T Bone Burnett is one of the United States’ most multi-faceted and successful artists. His multitude of musical identities include: acclaimed performer and songwriter; Grammy-winning producer (the Brother Where Art Thou? and Walk The Line soundtracks; the Tony Bennett and k.d. lang album A Wonderful World); Oscar-nominated songwriter (“The Scarlet Tide” from Cold Mountain); indie record label founder (DMZ Records); soundtrack composer/Executive Music Producer (Walk The Line The Big Lebowski); and versatile studio engineer (Elvis Costello, Roy Orbison, Tony Bennett, k.d. lang, Alison Krauss, Counting Crows, the Wallflowers, Sam Phillips, Gillian Welch and Ralph Stanley).
Born Joseph Henry Burnett in St. Louis, Missouri, T Bone grew up in Fort Worth, Texas where he first made records in 1965, producing Texas blues, country and rock & roll bands and occasionally himself.
In the early 1970s he relocated to Los Angeles, where he still lives and works as a producer and recording artist. In 1975 he toured with Bob Dylan’s Rolling Thunder Review tour before forming his own group, Alpha Band with other musicians from the tour.
Burnett returned to recording solo in the late 1970s and has gone on to record numerous critically acclaimed albums -including 1992’s The Criminal Under My Own Hat – under his own name. He has written music for two Sam Shepard plays – “Tooth of Crime (Second Dance)” and “The Late Henry Moss” – and composed music for a production of Bertolt Brecht’s “Mother Courage and Her Children” by Chicago’s Steppenwolf TheatreCompany.
A prolific and versatile producer T Bone Burnett has produced highly successful recordings for Elvis Costello Roy Orbison Tony Bennett k.d. lang Alison Krauss Counting Crows the Wallflowers Sam-Phillips Gillian Welch and’ Ralph Stanley among numerous others. Burnett was musical director for the concert film Roy Orbison and Friends: Black and White Night which featured Orbison and an all-star band of Bruce Springsteen Elvis Costello TomWaits Bonnie Raitt Burnett and many others.
In 2001 he served as Composer and Music Producer for the Coen Brothers’ film, O Brother Where Art Thou?, scoring the film and producing a soundtrack of old-time American music performed by musicians relatively unknown to the public at large. That soundtrack album became nothing less than a cultural phenomenon selling nearly 9 million copies and dominating the Billboard album chart for more than a year.
Burnett and the CoenBrothers joined forces again in 2002 to form DMZ Records, a joint venture with Columbia Records and produced the new label’s inaugural releases; a new album by the legendary bluegrass musician Ralph Stanley and the Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood soundtrack.
DMZ has since released several critically-acclaimed soundtrack albums produced or executive-produced by Burnett including Cold Mountain (2003), A Mighty Wind (2003), Crossing Jordan (2003), and The Lady killers (2004).
One of his songs for Cold Mountain, The Scarlet Tide, co-written with Elvis Costello and sung by Alison Krauss was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Song and won the BAFTA (British Academy of Film and Television Arts) Anthony Asquith Award for Film Music.
In 2005, T Bone served as Executive Music Producer for the highly-acclaimed Johnny Cash biopic Walk The Line, produced the film’s RIAA gold-certified soundtrack album Walk the Line and composed its score. Burnett’s work on that film earned him another Grammy (his sixth) for Best Compilation Soundtrack Album as well as a BAFTA nomination.
Burnett developed Raising Sand, a collaborative effort from Alison Krauss and Robert Plant, released in 2007. Burnett guided this project from an unlikely meeting of uniquely individual icons to a triumphant stunningly coherent artistic statement. As producer, bandleader and repertoire specialist, Burnett crafted settings that illuminated Plant and Krauss’ common musical ground while allowing each to shine in new and surprising ways. From ramshackle blues to hillbilly art song Raising Sand.
In 2006 T Bone emerged from a self-imposed 14-year hiatus as a recording artist to release two highly-anticipated and critically-acclaimed collections of music simultaneously; The True False Identity, his first album of new original songs since 1992 and Twenty Twenty – The Essential T Bone Burnett, a 4-song retrospective spanning his entire career of music-making.
T Bone said of his extended break, “After the last record (1992’s The Criminal Under My Own Hat) I felt I could write some new songs and go around the track again but I didn’t feel that I would get anywhere. The road had become too difficult. Music had come completely apart for me. But more importantly I didn’t have anything I wanted to say. It all seemed pointless so I decided to explore some of the other ideas that were coming my way. I needed freedom. I needed time to find another way into playing music again.”
It is no coincidence that T Bone released a retrospective and a new album on the same day. In his revelatory liner notes for Twenty Twenty he wrote: “This is the way I wanted to close the book on these songs from a dead man and open the book on die new life I am beginning after forty years of wandering in the desert.” An enigmatic sentiment coming from a man whose solo work has always been filled with droll humor sardonic wordplay and keen cultural observations. But for T Bone Burnett the past is prologue and The True False Identity fulfilled an artistic vision that’s been forming in the back of T’s brain for decades.
In addition to Robert Plant and Alison Krauss’s Raising Sand, Burnett also produced Cassandra Wilson’s Thunderbird album and the album from Seattle-based singer/songwriter Brandi Carlile. He also completed work as Executive Music Producer for the Julie Taymor-directed film Across The Universe- a fictional love story set in the 1960s and told through the songs.
Other productions included Elvis Costello’s album Secret, Profane & Sugarcane; The Union by Elton John and Leon Russell; Gregg Allman’s album Low Country Blues (2011), and the Punch Brothers’ fourth album, The Phosphorescent Blues (2015).
In 2019, he released the album titled The Invisible Light.
In 2024, T Bone Burnett released The Other Side, under Verve Forecast. The Other Side sees Burnett returning to his roots as a singer and songwriter, exploring various genres of American music. The 12-song album centers around a love story that transcends the physical world. Co-produced by Colin Linden, Mike Piersante, and Burnett, the album features contributions from artists like Rosanne Cash, Steven Soles, Lucius, Weyes Blood, and longtime collaborators such as Dennis Crouch, Stuart Duncan, Jay Bellerose, and Rory Hoffman.
The album’s second single, “Sometimes I Wonder,” follows the lead single, “Waiting for You,” which features Lucius. This album marks a departure from Burnett’s previous dystopian-themed The Invisible Light series, presenting a more personal and introspective approach. While some tracks had been in development for some time, the majority of the album was created in a creative burst after Burnett purchased new guitars. On The Other Side showcases some of the most direct and vocally rich performances of Burnett’s career.
When Burnett was making his new record, he was thinking a lot about “you.”
“I was reading a news story that some shocking percentage of number one hit songs had the word you in the title,” he says, and started contemplating who all those “yous” are and what it means when an artist puts them in a song. He realized that for many years, when he worked on his own solo albums as a singer-songwriter, he had been “tough” on listeners.
“I view the purpose of art as creating conscience, so I was constantly appealing to people’s consciences,” he says of a solo career that stretches back to the mid- ‘70s, “but I realized when a songwriter uses the word you, he is, of course, in the world of conscience, but he’s also in the world of people’s dreams. And when you enter into people’s dreams, you have to be very careful with them.”
Author: Angel Romero
Angel Romero y Ruiz has dedicated his life to musical exploration. His efforts included the creation of two online portals, worldmusiccentral.org and musicasdelmundo.com. In addition, Angel is the co-founder of the Transglobal World Music Chart, a panel of world music DJs and writers that celebrates global sounds. Furthermore, he delved into the record business, producing world music studio albums and compilations. His works have appeared on Alula Records, Ellipsis Arts, Indígena Records and Music of the World.