One on One with Jeff Bridges
Recently Ron Bennington sat down to talk with Academy Award winner Jeff Bridges at the Sirius XM Studios in New York City. Of course, you know Jeff from his incredible acting career in films like Cutters Way, The Big Lebowski, Fearless, True Grit and Crazy Heart. But he’s also a musician and he came in to talk about the release of his new album, “Jeff Bridges”.
Ron Bennington: Welcome Jeff, how you doing man.
Jeff Bridges: Good Ron, thanks for having me, man.
Ron Bennington: I think last time I talked to you on the phone about ten years ago when you had some music out at that time.
Jeff Bridges: Yea that was an album called Be Here Soon.
Ron Bennington: So you like to occasionally put out an album, do a bunch of movies, put out an album.
Jeff Bridges: Ha, ha, that sounds like a good thing.
Ron Bennington: It’s not a bad way to do it. You started in music though, right?
Jeff Bridges: Well….I’d have to say I did the acting thing first. I was carried on-screen when I was about six months old. My parents were visiting a movie set, their friend was the director, the guy needed a kid and my mom said, here, take mine.
Ron Bennington: And that started it off, you were set from there on.
Jeff Bridges: Pretty much. I’m a product of nepotism. I don’t know if I would have gotten into this movie thing if it wasn’t for my old man, Lloyd Bridges. I mean that’s the toughest thing for an actor is to get a break, and that was pretty much handled.
Ron Bennington: But once you got that break, you stayed with it. I mean you’ve done so many great movies over the years. And its interesting– you’re working with T Bone. So the same way that you find some good directors to work with, you find T Bone Burnett who I think right now is making better albums than he has his whole life.
Jeff Bridges: Yea, he is something. We go back I guess thirty some-odd years. We met on Heavens Gate. Kris Kristofferson, the star of that movie brought a bunch of his musician friends along to play different roles. We had T Bone, Steven Bruton was there, Ronnie Hawkins was on the show, Norton Buffalo, a whole slew of guys. We were playing a lot of music on that set.
Ron Bennington: So at that point, was that a little intimidating to be sitting down playing with Ronnie Hawkins and Kris Kristofferson and T Bone?
Jeff Bridges: No, not really. The way I think of it, artists are kind of …well we’re all in the family together, so it’s just like a kind of brothers and sisters deal.
Ron Bennington: So…get past the initial, oh shit, that’s Kris Kristofferson…
Jeff Bridges: The only time I remember ever feeling really that panicky thing was with Bob Dylan. We were doing Masked and Anonymous and I’m sitting in there in my trailer and I hear a knock at the door, and there’s Bob with the guitar, saying, hey wanna pick? And I was like, oooh shit. (Laughing)
Ron Bennington: Well what’s really funny is that no one feels comfortable with Dylan because he doesn’t always play it the same way.
Jeff Bridges. He wanted me to play– play for him, and then he would just back me up. That was a wonderful experience. But just talking about that movie and stuff..what was really wonderful for me was acting with Bob. I’ve always been a big fan of his….just his presence on the screen. And we had such a good day…hours of improvising together, just playing like when you’re kids. You know, like you go over there….and you do this. But we had a ball. It was great.
Ron Bennington: You know, the first time I remember Dylan acting it was in a Kris Kristofferson movie, Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid.
Jeff Bridges: Oh, excellent! Excellent! And Don’t Look Back you know, that’s some great stuff.
Ron Bennington: Now, do you think since that’s a documentary, was he still acting? I mean, was he still playing the part of Bob Dylan?
Jeff Bridges: Yea, I think he likes to mess around with persona and stuff. I thought he was very candid in that book– I’m sure you read his autobiography– that first thing. He hasn’t come out with the next one yet, but I’m looking forward. But that was a wonderful book and he was so generous with letting us get a peek into his ‘self.’
Ron Bennington: Well its interesting, there’s still slight of hand at the same time. Even when he says ‘here I am’.
Jeff Bridges: Isn’t it beautiful? Well that’s the thing. We are all so deep that no matter how much you reveal, it’s not even the tip, you know.
Ron Bennington: But for you, songwriting’s always been there for you?
Jeff Bridges: Yea. When I picked up the guitar, one of the wonderful things about the guitar is where you put your fingers…those chords, the lines and the dots just to picture where to put your fingers…and I try to figure out how to write songs out of a G and a C and a D and I figure out what I might want to say. So I kind of started writing, right off the top. When I was about thirteen, fourteen years old.
Ron Bennington: And always felt connected to that? It’s never been out of your life?
Jeff Bridges: No it never has.
Ron Bennington: But you think it helps? Does writing music help with your acting and does everything pulls together in some way?
Jeff Bridges: Yea. I remember I used to get kind of frustrated with myself when I’d be in my hotel room studying my lines for a movie. And all of a sudden I’d get a song idea and I’d find myself with a guitar in my hand writing a song for a couple of hours. And I’ll say Jeff! What are you doing man! You’re supposed to be studying for the thing! And then I discovered over the years, when I start to engage creatively on anything it kind of shakes up all my creativity and so you never know how it comes out. It could be a song or a drawing. Many different ways. And nowadays I kind of just let it all rip and I found out that it all kind of informs each other and goes together.
Ron Bennington: It’s interesting because we all specialize today, but the reality of it is, that people who love the arts, love the arts. Whether its photography or its painting. There’s no reason to sit down and say, just because I’m making more money at this, doesn’t mean it’s the only thing I’m good at.
Jeff Bridges: That’s right, that’s really true.
Ron Bennington: That’s why I always love a guy like Shel Silverstein who did so many different things in his life without wondering, hey which one’s the payoff. Who cares?
Jeff Bridges: And of course Mr. Dylan. I’m digging his Djing, man! Now I heard a rumor that he’s going to do the GPS voice, is that true you think? Come on Bob, work with us Bob! Come on.
Ron Bennington: Would you really want to be lost somewhere and have Dylan in the shotgun seat trying to tell you…
Jeff Bridges: Absolutely! I’d love it.
Ron Bennington: I do like Dylan’s way of stringing these songs together too.
Jeff Bridges: Oh, god he’s such a musicologist! He teaches us so much and its such a wonderful gift to give us.
Ron Bennington: You’ve got the new album out, and its self titled, Jeff Bridges. Are you going to be touring it?
Jeff Bridges: Yea we played Sturgis, South Dakota the other night. What a big highpoint for me, John Fogerty called me up for his encore and I got to sing Looking out My Back Door and Proud Mary with John, so that was cool.
Ron Bennington: So you love playing live, which of course is completely different than studio work, completely different from writing. And you’ve got the Lebowski Blu Ray coming out. Great music on that as well.
Jeff Bridges: T Bone. He pulled all that music together by the way.
Ron Bennington: So you’re connected to the Coen Brothers, T Bone is connected even through stuff that you haven’t done. How are all these things running back and forth together. Is it just by chance? Or is it on friendships? Work?
Jeff Bridges: I think a lot of it’s by chance. I think Lebowski might have been the first one that he did with the brothers.
Ron Bennington: And of course he did that great work, Oh Brother Where Art Thou. I think the album sold better than the movie at the time.
Jeff Bridges: Oh yea , maybe so. They had a great tour. They went all over the world with that.
Ron Bennington: Yea and it opened that kind of music up to people who had no idea about it. But it really does come back to that kind of roots music, doesn’t it? I mean you can’t get away from that.
Jeff Bridges: Well…I don’t know. You know Bone…one of the things that he really helped me with when we were doing Crazy Heart….he said, Jeff, I’m going to make you a playlist of all the music that Bad Blake, my character in Crazy Heart would have listened to growing up in Forth Worth. Which is the town that Steven Bruton and T Bone Burnett grew up. So of course, Hank was in there, Merle, Waylon, and all those guys, but [also] the Beatles, Dylan, Leonard Cohen, Ornette Coleman who’s also from Fort Worth. I said to Bone, Captain Beefheart man? And Bone said oh Beefheart absolutely!
And this gave us a great kind of a license, but also it informed the kinds of music that we were writing were coming from all these things, not just strictly country which is one of the things that’s so outstanding about T Bone. He makes this kind of genre-less music. You’re not really sure where its coming from– its coming from all kinds of places. And it’s a real education to be around.
Ron Bennington: The interesting thing too, like you were saying about Bad Blake, having all that music at his hands, it’s not Blake being born some country boy anymore, where that’s the only music you know. You would have to go back and pick country music just the way you picked it now. You could go in any direction that you wanted to go in these days, cause everyone has access to everything now.
Jeff Bridges: Yea…on the album, when I gave T Bone a call and said hey, I’ve got some tunes and I’m kind of itching to do an album. T Bone was really… one of the things he really wanted to do was to make the album reflect my own personal music and my music tastes. And not make it a follow-up to Crazy Heart per se. Not that we weren’t going to do country tunes, but to have an openness toward the whole album. And the thing that kind of knits it all together is this incredible band that Bone put together. I mean, gosh. In the movies and making records, I think that’s 99% of the deal, you know? It’s who you cast.
Ron Bennington: Sure, and nobody ever does anything on their own. No matter what the project is, if you don’t know how to be that team guy, you’re not going to succeed.
Jeff Bridges: Yea. And that’s the great thing about movies and making records. Every once in a while your highest expectations get transcended. You get the…oh this could be really cool and then …you ain’t seen nothing yet. Which is actually a Bruton tune on the album. Nothing Yet.
Ron Bennington: And that’s the beauty of it all. I guess that keeps you going no matter who you are. I mean, you could paddle out every day, but the wave has got to be there. Well you’ve given us some good waves, Jeff Bridges. It’s great to have you in here. It’s a self titled album, and of course the Lebowski Blu Ray is out again, But make sure you pick up this album. Jeff Bridges, thanks so much for stopping in.
Jeff Bridges: Great hanging Ron.
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This interview and many others can be heard in its entirety on Ron Bennington Interviews which airs weekly on Stars Too and The Virus Channels on Sirius XM Satellite Radio. Don’t have SiriusXM yet? Click here to get a free 7 day trial!
Click the links below to check out Jeff’s new Album available on CD or Vinyl on Amazon.com as well as the newly released blu ray edition of The Big Lebowski.
