T Bone Burnett has touched a lot of different facets of the contemporary music world in his decadeslong career. He's shared a stage with Bob Dylan, shone a spotlight on bluegrass with "O Brother Where Art Thou," and produced notable albums from Alison Krauss and Robert Plant, The Wallflowers and Counting Crows.
It's easy to think about the mythos and not the man, but Burnett's new solo album, The Other Side, leans into the latter. It's a stripped-down, authentic and incredibly earnest portrait of the singer-songwriter. A country blues affair featuring appearances from Lucius, Steven Soles and Rosanne Cash.
In this session, Burnett explains why he replaced old cynicism with love, plus how much of his musical ideas were borne out of a childhood nightmare involving menacing technocratic forces and his old Episcopal church. We'll let him tell the story.
This episode of World Cafe was produced and edited by Miguel Perez. Our senior producer is Kimberly Junod and our engineer is Chris Williams. Our programming and booking coordinator is Chelsea Johnson and our line producer is Will Loftus.
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