I have seen the future of hillbilly rock & roll, and its name is The Boxmasters. Conveniently, The Boxmasters just so happen to be the past and present of hillbilly rock & roll too.

In a musical universe where far too many still haven’t found what they’re looking for, lifelong player Billy Bob Thornton has finally happened upon true musical happiness with life as a Boxmaster. “This is what I’ve been searching for since I was a kid,” says this son of Hot Springs, Arkansas of his beloved band of hillbilly brothers. “I grew up as a fan of Frank Zappa and the early Mothers and Captain Beefheart and the Bonzo Dog Band, as well as Cream and Traffic, as well as George Jones and Cash and Buck Owens,” Thornton explains. “So I guess all my life, I’d bounce around country and rock bands. And as much as I like my past records, they never gave me a little of everything I love like this one does. I finally figured out what my style is -- and it’s this.”

This is appropriately The Boxmasters highly unusual, self-titled box set debut (Sawmill/Vanguard) -- a singular double-dose of raging hillbilly rock as served up by a raggedly glorious band based (at least emotionally) in Bellflower, California. By any fair standard, The Boxmasters are a great group that proudly leaves its eclectic, kickass roots showing. The first half of the group’s debut album is full of vital, vivid original material -- earthy, lived-in songs like “Poor House” “Shit List” and “I’m Watchin’ The Game.” Many of the new songs here combine the lyrical playfulness of retro country with the sort of frank talk that brings The Boxmasters’ music the shock of the new. For example, that bitchy woman being sung to in “I’ll Give You A Ring” will only get said jewelry when she complies with her man’s direct request to “give me back my balls.”

“I was raised lower middle class in the South and the original record is really about that lifestyle and the way it impacts men and women.” Thornton explains, “I tried to be equal opportunity. Sometimes in the songs the man’s the asshole, sometimes the woman. Sometimes maybe both.”

The Boxmasters were first formed by Thornton and Grammy-winning producer and guitarist J.D. Andrew, and features Billy Bob Thornton on lead vocals, background vocals, drums and tambourine; J.D. Andrew on rhythm electric, acoustic guitar, bass and background vocals; Mike Butler on lead guitar and lap steel. When The Boxmasters hit the road -- which they hit happily and hard --Mike Bruce sits in on drums, allowing Thornton to fulfill his duly appointed front man duties, and Teddy Andreadis on harmonica, organ and accordion, Brad Davis on mandolin, guitar, and background vocals and Marty Rifkin adds slide guitar.

The roots of The Boxmasters are wonderfully tangled and run extremely deep. “The reason The Boxmasters were formed is because I was listening to Chad & Jeremy’s “Yesterday’s Gone” on a British Invasion compilation and I realized underneath it all, there was a really terrific hillbilly song there,” Thornton recalls. “That’s kind of how the idea for the band was born. The Boxmasters are really a combination of the Beatles, the Monkees and the Turtles with Del Reeves and Buck Owens and Merle Haggard -- all put together.”

The Boxmasters went from a concept to a working group when a commercial director from Canada contacted Thornton about licensing his version of Hank Williams’ “Lost Highway” from his first album. Never entirely satisfied with that version of the song, Thornton asked J.D. Andrew who was doing some engineering on his Beautiful Door album to work with him on cutting a new track. And so The Boxmasters began.

A passionate lifelong music lover, Billy Bob Thornton has been playing and following music all his life. He’s been a bandleader and a roadie (including the famed Nitty Gritty Dirt Band), in most every kind of band imaginable, and some that were unimaginable. “I made my first record in Muscle Shoals, Alabama in 1974 with a group I was in called Hot Lanta – that’s how long I go back with recording.”

For all that history -- and his recent highly impressive run of solo albums like 2001’s Private Radio, 2003’s The Edge of The World, 2005’s Hobo and 2007’s Beautiful Door -- Thornton instantly recognized that in putting together The Boxmasters, a lifelong fantasy of his had actually come true. “It was everything I ever wanted to do -- which is to combine British invasion groups, the sound of the Sixties with vintage instruments and the compressors from those days and get a sound like the Beatles got but using hillbilly music,” Thornton recalls of The Boxmasters early days. “Then I started writing songs for that, the first being “Work Of Art” -- which has that traditional country twist in its title -- then “Poor House” and all the others. When we played the music for people, they flipped out -- even really young people who don’t remember any of what we’re talking about.”

“Poor House” was inspired by Thornton’s own modest upbringing. “When I was growing up if I spent my money and asked for something else, they’d say `You’re going to send us to the poor house.’ You heard that a lot and it inspired me to write the song and wonder what is the poor house exactly? Throughout our songs you meet a lot of well meaning guys who are making the worst laid plans.”

On the album’s second half, The Boxmasters pay their own suitably masterful and sincere tribute to their musical forefathers through a series of covers of past classics. Confucius -- who was tragically unavailable to tour with The Boxmasters -- once suggested “Study the past if you would divine the future.” The Boxmasters have studied the musical past with tremendous passion and now offer their own divine, decidedly down-home cover versions of songs from Mel Tillis (“Sawmill”) to Mott the Hopple (“The Original Mixed Up Kid”). As if coming to us from some twilight zone where it still is the mid-Sixties, The Boxmasters offer a sort of inspired alternate history – both battling and celebrating the bands of the British Invasion by playing intensely American renditions of The Beatles’ “I Want To Hold Your Hand” and the Who’s “The Kids Are Alright.”

The Boxmasters -- dressed of course in their famed Black and White suits -- will hit the road in support of their self-titled debut this summer, but they have already broken in their act back in 2007. “We toured last year with The Boxmasters but no one knew who we were,” Thornton says. “We had our backdrop, and audiences are into it instantly since it’s like they’re in 1964. And then we do the solo big rock show and move the backdrop out and let the hippie light show. So we give you both sides of the Sixties.”

With The Boxmasters, Billy Bob Thornton has found the musical job of a lifetime. Don’t miss the chance to see to some true masters at work when they hit a roadhouse near you.

- David Wild