasons the women fare so well with him is that in an era in which so many female pop singers imitate the vocal acrobatics of Mariah Carey, he won’t tolerate those who “attract attention to the fact that they’re singing,” as he told Performing Songwriter. “I just want them to say the word. That word has its own meaning; you don’t have to give it meaning, so just say it.”

  In Giddens, he found someone who “just says it” and then some. The North Carolina native, who emerged with the Carolina Chocolate Drops (their 2009 debut, Genuine Negro Jig, was produced by Joe Henry), has a powerful, opera-trained voice but practices the kind of winning, unmannered folk diplomacy that made Harry Belafonte so popular in the late 1950s and early 1960s, via his Carnegie Hall recordings. On Tomorrow Is My Turn, she reaches across a broad spectrum of styles and eras as an entertainer first and a teacher of traditions second. The beauty of the album is how she transcends history even as she avails herself of it.

  In a departure from his usual approach, Burnett had Giddens draw up her own list of songs, asking her to come up with tunes she would put on her “dream album.” She chose music by strong-willed female artists that had been going through her head—a wide selection ranging from the 1930s blues singer Geeshie Wiley to the 1960s jazz sorceress Nina Simone. Tomorrow boasts smart string and horn arrangements by the Punch Brother Gabe Witcher, but this is, decisively, a vocal album. Planting her feet firmly and projecting—really projecting, something too few singers do anymore—Giddens brings spellbinding power to songs such as Sister Rosetta Tharpe’s rocking “Up above My Head” and the hard-bitten Patsy Cline vehicle “She’s Got You,” which has never sounded more convincing.

  Giddens’s first gig with Burnett was as a contributor to The Hunger Games: Songs from District 12 and Beyond. “He wanted ‘Appalachian music from 300 years in the future,’” Giddens told the New York Times. She delivered it by turning Hazel Dickens’s stark bluegrass reverie “Pretty Bird” into a jig-like ballad, “Daughter’s Lament.” Burnett then enlisted her for the Another Day, Another Time concert at Town Hall, held in September 2013 to promote the Coen Brothers’ Inside Llewyn Davis, where she had the crowd whooping with the Odetta staple “Water Boy.” And then came the trial by fire of Lost on the River, an experience she documented in the original song “Angel City,” with which she concludes Tomorrow Is My Turn. Some producers, in the interest of preserving the cover version concept of Tomorrow, might have gotten Giddens to save that tune for another album. Burnett included it to extend the album’s chronology into the present—and announce that, in fact, today is Giddens’s turn.

  Like many listeners, Burnett was drawn to the Punch Brothers by their scary brilliance as musicians—by the ingenuity with which they floated above bluegrass and classical music and jazz—and the star potential of their mandolinist Chris Thile (who in the summer of 2015 was named the new host of the long-running NPR favorite A Prairie Home Companion). Burnett signed the band up for the all-star Speaking Clock Revue, which visited New York and Boston in 2010 and recorded an album, performed with them as guest guitarist at the Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival in San Francisco, and featured them on the soundtracks of The Hunger Games and Inside Llewyn Davis. The Punch Brothers also were the house band for the Another Day, Another Time concert.

  Even knowing Burnett as well as they did, Thile, Witcher, and their Punch siblings didn’t know what to expect when they went into Ocean Way during the summer of 2014 for what proved to be a month’s worth of recording. Though the producer introduced drums to their airy sound, overdubbed some strings, and played some guitar to sharpen the musical texture on The Phosphorescent Blues, their fourth full-length album, he mostly left them to their own freewheeling devices. With its sudden episodic shifts and tricky time signatures, the ten-minute opener “Familiarity” is the album’s grabber, creating excitement by being more than the sum of its interludes. With its plea for human connection in the age of text messaging, the song is the heart of the album. “Singing while T Bone was in the control room,” Thile wrote on the band’s website, “I felt what it was like for an actor to work with a great director. He would find ways to get me into my own lyrics.”

  The Punch Brothers may not be the Hot Five of their era—and considering how many side projects the individual members are involved in, they may well not last any longer as a group than did Louis Armstrong’s famous band. But in the end, you can forgive Burnett for suggesting, and maybe even believing, that they’re on the same level. The Punch generation sorely needs to have a Hot Five—and a Ray Charles and a Bing Crosby and an Ella Fitzgerald—to set the bar high. We are told that kids these days place little value in the future; they don’t even take one for granted. Through their involvement in American tradition and their up-to-the-moment ingenuity in creating meaningful ripples in it, young artists like Giddens and Thile awaken us to the timelessness of possibility.

  Music that isn’t reinvented remains stuck in place. Reinventing—reharmonizing, restructuring, reshaping, recontextualizing—doesn’t mean going where no artist has gone before. In the best cases, it means finding new and personal modes of expression by building on and expanding available models. Punk music didn’t come out of a vacuum, but rather reprocessed and readrenalized elemental rock. As radical as rap and hip-hop first seemed, they had James Brown and Gil Scott-Heron, P-Funk and Chic, whispering in their ears. The freest of free jazz artists are shaped by the blues-based breakthroughs of Charlie Parker and those musicians who influenced him.

  As a producer prized for his authentic touch in treating roots-based styles, Burnett might not seem like this kind of trailblazer. But in freeing up traditional sounds in such a way that they can speak to the future, and the future can knowingly speak back to them, he belongs in the company of artists who have pushed the music forward. “To remember is incredibly important. But I think one has to be selective in what he remembers at the same time. I’ve never wanted to be an anachronism. What I want to remember from the past is the wit of people like James Thurber and S. J. Perelman,” he told the Los Angeles Times, “and the heart and soul of people like Hank Williams and Muddy Waters. But I don’t think it’s nearly as important to keep the style and surface of what all that was alive.”

  Burnett has no monopoly on pursuit. It is in the Declaration of Independence. But after all these years of being surrounded by satisfied individuals who define themselves by what they have achieved, and how much money they have made, he continues to define himself by what he aspires to for the culture: new ways of making music and framing sound, of applying and integrating art, of inciting and provoking change—of daring ourselves to be better and, of course, to sound better.

  Once he attaches himself to a young artist with the right stuff, he is likely to stay attached. When the gospel-folk band Ollabelle was left in the lurch following the demise of his DMZ label, for which he produced their self-titled 2004 album, he used his influence to get them on Alison Krauss’s Great High Mountain Tour and secure them a gig as harmony vocalists on Across the Universe (2006), the film director Julie Taymor’s darkly fanciful Beatles musical, of which he was music producer. Unhappy with the mix on Ollabelle’s second album, Riverside Battle Songs (on Verve Forecast), produced by Larry Campbell in close association with him at his home studio (Mike Piersante did the engineering), he remixed it grati
s.

  “His old friends and new friends are never on vacation in his mind,” Sam Phillips said to me. The same can be said of old songs and new songs—including the ones that haven’t yet been written. After a long hiatus, Burnett was composing songs again. In late 2015, it was announced he was writing the music and lyrics for Happy Trails, a Broadway musical about Roy Rogers and Dale Evans—replacing, ironically, the Disney composer Alan Menken (known for The Little Mermaid and Aladdin) and his partner, Glenn Slater. On the weather map of possibilities—or, okay, fervent wishes—a new T Bone Burnett album was blowing in from the West, somewhere in the wide open spaces between Electromagnetic City and the Athens of the South. As long as his hopes and dreams stay in motion, you have to figure, the man is reasonably satisfied.

  THE KILL SQUAD: A SHORT LIST OF LONGTIME MUSICAL ASSOCIATES

  CARLA AZAR, DRUMS

  Azar was tipped off to Burnett in 2001 by Joe Henry. Burnett didn’t need any convincing after seeing her play with her experimental LA trio Autolux, which became the first band he signed to DMZ, the short-lived label he formed with the Coen Brothers. Though record label changes and a horrendous injury to Azar’s elbow slowed the band’s momentum after its impressive 2004 Burnett-produced debut Future Perfect, they have remained in the game, and Azar has become a star. Among her recent credits were playing with Jack White and appearing as a drummer in the Michael Fassbender film Frank.

  Schooled on classic rock, Azar is a ferocious drummer in the manner of her idol Keith Moon and has embraced synthetic drums, programming, and “sick beats.” “She never plays anything straight,” Burnett told Modern Drummer. “She’s always doing something beyond. And she can play more quietly than anybody else I know and still groove.” That Jim Keltner, one of the most individual-minded drummers, became enamored of playing in a two-drum setting with her speaks volumes about her abilities.

  JAY BELLEROSE, DRUMS

  No single musician has been more important in the development of Burnett’s mature deep-end sound than Bellerose, an extravagantly inventive and intuitive drummer with the ability to change the aural atmosphere in the studio. Many or most drummers establish their comfort zone and stay there. Bellerose sets things up differently for each song, customizing sounds and textures to the needs of the song, and is happy to keep trying new things to achieve the desired effect.

  A native of Maine, Bellerose started out playing jazz, idolizing Gene Krupa. He attended Boston’s prestigious Berklee College of Music for one year before an instructor, recognizing his uniqueness—and basic unteachability—told him to take off. Bellerose followed a girlfriend to California in the late 1980s and, after a difficult period during which no one in Los Angeles cottoned to his idiosyncratic approach, found a foothold.

  His first significant gig was in 2000 with Joe Henry, who hired him for a tour, sight unseen, based on the recommendation of the bassist Jennifer Condos (now Bellerose’s life partner of twenty years). She had been blown away seeing him play cardboard boxes at a party. Bellerose had actually agreed to join the band backing former Talking Heads front man David Byrne, but chose to play with Henry because he liked his music and, he told me, “I didn’t see myself playing with Byrne.” (Ironically, Henry was Byrne’s opening act.)

  “Jay is like a painter,” Henry told me. “He’s completely and unfailingly song-oriented. He has a genius for keeping the pulse going, with some subliminal kind of tone. It’s tricky for a drummer to be present with a singer, to give the singer a foil and some ballast. He serves the singer by pushing against them with his phrasing, something you feel more than hear.”

  KEEFUS CIANCIA, KEYBOARDS

  Ciancia first worked with Burnett on the soundtrack for Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood. The film featured “Drug State,” an exotic groove piece with a melody borrowing from “My Funny Valentine” created by Burnett and Vincent & Mr. Green—Ciancia’s goth-style duo with the singer Jade Vincent. With his hip-hop seasoning, Ciancia has a talent for subtly underwriting the beats into other styles. He is also an acknowledged master of weird effects.

  “I honestly don’t know what some of the sounds are,” Burnett told Mix. “I’ll e-mail him and say, ‘What the hell is a harp-piano?’ and he’ll write back, ‘Yes!’” “I call him the ‘texturizer,’” said Cassandra Wilson, whose album Thunderbird he co-produced. “I’ve never seen anyone do such intensive work on a sound, an idea, a thought, an impression, or a feeling.”

  JIM KELTNER, DRUMS

  An Oklahoma native, Keltner first hooked up with Burnett in the late 1960s, when he was a member of the Fare, a Texas band young Burnett was producing. He made a name for himself in Los Angeles playing with the likes of Gábor Szabó, one of the leading jazz guitarists of the day. He soon entered the ranks of the Wrecking Crew, as the city’s fabled collection of super-prolific but virtually anonymous studio aces would be known. Among his first records was the Gary Lewis and the Playboys track “She’s Just My Style,” a big hit for the comedian Jerry Lewis’s son produced by fellow Tulsan Leon Russell.

  In the fall of 1968, after subbing for Delaney & Bonnie’s drummer, Keltner began playing with that husband-and-wife band regularly and appeared on their 1969 album Accept No Substitute. He made a splash with Joe Cocker’s Leon Russell–directed Mad Dogs and Englishmen band. As a drummer who could adapt to anyone’s style without compromising his personal approach, he built up a remarkable résumé boasting recordings and live dates with John Lennon, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr as well as Bob Dylan, Jimmy Webb, Ry Cooder, Steely Dan, and Barbra Streisand.

  Though he is one of rock’s finest groove-oriented drummers, his playing has a coolly understated, seemingly effortless quality. As different as he is from Charlie Watts, the Stones’ Zeusian rock of time, they share a centered, poised quality that reflects their shared background in jazz. “Keltner broke the mold of what drummers were supposed to do,” said Jay Bellerose, who has played in a dual drum format with Keltner on various Burnett recordings. “He keeps a different kind of time; his concept is more elastic and forgiving. He floats and breathes and makes you dance. He has always been a song and lyric guy, and very performance-oriented.”

  DARRELL LEONARD, HORNS, ARRANGEMENTS

  Even though he has been one of Burnett’s most valuable weapons in the studio since the days of Sound City, Leonard remains one of his best-kept secrets. An Iowa native schooled in the high-powered music program at North Texas State (now called the University of North Texas), he met Burnett in the late 1960s when the Third Avenue Blues Band, of which he was a member, recorded at the Fort Worth studio. (The touring group’s drummer, Bill Maxwell, has played and done arrangements for Burnett over the years as well.) Leonard has played on and/or contributed charts to dozens of Burnett albums.

  “T Bone sends me stuff and asks whether we should put horns on it,” he told me. “I see whether we can make it work. People often call and say, ‘Can you give us some Memphis Horns, that kind of sound?’ We try to paint outside the box, using different combinations of horns, including French horn. We try to make the horns part of the rhythm section, not the kind of arrangements where it’s ‘Here come the horns!’”

  MIKE PIERSANTE, ENGINEER

  Piersante may not play with the kill squad unit, but he deserves recognition as a full-fledged member for all he has done to enhance their sound. Burnett met him while producing the Wallflowers at Sunset Sound, where “Mikey” was a second engineer. It proved to be a memorable first encounter. “In that era, the second engineer was a whipping boy for clients of that ilk,” Piersante told me. “But T Bone found a way to treat me as part of the party, if not an equal. At one point, he went around the room asking people what they thought about something. He looked at me and asked me what I thought—the first time a producer had done that. I knew right then that this guy was different.”

  Before making Piersante his regular right-hand man in the studio, Burnett had used different engineers for different recordings, depending on what
they would bring to a particular project. Having him on permanent call as engineer and mixer brought a consistency to the recordings that enabled Burnett to develop the complex sound for which he is known. Piersante, who has won numerous Grammys for his work with Burnett, said he learned from the legendary Texas producer many of the techniques and methods he practices, crucial concepts in control and separation among them.

  “I’m the captain of his vision,” Piersante told me. “I know what he wants to hear. To a large extent, that has freed him from having to worry about the sound.” And when he does worry? “T Bone is like Clint Eastwood in Unforgiven,” Piersante said. “He goes into this slow-motion mode, the calm in the storm. Even in a hail of gunfire, he never panics.”

  MARC RIBOT, GUITAR

  Since emerging from New York’s experimental scene in the mid-1980s, Ribot has left his idiosyncratic imprint on virtually every form of music. Best known by rock fans for his boldly inventive work with Tom Waits, who calls him “the Lon Chaney of the guitar,” he can at any moment reflect the influence of Duane Eddy or Thelonious Monk, Charley Patton or Charlie Christian, Andres Segovia or Lou Reed. He is lionized in jazz for his remarkable solo improvisations, his interpretations of the free jazz giant Albert Ayler’s works, and his Cuban crossover efforts with his band Los Cubanos Postizos.

  Ribot, who first worked with Burnett on Elvis Costello’s Spike, is all over Burnett’s discography. He has made crucial contributions to such Burnett albums as The Criminal under My Own Hat and The True False Identity, as well as a long list of Burnett productions ranging from Sam Phillips’s Cruel Intentions and David Poe to Robert Plant and Alison Krauss’s Raising Sand and Diana Krall’s Glad Rag Doll.