T Bone Burnett

T Bone Burnett's 40 years of experience in music and entertainment have earned him an unparalleled reputation as a first-rate innovative artist, songwriter, producer, performer, concert producer, record company owner and artist advocate. Burnett';s highly sought-after involvement in music, film, television and stage projects is marked by his uncanny ability to successfully combine his unique artistic sensibilities with massive commercial appeal. Just as importantly, T Bone Burnett is a champion for artistic freedom and independence, and a driving force in the elevation of our popular culture. He is a 10-time Grammy Award winner, earning numerous statues in 2009 -- including Album of the Year and Record of the Year -- for his production work on Raising Sand, the worldwide smash album from Robert Plant and Alison Krauss. That same year, he was also awarded a Grammy for Best Traditional Blues Album for his work on B.B. King's One Kind Favor. He previously earned five Grammys for his work on the 8-times Platinum release, O Brother Where Art Thou? , which also spawned two highly successful national concert tours: Down From The Mountain and The Great High Mountain. Further Grammys followed for his work on the platinum soundtrack to the Johnny Cash biopic, Walk The Line, and the platinum Tony Bennett / k.d. lang duets album, A Wonderful World. T Bone produced the critically acclaimed hit film Crazy Heart, starring Jeff Bridges, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Colin Farrell and Robert Duvall, which was released by Fox Searchlight in December 2009. He also composed the film's score and co-wrote many of its original songs, including "The Weary Kind," which earned T Bone and co-writer, Ryan Bingham, an Academy Award, and a Golden Globe Award. T Bone's work on that film also garnered him awards from the Broadcast Film Critics Association (for Best Original Song for "The Weary Kind"), as well as numerous other critics organizations throughout the U.S. He is Executive Producer of the forthcoming television series, Tough Trade, and is also creating original compositions and recordings for the series. He was nominated for an Academy Award in 2004, along with Elvis Costello in the category of Best Original Song for "The Scarlet Tide" from the film, Cold Mountain. For his work on that film, Burnett also earned the BAFTA's Anthony Asquith Award for Achievement in Film Music. Burnett' work as an in-demand music producer spans three decades and has resulted in some of the biggest-selling and most critically-lauded releases of all time, including albums from Counting Crows, The Wallflowers, Los Lobos, Cassandra Wilson, Roy Orbison and Ralph Stanley. His first major foray into film was his 1999 collaboration with the Coen Brothers on The Big Lebowski, for which he served as "Musical Archivist." He has since served as Executive Music Producer on numerous additional films, including Across The Universe, the aforementioned Walk The Line (for which he also composed the score) and The Divine Secrets Of The Ya-Ya Sisterhood. T Bone most recent music productions include Country Music from Willie Nelson, Women & Country from Jakob Dylan, Secret, Profane & Sugarcane from Elvis Costello and Life, Death, Love and Freedom from John Mellencamp. He is currently producing album projects for Elton John & Leon Russell and Gregg Allman, and followup albums for John Mellencamp and Elvis Costello, all of which will be released in 2010. Burnett is also collaborating with Mellencamp and author Stephen King on Ghost Brothers Of Darkland County, a play with music set in the fictional town of Lake Belle Reve, Mississippi. Born Joseph Henry Burnett in St. Louis, Missouri in 1948, T Bone grew up in Fort Worth, Texas, where he first began making records in 1965. His big break came in 1975, when he was asked by Bob Dylan to play guitar in his band on the now-legendary Rolling Thunder Revue tour. From that experience, he formed the Alpha Band with David Mansfield and Steven Soles, and the group made three acclaimed albums before Burnett went solo with the arresting Truth Decay in 1980, followed by the Trap Door EP (1982), Proof Through the Night (1983), the Behind the Trap Door EP (1984), an acoustic collection, T Bone Burnett (1986), The Talking Animals (1988), and The Criminal Under My Own Hat (1992). T Bone emerged from a self-imposed 14-year hiatus as a recording artist in 2006 to release two highly-anticipated collections of music simultaneously: The True False Identity, his first album of original songs since 1992, and Twenty Twenty - The Essential T Bone Burnett, a 40-song retrospective spanning his entire career of music-making. In 2008, he released the album Tooth Of Crime, a vibrant outgrowth of his long-running collaboration with playwright Sam Shepard.