Riddle us this: when you look at Billy Bob Thornton, do you see a rockstar? You know you do! He has that passionate, rough-around-the-edges, sensual, creative aura and that sleek denim and leather look that altogether screams rockstar.
Crooning on stages near and far, calling out for an Americana-tinged rock revival, and swaggering alongside his bandmates, Billy Bob Thornton being a rockin’ musician of sorts just makes sense. His group, The Boxmasters, is electric, globe-trotting, and dedicated to making music that inspires others as much as it inspires them; whether it be to get on your feet, start your own band, or just release artistic energy in whatever means possible. They are not new, they are merely underground, scratching the surface release-after-release. His main man, music partner, and friend, J.D. Andrew is all-in on The Boxmasters, as well. He has an expressionist’s ear and a sleek musicality that balances the homegrown storytelling of the Academy Award-winning frontman.
Now, Billy Bob ‘Bud’ Thornton and J.D. Andrew are gearing up to captivate New Jersey later this week, and with a new album under their belt, some more rockers and rollers on stage, and more passion than most of today’s bands combined, they’re more than ready. This exhilarating return to Monmouth University’s Pollak Theatre in West Long Branch, New Jersey is a long time coming, too. Kirk McKim on guitar and Raymond Hardy on bass have rounded out the already homegrown, diverse sound of The Boxmasters.
For Thornton and Andrew, making music is like scratching an itch, and if doing so means rocking out on stage every few months after some heartfelt recording sessions, they’re going to keep on going. As hoped and as expected, the crowds have been responding phenomenally this time around “The audiences couldn’t have been better,” J.D. Andrew tells us while phoning in from the opposite coast while on the road right now. “It’s been kicked off as a really successful tour already, so we’re very happy right now.”
The songs are high quality narratives with melodies and riffs that are digestible for all – earnest and intriguing, only occasionally blistering, and rarely overly complex, whether on a studio recording or taking place in front of your very eyes.
“We take our songwriting very seriously,” Andrew explains. “Anytime people are talking about the songs, it means a lot to us, because we spend a lot of time recording these songs and a lot of thought goes into ’em. When somebody appreciates something musically and lyrically, it always makes us feel really good.” His allegiance to the craft is evident with every answer to every question, and, really, every aspect of this personable conversation we had.
The Boxmasters are authentic, as humans and artists, and they put their feelers out in terms of when the right time to release a song is, or where to put it on an album, or if it gets put on an album at all. The care and keeping of the tracks in The Boxmasters’ discography is commendable, and further proof that the masses need to get on board with it.
“This is kind of funny, but when we played Monmouth University before – we’ve only done it once – and when we came in there, we knew the town’s name only from the tour schedule. We didn’t really know it was at Monmouth University. We just thought it was in West Long Branch, New Jersey,” Thornton starts with a laugh. “We had gotten there and it was a Sunday, as I remember it, and it was drizzling rain – just kind of a dreary day. We get there and we were told that we’d only sold, I don’t know, like 50 tickets or whatever. It was this giant performing arts theater in like June or something, too! School wasn’t even in session! The promoter told us that, and then when we said, ‘Oh gosh, I’m so sorry we didn’t sell more tickets,’ she told us that school’s not in session and it was not a great time for this. When they wanted us back for this tour, we were shocked!”
Andrew and Thornton laugh, and it’s infectious. Thornton carries on, saying, “I thought, ‘You gotta be kidding me! We played to a pretty empty theater last time and we didn’t really notice any student-types!’ Evidently, not many people were going to summer school there, so it was mainly professor-types there. That’s why we always like to let people in a place we haven’t played before know that we are a rock band. We always stress that we’re a loud rock and roll band, because sometimes they may expect us to be sitting on stools doing Simon and Garfunkel stuff something. We just always make it clear for new places where we haven’t played, so, yes, we rock hard, and hopefully this year at Monmouth (since school is in session), it’ll work out better – at least in terms of the people who were there last time. I mean, we put 100% into a show, no matter if it’s 12 people or 5,000 people. We always go out and play the same show.”
“We wrote that song in 2009,” Thornton admits about their new record’s opening track, “Jayne Mansfield’s Car,” which was one of our favorites right from the get-go. “The reason it was never on a record was that it was heavier for us, but we used to play it live from time to time. Raymond, our bass player, he said to us this past year before we started recording Love & Hate, ‘You guys remember ‘Jayne Mansfield’s car?'” He goes, ‘I always loved playing that song, and every time you guys did that, it always made me happy.’ I mean, musically, for him, he just likes the melody and the way it sounds. The reason it didn’t end up on a record – along with another song on this new record called ‘I Never Dreamed I’d Lose, which e recorded at the same time – was because they were just a little too heavy for the things we were putting on our records at the time. Somehow they just never ended up on a record because of that, so when Raymond mentioned that song, we said, ‘You know what? Let’s just make ‘Jayne Mansfield’ the sort of blueprint for this album.'”
That slight edginess led the way, making Love & Hate In Desperate Places quite the textured LP, one worth diving deeper into as it shapes the current landscape of the group. “It’s usually just me and J.D. on the albums when we are recording, but we thought that we ought to just get Raymond and Kirk out here to play on this one. They normally we don’t play on the records, but they did this time, and it was really great having the whole bunch of us there. It was a really good creative time. This record is a little more rock than our usual sixties-oriented rock and roll… and I don’t even know if you’d call our older material rock and roll.”
He continues, declaring, “The good thing about this band is it’s hard to pigeonhole. It’s not easy to say, ‘Oh, they’re this style or that style. We’re just a band that writes original songs, but we’re influenced by so many people – mainly the British Invasion and the Southern California pop of the sixties and early seventies, and all of those influences go into the make up something of ours. This means that it comes out sounding like us. Even on our older roots records to the actual way we sound live – it’s changed over the years, but at the same time, you can listen to one of our records and know it’s us no matter which style we’re doing it at the time. I think that the special thing about Love & Hate is that it sounds like us when we play live.”
When they play live, The Boxmasters pay very close attention to all the details – something we appreciate just as much as they do. “We pay very close attention to sequencing; we always have,” Thornton shares when asked about the tracklist order for this particular record (and its subsequent tour setlist). “These days, with downloads and streaming and all this kind of stuff, people mainly concentrate on singles, you know? For us, we’re old school, so we still sequence our albums like you would’ve in 1969 or 1973 or whatever. It’s very important to do that because we like to look at each album as a story, and so in a way, all of our albums are concept albums.”
Billy Bob Thornton chuckled as he continued. “Here’s how anal we are about this stuff: you know the walk-in music where the doors open and you have stuff playing over the sound system in the venue? We don’t just have some radio station or playlist on that the House has or whatever. We have always handpicked the songs in the walk-in music, and it’s not shuffled. We actually sequence the walk-in music. I don’t know if anybody’s ever done that!”
These venues span far and wide, literally and figuratively, but every corner of the world and every type of fan gets that Boxmasters dedication – even the Cavern Club. (We’ll get back to that.) To prepare for that dedication and those live shows (if you’re heading out), most of the setlist comes from the last three or four albums, according to both Andrew and Thornton. The rooms will be filled with the last few years of Boxmasters songs, slower Americana deep cuts, as well as roof-raising soon-to-be fan favorites.
Andrew says, “We tend to like the bigger rock clubs and also theaters. Theaters are amphitheaters, and theater settings are obviously different from the rock clubs.” He and this band foster a community of vibrant artists, but equally as vibrant fans – it’s all about bringing them and their energy out to hear these songs and live in the moment alongside them. It’s pretty damn fun, one might say.
“The rock clubs… you know, they’re ready for you when you get there,” frontman Bud says, “because it’s usually a raucous type of audience. Sometimes in theaters, people have the idea that they have to be kind of reserved and sit there and listen and everything, but we usually turn theaters into rock clubs by the time it’s over! We like to invite [the fans] down to the front toward the end of the show. We let people know – usually those in the theaters – that they are not here at the theater to see Peter Pan. ‘You’re welcome to be crazy,’ we say to the audience, and they take it to heart,” he laughs.
Yes, they want you to rock, which means if you’re heading to the Pollak Theatre this week, you have to keep that in mind. Not only that, but this is a band that has, yes, played at the infamous Liverpool club where the Beatles got their start. The Cavern Club has been graced by the precedence of Billy Bob Thornton, J.D. Andrew, and crew; New Jersey can’t let them down!
Having been influenced by the Fab Four, music that came out of that area, and the stylings that put those revolutionary pop rockers on the map, we knew it had to have been quite the experience for the band. Those once dingy walls have history, and it only grew with this roots-y rock band taking to its bustling music scene.
“First of all, it was awesome,” Thornton exclaims about having a concert of his own there. “It was the second time I played there, though. I played there with my old solo band, too, before The Boxmasters, back in about 2001. When I first went there, the Cavern was more like it used to be in the old days; it was still kind of a musty, grubby old place.” He laughs. “It’s not very big – they say it holds like 350 or 400 people, but that’s if people go in those back rooms. There are still twice that many in there, though, for a show, so I guess they don’t have fire marshals over there.”
“[The Cavern Club] is something else,” he continues. “The dressing room hasn’t changed since Paul McCartney and John Lennon were there. It’s old, but there is a very lively atmosphere there. The neighborhood now, when we went back last year, has changed a lot. The street that it’s on? Now, you know that they’ve got brick streets and stuff over there, but over near the club has sort of turned into a little bit of a Universal CityWalk because there are all or these Beatles souvenir shops and things like that around there now. […] There is still a magic there, and just the fact that you’re on the stage is something. It’s not that tiny one the Beatles were on – although it’s still there to look at – but you’re in that room where those guys started.”
Both J.D. Andrew and Billy Bob Thornton are avid fans of The Beatles, as the latter of the two was quick to remind us. “I was eight years old, a little kid laying on a hardwood floor, watching an old Zenith black-and-white TV when saw the Beatles on The Ed Sullivan Show and it changed my entire life – just like a lot of other people’s. I mean, I think most musicians of that era would tell you that,” Thornton acknowledges with a smile in his voice at the childhood memory. “It was just an amazing experience both times I went there, and the great thing about the people in some of those towns in Europe is that they actually are coming out and singing the words, even when your record just came out. They’re already singing along! That happened on my solo record. There was this one young lady right in front of me and I had one record out when we played there, and one that we had recorded, but wasn’t out. Still, this girl sang along. She literally sang every lyric of every song we did from it. It’s an awesome place. And the first time I went there, I got to meet Gerry Marsden of Gerry and the Pacemakers and spend like two days with him and his family. We had some days off and he was a hero of mine. I watched him on TV growing up!”
“JD and I know all of these British Invasion people now. They’re friends of ours, and sometimes we can’t even believe it. I mean, we’ve just spent the last several months off-and-on, hanging out with Ronnie Wood from The Rolling Stones. I’ve known Ronnie for – oh God – I’ve known him for a long, long time, like well over 25 years! We hung out with Eric Burdon from The Animals recently who we didn’t know before. It’s such a special life, and it is so special to be considered a peer with your heroes. That is really amazing.”
FOR ALL THINGS BOXMASTERS, VISIT THEIR WEBSITE! TO GET TICKETS TO THIS FRIDAY’S JERSEY SHORE PERFORMANCE, CLICK HERE!
YOU CAN STREAM THE BAND’S LATEST RECORD, LOVE & HATE IN DESPERATE PLACES, WHEREVER YOU LISTEN TO MUSIC!
