Bone vivant: T Bone Burnett keeps the old times rolling with a new label
Jon Bream, Star Tribune, June 9, 2002

First came the best-selling soundtrack to "O Brother, Where Art Thou?" that won a bushel full of Grammys. Then came an all-star spinoff tour, Down From the Mountain, which sold out every show. Now comes DMZ Records, a new record label featuring "O Brother" hero Ralph Stanley.

"We're going to have a 75-year-old rock star," said Grammy-winning producer T Bone Burnett, 54, who just launched DMZ with Twin Cities-born filmmakers Joel and Ethan Coen. "Ralph is one of the most important music artists in this country. He's been the keeper of the flame for 50 years, and his skills have not diminished."

After more than 35 years in the music business, Burnett -- who has produced smash albums by the Wallflowers and Counting Crows as well as discs by everyone from Bob Dylan to Spinal Tap -- wanted to approach the music with his own point of view.

"I grew weary of waiting for people to send me things [to produce]," he said. "This was a chance to actually instigate some things. And the Coens and I have learned a lot about how this works. There's a great and fair way to do this, and we're going to try to discover that."

The Coens, who enlisted Burnett for "O Brother," are naturals, he said, because they are music lovers with sharp musical instincts. Also, they could bring DVD possibilities to DMZ.

The label's first release was the soundtrack to the movie "Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood," which includes Cajun music, vintage blues and new recordings from Dylan, Macy Gray and Lauryn Hill.

DMZ takes its name from Burnett's intended label, D-Pop, and the Coens' Mike Zoss Productions, named for their childhood pharmacist in the Twin Cities.

That isn't DMZ's only Minnesota connection. The label's co-presidents -- John Grady, 46, and Cameron Strang, 34 -- have local roots. After graduating from St. John's University in Collegeville, Minn., Nebraska native Grady spent 12 years working as a record-store manager and promotional rep in the Twin Cities. He ended up in Nashville as a senior vice president at Mercury, where he led the push that sold 6 million copies of "O Brother."

"John Grady is the best salesman I've ever seen," Burnett said. "First, he sold all those Shania Twain records; anybody who can sell Barbarella to country radio has got to be the best."

Strang, a native of Vancouver, B.C., came to Minnesota for treatment at Hazelden, then lived for four years in St. Paul, where he started New West Records in 1996 in Kelley Deal's Grand Avenue apartment.

"Cameron is the first guy at an independent label who actually pays people," Burnett said. "Delbert McClinton, who's never made a dime off any record in his life, is going to make a tremendous amount of money this year from working with Cameron."

Strang, who moved to Los Angeles in '97, remains New West's principal owner, but Peter Jesperson, the former Twin Citian who was the Replacements' first manager, now manages the label's L.A. office.

'Justice League of America'

Another Minnesota resident, playwright/actor Sam Shepard, sits on DMZ's board of advisers along with Elvis Costello, Bono, Tom Waits and filmmakers Wim Wenders and Callie Khouri.

They have not met as a group, but the idea makes Costello think of the comic-book confederation the Justice League of America: "We'd all get stuffed into a helicopter and taken to Superman's palace at the North Pole. I'd be interested to see that board meeting. That advisory board is some serious, argumentative people."

DMZ is serious, too, about "Ralph Stanley," a new recording due in stores on Tuesday that features bluegrass and old-time songs -- from 50 to 400 years old. The album was recorded before the Grammys, funded by Burnett, the Coens and Grady. With the recording finished, DMZ arranged a partnership with Columbia Records in March.

"This is the most interesting record I've ever had to work," said Grady, who has marketed such blockbusters as "Frampton Comes Alive," MC Hammer's "Please Hammer, Don't Hurt 'Em," Bonnie Raitt's "Nick of Time" and Whitney Houston's debut.

Grady has a plan to market Stanley. It started with the bluegrass patriarch and Burnett spending an entire day doing interviews at the National Public Radio convention in Washington, D.C. A reporter from Time magazine was along to do a story.

DMZ already is looking ahead. There's the Down From the Mountain summer tour, expanded to include Ricky Skaggs, Rodney Crowell, Rosanne Cash and the McGarrigle sisters (and playing St. Paul's Xcel Center July 23). The label is close to signing a young Los Angeles art-rock trio. On the schedule for fall are a new 1956 concert disc by Stanley and his late brother Carter, and a 25-song retrospective by another wily veteran: Burnett.

Thanks to John Foyle