Billy Bob Thornton & JD Andrew discuss their new album and more
The Boxmasters, featuring Billy Bob Thornton (or Bud as he’s known in the band) and JD Andrew, recently released their latest album, Pepper Tree Hill, marking the group’s 19th release. The project showcases their love of the Sixties and the inspiration of their studio, also named Pepper Tree Hill.
The song “Pepper Tree Hill” features legendary trumpeter and bandleader Herb Alpert and longtime collaborator and Boxmaster alum Brad Davis. The title track is “a salute to the creative atmosphere that The Boxmasters thrive in.”
“Pepper Tree Hill is the property where my family and I live, and it’s also where our studio is, and we call the studio Pepper Tree Hill. The studio is at the bottom of the hill, and the house is at the top of the hill. It’s a very steep climb up the driveway, and it’s lined with pepper trees. And so we thought that was just a natural name, you know, you got a little little Beatle reference in there,” Thornton tells us from the group’s tour bus before Andrew interjects, “Sergeant Pepper Tree Hill.”
Thornton continues, “This album really is, more so than a lot of our records, even though all of our songs that we write are based on the 70s and the British invasion and all that. This one really has some touches that are more evident than usual and, of course, we had Herb Alpert on the song ‘Pepper Tree Hill’ which harkens back to the 60s.”
The rest of the album contains jangly guitars, a Mellotron, and solid backbeats that drive the songs about nostalgia, hope, and happiness.
The group is on its 2025 Pepper Tree Hill Tour, which wraps in Los Angeles on October 19th. Some familiar stops, like in Kansas City at Knuckleheads, and Tomball, TX at Main Street Crossing, are joined by five nights at the Bourbon and Bonfire weekends in Livingston, Montana, and many other new towns and venues across the country.
They recently opened for The Who in Newark, New Jersey, where the show didn’t go as planned. Thornton and Andrew discuss the performance along with the album, tour, and more, including a Landman soundtrack album that’s in the works, featuring original songs co-written with Landman co-star and country singer-songwriter Mark Collie, Ronnie Dunn, ZZ Top’s Billy Gibbons, Parker McCollum, and Dwight Yoakam, to name a few.
“The Boxmasters are not [contributing songs to the soundtrack], but Mark Collie is an old friend of mine, a country singer-songwriter,” Thornton says. “Colle said, ‘Hey, you and I should write a country song [for the show] and see what happens.’ The next thing you know, I’m talking to MCA about doing a soundtrack album, and before you know it, somehow we started co-writing songs with all these country singers. I have a co-write thing on the soundtrack coming out that we wrote with Ronnie Dunn, and Billy Gibbons, and Parker McCollum, and Dwight Yoakam.”
