“You’re supposed to get better as you get older,” says T Bone Burnett, record producer, guitarist and songwriter for over five decades.
For the first time in 16 years, Burnett has come out from his comfortable position behind the scenes to the limelight to debut his new solo album The Other Side, a 12-song collection centered loosely on a love story.
Burnett regards this as the best album he’s created. His evidence? The work he’s doing with four longtime colleagues who are all over 80.
The four people Burnett is talking about are Bob Dylan, Ringo Starr, Meredith Monk and Tylwa Tharp. Burnett was Dylan’s guitarist during the ’70s, and has produced multiple film soundtracks and albums — from O Brother, Where Art Thou? to The Hunger Games. His work on Raising Sand united singers Alison Krauss and Robert Plant, who recently played a sold-out show at the Cuthbert Amphitheater.
Burnett himself plays the Hult Center Sept. 9.
Burnett tells Eugene Weekly that The Other Side features songs he had been working on writing for several decades. However, he says most of the album came to fruition after Burnett allowed himself to buy multiple guitars that he had been inspired by all throughout his career.
The guitars — a 1932 Gibson L5 archtop, which Maybell Carter played; a 1959 Epiphone Texan, which Paul McCartney played on “Yesterday”; and a Gibson Southern Jumbo, which Donnie Everly played on the early Everly Brothers records — helped Burnett create an album that he calls a collection of everything he’s learned about American music.
An example of this newfound inspiration “spewing” songs out of him can be seen on the track “Little Darling.” The last track of the album, “Little Darling” features the indie pop band Lucius whose lead vocalists Jess Wolfe and Holly Laessig provide whimsical vocals, and act as the lighthearted ending to the love story narrative that the album creates.
The verses in the song are simple and create a nostalgic soothing melody. “I love to be able to write a simple song like that,” Burnett says, “These songs just came out of nowhere,” he adds. ”They were just suddenly there, so I appreciate them all as gifts to me.”
The album is also Burnett’s attempt at getting back to tone, which he considers more true than language.
He says this belief about tone spurred from a book he read called The Master in his Emissary by Ian Mcgillchrist that says human beings sang to each other like dolphins and whales for thousands of years before we innovated the technology of language.
“The lie is in the words; the truth is in the tone,” Burnett says.
To accomplish this Burnett says he aimed at writing from his chest rather than his head.
“My earliest ambition was to be a songwriter, and so I just tried to get into the thing that I love when I’m listening to and producing other singers which is the truth of what they’re saying and I’m trying to remove anything that gets in the way of that,” Burnett says.
His love for these songs is what has made him want to step outside of the studio and enter the stage as a performer. However, through his performances he hopes to give the audience a taste of the behind the scenes.
“I’m approaching it as if we’re all sitting in a living room together, and we’re just playing music,” Burnett says.
That performance consists of what Burnett calls one the best string bands that’s ever been. There are no drums in the band, creating a more quiet atmosphere.
“Quiet is the new loud,” Burnett says.
That string band accompanying Burnett’s vocals consists of David Mansfield on mandolin and violin, Colins Linden on guitar and Dennis Crouch on string bass, all of whom worked with Bob Dylan at one point in their careers.
When he was in his 20s, Burnnett would describe himself as a rebel. and now he describes himself as a “kindly old man.” From 20 to now, he says, he has been on a journey to become kind and content with life.
“I’ve been working to get someplace, and this album was the place I was working to get to,” Burnett says.