There’s this Los Angeles band called the Boxmasters. Heard of ‘em? They play country-pop (or “Modbilly” as they like to call it) in the vein of the Byrds, Muswell Hillbillies, and Mike Nesmith. Ring any bells? They put out three albums in the past year! Still never heard of them? Oh, well, their singer and sometime drummer is actor/screenwriter/director Billy Bob Thornton. Now let’s say you’re a journalist. What are you gonna ask about: the music of yet another country-pop band or the fact that your singer is a pretty famous dude in another industry? Yesterday, CBC host Jian Ghomeshi made the unpardonable mistake of placing the Boxmasters’ music in the context of their singer’s more well-known endeavors. He paid the price with an interview that careened from awkward to esoteric to combative.
Sample question and response:
Ghomeshi: And that was true for you, Billy Bob, growing up it was sort of a combo of Stones and Monkees and Buck Owens?
Thornton: I just liked baseball when I was a kid.
Ghomeshi: And you almost became a professional baseball player, right?
Thornton: I don’t know. Maybe.
Ghomeshi: But you didn’t love music when you were a kid?
Thornton: I subscribed to a magazine called Famous Monsters in Filmland, which the publisher was a guy named Forrest J. Ackerman, who passed away recently.
Things got way worse after that, with Thornton getting onto the host about suggesting that “music was his first love,” even going so far as to boast that he is “pretty much a music historian.” Thornton kept bringing up Tom Petty, saying that Ghomeshi wouldn’t ask Tom Petty these questions. He’s right. Ghomeshi wouldn’t ask Petty these questions because Petty has a three-decade career of writing hit songs with only brief dalliances into acting. Sorry, Billy Bob, but if you’d wanted to be thought of only as a musician then you should have started with that. Sorry that Academy Award has forever tainted your ability to devote yourself to being a middling retro-rock musician!
I like Billy Bob Thornton. I love Bad Santa and A Simple Plan. Sling Blade, though flawed, is one of the few movies I’ve seen that depicts the real American South as something more than cornpone accents, mossy plantations, and people fanning themselves in courtrooms. (We have air conditioning here and have had it for some time!) However, it’s unreasonable for him to go through interviews expecting nobody to ask him about his more successful—monetarily and aesthetically—career? Thornton suggests to Ghomeshi that these questions were declared off-limits before the interview, but Ghomeshi says he never heard such a thing. Later, Thornton’s own spokesperson confirmed that they didn’t tell anybody what questions to ask. In my view, Ghomeshi wins this round and Thornton comes off looking like a turbodouche. The other Boxmasters seem like nice fellas, but this probably wasn’t the type of publicity they were seeking when they signed on to that famous guy’s band.
Q TV’s tags of this interview’s YouTube are hilarious:
“billy bob thornton blow up cbc tv qtv jian ghomeshi radio vs ass of himself crazy joaquin phoenix boxmasters perez hilton willie nelson actor music oscars”
Note the de rigeur usage of “joaquin phoenix” as shorthand for “crazy celebrity interview.” Oh, Leaf, you’ve come so far!
I feel bad for the other guys in the band when they are trying to be normal and nice and BBT is out of his freakin mind. So awkward! Of course, based on the description of the music, even a silly term like “modbilly” makes me want to hear the music, as I’m a big fan of Mike Neswmith, etc.
Actaully, the funniest thing is that one of the members of the Boxmasters in the studio is Danny Baker, aka Unknown Hinson and the voice of Early Cuyler from Squidbillies. I wonder what he was thinking in the midst of BBT’s act.
I would’ve much prefered to see him talking about something like this:
+ Watch video
@Sara Sherr: I listened to ‘em, and the songs have clean production and pretty tight songwriting. The vocals are okay, but the lyrics are generally pretty stupid, with completely unnecessary cursing and lines about things like “rain babies”. I’d say BBT is the weak link!
Dude is full of shit and the rest of the band is a bunch of wusses for not calling him on it. For someone who wants to be treated like just another guy in the band, he sure is self-important and he sure does expect his ass kissed. It’s probably fun to pretend your film career has nothing to do with getting to tour with Willie Nelson, but you can’t expect the rest of the world to play along.
I’ll be at the show at Massey Hall tonight. I expect Billy Bob and Co. to receive a chilly greeting. Sad that this buffoon will get all the attention instead of Willie.
What a dick.
That is Unknown Hinson! I knew that guy looked familiar! Thanks for pointing that out.
This interview is classic.
Jian was merely trying to get Billy Bob to reveal his secret past as the King of Spain
@pr0FF3ss0r_j3rkwh3at: Hahah, I *thought* that name sounded awfully familiar. I think I interviewed him back in 1994 or so (and a v. friendly fellow he was).
That was painful. Maybe Billy Bob was just pissed because he didn’t get the memo from the rest of the band about wering horn rimmed glasses. In any case wattadikk!
@Ned Raggett: @pr0FF3ss0r_j3rkwh3at: Wait. That guy was in Moxy Fruvous?
@Lucas Jensen: And how do I know that?
You just do, admit it. Sing along now:
Oh, I forgot to include in here that Billy Bob didn’t perform because he said he “forgot his drums.”
The remarkable thing is that the interviewer doesn’t even ask a single question about anything other than music, until his hand is finally forced by BBT spending 10 minutes brooding over the innocuous introduction.
@ChrisWillman: Yeah, he mentioned it at the beginning and that was it. I thought the interview was remarkably music-centric.
Is there any sort of legal action that can be taken to prevent further egregious misuse of the modifier “mod”? As in “modbilly”? That’s completely stupid and wrong. At least when used by a bunch of scruffy country posers.
Damn this thread for making me remember Moxy Fruvous!
@ Lucas: I believe Jiam told you specifically to please stick to the fact that he’s an interviewer for CBC and stop mentioning that he was in Moxy Fruvous. :)
I guess Canadians don’t like being described as “mashed potatoes but no gravy”.