Despite being around for almost two decades, it wasn’t until this year that Californian rock band The Boxmasters headed to Europe for the first time. The group, in which the Oscar-winning actor Billy Bob Thornton sings, among others, will perform on July 16 at Prague’s Futurum Music Bar. The Smíchovský club has a capacity of approximately 400 people.
Billy Bob Thornton and The Boxmasters play That Mountain, a recording from the Grand Ole Opry radio show. Photo: ČTK/AP | Video: Grand Ole Opry
Tickets for 520 crowns will be on sale from Friday on his website and in the GoOut network, the organizing agency D Smack U Promotion announced on Thursday.
Sixty-seven-year-old Billy Bob Thornton is an Oscar winner for the 1996 film Deadly Boomerang, which he wrote, directed and starred in. He embodied a retarded man who killed his mother and her lover in his childhood and is now returning to a normal life after years in a psychiatric hospital.
Thornton received another Oscar nomination shortly after for his role in the crime drama The Simple Plan. In addition, he is known from the films Armageddon, The Man Who Wasn’t, Bandits or Santa’s Deviation. In the last decade, he drew attention to himself with the characters of a killer in the TV series Fargo, a lawyer in Goliath or a marshal in the period miniseries 1883.
But Thornton has also been involved in music since the 1970s. He first drummed in the little-known blues rock group Tres hombres, at the beginning of the new millennium he released several solo albums, and in 2007 he founded the rock group The Boxmasters, with whom he will now come to the Czech Republic. The frontman of the band is the singer and guitarist JD Andrew, the second guitarist, bassist, drummer Nick Davidson and Billy Bob Thornton, originally as the second drummer, now more as a singer, also work in it. They play music originating from the 60s of the last century and combining rock’n’roll with country or rockabilly.
The group released twelve albums. He also has an incident in 2009 when The Boxmasters were guests on the Q show on Canadian radio. At the time, host Jian Ghomeshi mentioned that Thornton is known as an actor while introducing the guests. He objected to this and subsequently refused to answer most of the questions. For example, when asked when the band was formed, he replied that he did not know what the moderator was talking about. Finally, he criticized the Canadian audience. The video was watched by hundreds of thousands of people within a few days and had an international response, for example the New York Times or Hospodářské noviny wrote about it. Thornton’s spokesperson later said that the actor “simply decided not to answer the questioner because of the direction the interview took early on.”
“You were instructed not to talk about it,” Thornton says in an interview about his career. “Would you like me not to mention at all in the interview what you have achieved as an actor and screenwriter?” asks the moderator. “Exactly,” Thornton says.
Video: The Boxmasters performing on Canadian radio
In 2009, the band The Boxmasters caused a stir in an interview on Canadian radio. | Video: Q
