MOG

T Bone Burnett, the record producer behind the recent Robert Plant and Alison Krauss mash-up Raising Sand, the Grammy winning O Brother, Where Art Thou? soundtrack and about another million amazing collaborations, will release his new solo album Tooth of Crime, on May 6, 2008.

The work for his follow-up to the 2006 album The True False Identity began back in 1996, when Burnett began writing music for the Sam Shepard play of the same name (Second Dance) in New York. But only about half a dozen tracks made it to the stage, not enough for a whole album score. Burnett kept going back and working on the music, among other projects.

"Tooth of Crime is a prophetic play that Sam first wrote in 1972, and it takes place in a time very much like now," Burnett explains of the album. "It's a time when there are zones of fame that flare up and people can become incredibly famous in their own zone and nobody else can know it. And then the zone completely disappears, but the famous person doesn't realize it because you can't even find the zone anymore. You have to hook up a toaster to a television to a microwave to a piano - very post-apocalyptic. That was the initial inspiration for the album.”

"These days one of the hardest things to do is find a frame at all to make the songs hang together,” Burnett adds.