By John Voket

When actors decide to further expand or explore their skill set by venturing into the music business, it can often mean backing musicians are saddled with the responsibility of making their new front person look and sound as good as possible.

At the same time, actors who are ultimately comfortable acting may also become decidedly uncomfortable when stepping into the role of fronting a band.

Neither was the case with Oscar winner Billy Bob Thornton, who is bringing his band The Boxmasters into Mohegan Sun's Wolf Den for a free holiday weekend show.

Thornton and his bandmate of a dozen years, J.D. Andrew, recently called in to The Newtown Bee to invite readers out to the show to experience The Boxmasters own brand of Psycho-billy fireworks on Saturday, July 6 — and to chat a bit about their ninth and latest project entitled Speck.

"The reason it's called Speck is it reflects the problems of tiny humans in a giant universe — from personal problems to global problems," Thornton said. "We've got some political songs on this one I think touch subjects that are on everybody's mind right now. We really set out after recording the first three or four songs, to make an album that was loosely thematic and ultimately we grew into it. Once we got the other songs done we knew they fit the record."

Thornton said the Boxmasters decided to open the new album with "I Wanna Go Where You Go" because it involves "personal stuff between two people."

"Really it's about how young people are struggling so hard these days to figure out who they are in the world they're living in," Thornton said, "and this is one telling the other, 'hey, you're better than you think you are, and don't chance me off because you're down on yourself.' Then it leads into songs about power, the beauty and destructive forces of nature with "Here She Comes" — a song that's literally about a tornado. Then you've got "Day's Gone," which was inspired by a homeless encampment in Westwood, California."

Thornton said another number, "Watchin' the Radio," was actually written before The Boxmasters settled down to complete writing for Speck, and it was performed nightly on their last tour, so it naturally rises to the point of being one of the tightest and most confidently delivered songs on the new album.

"I wrote 'Watching The Radio' about the fact that we aren't so keen on people listening in, or watching us in our underwear through our TVs and computers," Thornton said. "Originally, it didn't have the lyrics in it that were tied to the government — those were added. It was originally more about loneliness and it became a more political song, like "Let the Bleeding Pray," whose message becomes pretty obvious if you just listen to the lyrics."

According to the band's advance, Speck is the product of Thornton and The Boxmasters, which also includes Teddy Andreadis on harmonica and keys, in collaboration with legendary Engineer/Producer Geoff Emerick for an album that Geoff has called, “One of the most exciting projects I’ve worked on since The Beatles.”

Speck dropped on June 7 through KeenTone Records / Thirty Tigers, but sadly, Geoff passed away before the album was formally released.

Known for taking over the engineer’s chair on The Beatle’s albums Revolver, and Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, Geoff added a familiar sonic touch to the sound of The Boxmasters, who have been unapologetic Beatles and British Invasion fans. His work on albums by Badfinger, The Zombies, America, and Paul McCartney, among many others, had been a huge influence on The Boxmasters.

Speck touches on all of The Boxmaster’s influences, including The Beatles, The Byrds and Big Star but there are new sonic touches as well. Ukulele, cardboard boxes and the Beatle’s famous “tea towels on the drums” trick pop up on songs throughout the album.

“Geoff really did an amazing job on the mixing of this album and did it in a way that you recognize sounds you’ve known all of your life, but at that same time are in a new way. And I really loved being able to sit back and enjoy the mixes of an album instead of sweating every tiny detail of every song,” remarked J.D., who typically mixes all of The Boxmaster’s material.

The always prolific trio has also been working on finishing another long awaited project titled And Then We Drove, as well as contributing music to an upcoming independent feature film. One might think that with all his motion picture and television connections, Thornton would be a natural go to when it came to providing music for films — but he said that was not the case by design.

"I really keep the two things separate, and I certainly don't [solicit Boxmasters music] through my work in the film business connections," Thornton said. "But we have had songs in movies. Recently there's a little independent film called Spare Room, and I was asked to sing the theme song. But then I told the producer this song is all well and good, but how about we do a Boxmasters version of it for the end title? So we did more of a rock song version of it, where in the body of the movie it's a ballad.

"Then they came back and said they weren't really happy with the score, do you guys want to give us some score music? So we did," Thornton said. Another favorite insertion of Boxmasters came when the band was asked by creator Jenji Kohan to record their own version of "Little Boxes" for the opening of an episode of the Emmy and Golden Globe winning series Weeds.

"We also scored a documentary that was never released because it's tied up in financing issues," Thornton said. "But I don't go out and try and get Boxmasters songs into these films. We've got some other stuff that's more cinematic, you might say — some concept records that you'll really dig that sound a lot like film music. One of these days we'll get that out there."

Flashing back to the early days of the band, both Thornton who was a lifelong musician and singer, as well as Andrew, laughed out loud when asked whether Thornton was intimidated to be walking into a studio cold to attempt collaborating with the established engineer, producer, mixer, musician, film score composer, and music editor.

"I was excited," Andrew admitted. "Billy's music manager at the time was a good friend of mine and had been talking up a record he was working on for quite a while. She had been hinting to me that the opportunity would be coming up. So I heard some of his earlier solo stuff a few days before meeting him. She played [Thornton's solo album] Beautiful Door for me and it was eye opening — I was really impressed from the first few notes.

"So once we started working on it, we discovered we were like minded on a number of things, they types of music that we liked, and Billy actually taught me a lot about some bands I heard of but didn't really know a lot about," he added.

"In the entertainment business you meet new people all the time," Thornton said. "So you get used to size people up in the first few minutes. That's part of being successful in the entertainment business. So meeting J/d. was pretty easy because it was just two people who never met before, all alone in a recording studio, which you know if you've ever been in one is really isolating.

"If it was somebody you didn't mesh with, it would have been kind of difficult to work with, but there was never any of that kind of discomfort with J.D. All I kept thinking was, this is cool — let's make some records!"

Anyone heading to The Boxmasters free show at Mohegan Sun on July 6 at 8 pm should note — you must be 21 years of age to enter the Wolf Den. Lines form early and seats are given on a first-come, first-serve basis until the venue is at full capacity.

One person can hold four spots in line, but seats will only be given to those present at the time of seating. Limited seating available. The Wolf Den is a non-smoking entertainment venue.

Learn more about The Boxmasters by visiting [naviga:u]theboxmasters.com[/naviga:u].