Production Notes: T Bone Burnett

Filmmaker Anthony Minghella (The English Patient) had good reason to call on T Bone Burnett to produce the music for Cold Mountain, his cinematic adaptation of Charles Frazier’s acclaimed Civil War novel. The radical methodology Burnett employed for the O Brother, Where Art Thou? soundtrack brought the film’s rustic music to life with startling vividness and accuracy—an achievement that brought the producer an Album Of The Year Grammy in 2001—and Minghella required a similar level of authenticity for his movie.

“Most of the time when people record period music, they get the form of it right, but they completely miss the content because they record it with transistors, digital equipment and digital echo, close-mic-ing and separation,” says Burnett, a Texas-bred iconoclast whose studio career has been characterized by adventurous choices and left-field hits (Los Lobos, Counting Crows, The Wallflowers). “With O Brother, we went in the opposite direction—we used all the ’30s technology, but we recorded it like a rock ’n’ roll band, rather than use new technology and record it like an old-timey band.”

Burnett had his production approach nailed down, but the subject matter of Cold Mountain was something else again. “To do the Civil War is difficult because it’s been done so often—Ken Burns, all the reenactments and movies,” he points out. “I knew I needed to dig a lot deeper, and for that I needed a guide.”

Burnett found his man: John Cohen, a onetime member of the New Lost City Ramblers who has devoted his life to the exploration of American traditional forms. “John is an extraordinary person who’s been diggin’ around in the music and doing field recordings for half-a-century,” Burnett explains. “He brought a tremendous amount to it.”

With Cohen’s help, Burnett uncovered a batch of arcane songs and assembled the musical ensemble that would perform the material, in various configurations. This crew was composed primarily of little-known singers and players who share an uncanny feel for antique forms—musicians like hardcore punk-turned-ethnomusicologist Tim Eriksen, whose craggy, world-weary voice sounds as old as the hills; the Reeltime Travelers from rural Tennessee, who are “as authentic as it gets,” according to Burnett; Dirk Powell, a fiddle, banjo and mandolin virtuoso; and bluegrass guitarist Riley Baugus.

“They’re an extraordinary group of young musicians,” Burnett marvels. “They’re new traditionalists who are digging into this old music in a really vital and exciting way. There’s a whole community out there of people who care about keeping the flame alive. Ralph Stanley’s bus driver told us about the Reeltime Travelers.”

Also on board were Alison Krauss, the lone O Brother returnee, bluegrass cult hero Tim O’Brien and, significantly, The White Stripes’ Jack White, who plays a musician in the film and contributed five tracks to the album. Among those who initially auditioned for the role were Jakob Dylan and Justin Timberlake, who surprised Burnett with his soulfulness but lacked the prerequisite of “roughness.”

“I was saying to my wife [artist Sam Phillips] that we needed to find this guy,” Burnett remembers, “and she just said, ‘Jack White.’ Exactly right. I’d been listening to his stuff and I’d heard the knowledge in his music. He had really listened to the blues, country music, gospel music. I got very excited about Jack; then we met and discovered we both wear white socks all the time. He got the part, and he acted great. Jack White is gonna do well.”