T-Bone Burnett - Production and Other Professional Activities

Production and Other Professional Activities

Burnett has become best known as a music producer. He began producing albums for artists such as Counting Crows' August and Everything After; Los Lobos' How Will the Wolf Survive?; Elvis Costello's King of America and Spike; the Wallflowers' Bringing Down the Horse; Marshall Crenshaw's Downtown; Spinal Tap's Break Like The Wind; Gillian Welch's Revival and Hell Among the Yearlings; David Poe's self-titled debut; the Roy Orbison tribute A Black & White Night Live; two albums for Bruce Cockburn; and nearly everything released by his former wife, Sam Phillips, who has also performed under the name Leslie Phillips.

In 1985, Burnett collaborated with Elvis Costello on a single titled "The People's Limousine," using the moniker "The Coward Brothers."

In 1987, Burnett produced Roy Orbison's two-record album, In Dreams: The Greatest Hits and two songs of Mystery Girl. In 1997, Burnett created new songs for the Sam Shepard play, The Tooth of Crime: Second Dance, which premiered in New York City, during the same year in an off-Broadway production that featured Vincent D'Onofrio and Kirk Acevedo. A CD of these songs, Tooth of Crime, was released in May 2008, featuring guitarist Marc Ribot and backing vocals by Sam Phillips and singer/songwriter David Poe, whose self-titled debut Burnett also produced that year. According to Burnett, he was inspired by the music of Skip James, while composing the songs for the updated version of Shepard's play.

In April 2006, he announced that his first concert tour in nearly two decades would begin on May 16 in Chicago at The Vic Theater. Around the same time, jazz singer Cassandra Wilson released an album of blues songs, Thunderbird (2006), which was produced by Burnett. He also wrote one of the album's songs and co-wrote another with Ethan Coen. Burnett also produced music for the remake of the film All the King's Men.

In 2006, Burnett produced Brandi Carlile's The Story album, the title song of which became a minor hit and was featured on a special broadcast of ABC-TV's Grey's Anatomy. Carlile's guitarist and bassist, twins Tim and Phil Hanseroth, respectively, used instruments from Burnett's private collection during the unique "live" recordings in Vancouver, B.C.

In early 2007, Burnett earned nominations for two 2006 Grammy Awards, one as Producer of the Year for his work on Cassandra Wilson's Thunderbird album, the soundtrack to Walk the Line and his own The True False Identity. Walk the Line was nominated for Best Compilation Soundtrack Album for a Motion Picture, Television or Other Visual Media. Burnett earned another nomination for his efforts as Executive Music Producer and Album Producer on that soundtrack.

In October 2007, the Grammy-winning, Burnett-produced Raising Sand, a collaborative album featuring Alison Krauss and Robert Plant was released. Burnett plays guitar on ten of the 13 tracks.

In early 2008, Pete Townshend announced that Burnett was to go into the studio that fall to help produce an all covers album for The Who. However, on a May 15, 2008, episode of the NPR radio show, All Songs Considered, Burnett threw that project into question. He stated that in a blog, Townshend had indicated that he was putting all his projects on hold.

In 2008, it was reported that Burnett "started a new venture called Code, which aims to do for music what THX did for movie-theater sound: set standards that ensure the best possible quality." He is opposed to the trend of brighter and more compressed processing, sufficiently so, that he essentially retired from the music business around 1995–1996 and pursued an opportunity to work in theater with Sam Shepard, leading to his work on several films.

The audio format known as Code, involves the simultaneous release of multiple sound formats, thus avoiding much of the processing which happens when sound is converted from one format to another. Burnett produced John Mellencamp's album Life, Death, Love and Freedom, which was the first Code album when it was released on July 15, 2008. Burnett also produced Mellencamp's follow-up to Life, Death, Love and Freedom, titled No Better Than This.

In 2009, Burnett produced albums for Moonalice and Grace Potter and the Nocturnals. In that same year, he also produced Elvis Costello's album, Secret, Profane & Sugarcane as well as co-writing the song "Sulfur to Sugarcane" with Costello.

Burnett produced a collaboration album by Elton John and Leon Russell. John, Russell, and Bernie Taupin (John's lyricist) wrote songs together in late 2009. The album, which is titled The Union, was recorded in January 2010 and released in October 2010.

In 2010 Burnett produced Gregg Allman's “Low Country Blues” album (release date in January 2011).

Burnett has started production, as of January 2011, on Lisa Marie Presley's third album " Storm And Grace" in Los Angeles. The album was released May 15, 2012.