T Bone Burnett Comes Home to the Kessler Theater

“It’s good to be home,” T Bone Burnett said as he took his seat on the Kessler Theater stage Thursday evening. “When I was a kid, that 30 miles seemed like a long way. Now it’s like going to the dry cleaners in Los Angeles.”

An appreciative chuckle rippled through the sold-out room, packed to the walls with people of all ages. Though born in St. Louis, Burnett came of age in Fort Worth, and the long road he’s traveled — literally and metaphorically — was on full display Thursday.

His appearance in Oak Cliff marked Burnett’s first in North Texas in over 16 years. The Grammy-winning producer and singer-songwriter last performed here as a member of Robert Plant and Alison Krauss’s touring band in 2008 at the then-Verizon Theatre.

Although he’s been scarce on the region’s stages in the interim, he has been exceedingly prolific in the worlds of music and film, collaborating with everyone from Elton John and John Mellencamp to Sara Bareilles and Diana Krall.

Earlier this year, the Grammy and Oscar winner turned his attention back to his own recording career, which was effectively put on the back burner for much of the last 15 years. That's when The Other Side, his first proper solo album in 16 years, was released. A deceptively dense work, rich with the sort of folk and country-blues Burnett has infused in countless others’ catalogs, Side is a homecoming of sorts.

Backed by a formidable, excruciatingly talented trio of musicians — guitarist Colin Linden (who co-produced Side with Burnett), bassist Dennis Crouch and multi-instrumentalist David Mansfield — the 76-year-old Burnett spent more than two hours and over two dozen songs traversing the breadth of his musical life, reaching back to his teenage years in the 1960s and dusting off songs that had gestated, in some cases, for more than 50 years. Time, and distance, hung heavily in the room.

But for all that weight, Thursday’s performance was remarkably light and limber, anchored by Burnett’s discursive, disarming monologues — I clocked nearly 10 minutes elapsing before a note was played, as Burnett held forth on attending Fort Worth’s Trinity Episcopal Church, living in “a dystopia,” the invention of languages and “conditioned reflexes,” among other topics — and the dazzling interplay of Burnett and his musical collaborators. (“I’m way out of my depth,” Burnett joked as he introduced them.)

Seated in a tight semicircle on the cozy Kessler stage, the music being made took flight, soaring into space on the strength of Linden’s impassioned flurry of notes, Mansfield’s tasteful fillips of fiddle and mandolin and Crouch’s rock-solid walking basslines.

All of it bolstered Burnett’s thin, wild tenor — curling into beauty, often when least expected — and stitching together the eclectic tapestry he’s assembled. The quartet began the night by playing The Other Side straight through, allowing for its multitude of highlights to be appreciated: “(I’m Gonna Get Over This) Some Day,” “The Pain of Love,” the rollicking “Sometimes I Wonder” and the gorgeous, brooding “The Town That Time Forgot.”

The recorded versions on The Other Side often feature starry guests (Lucius, Rosanne Cash). At the Kessler, the material was more pared back, allowing for the elemental, direct sentiments to rise to the fore. Burnett sings plainly of love, fire and brimstone and an ailing world. Linden often leaned in to sing harmony with Burnett, who swapped between multiple acoustic guitars and generally gave the night the air of an intimate, living-room listening session.

Following a 15-minute intermission, Burnett and the band returned for a second set, roaming more freely across his extensive back catalog. It was during this run of songs that Burnett fully crystalized something he’d said earlier.

“If you wanna know what’s great about America, listen to its music,” he said. “The promise of America is realized in our music. We’ve listened to each other and made harmony. The idea that America is a melting pot — it actually exists in our music.”

The promise was there in the stomping, snarling, bluesy “Humans of Earth,” from Burnett’s 1992 LP The Criminal Under My Own Hat. The promise was there in the wistful “It’s Not Too Late,” a tune he co-wrote with Elvis Costello and the late Bob Neuwirth. The promise was there in the lonely-hearts rockabilly ache of “When the Night Falls,” a song Burnett said he wrote for Roy Orbison, but never shared with him.

The distance between each of these promises was as far as the break between songs, each of which, especially in the latter half of the night, was greeted with enthusiastic whoops and applause.

As Burnett and his bandmates unfurled one dazzling tune after another, the interplay between the men was often breathtaking. Linden, in particular, seemed to reach another level in the second set, and the rapt silence felt like a manifestation of Burnett’s fervent wish, uttered not long after he appeared on stage.

“These evenings are all about listening,” he said. “It’s a beautiful thing.”

Unspoken, of course, was the sense that this could, potentially, be Burnett’s last turn on a stage anywhere near his hometown. Not to suggest that he’s declining or missed a step Thursday — far from it — but rather that his attention is fixed elsewhere, and should a similar amount of time elapse before his next substantive tour, Burnett will be 92. (That said, perhaps Burnett will take a page from his friend and collaborator Willie Nelson, and stay on the road into his 90s.)

Given that reality, as each song concluded, there was a feeling, however faint, of time inexorably slipping away and that distance — literal, metaphorical, temporal — growing greater once more.

Burnett is one of the greatest artists to ever emerge from the distinctive, fertile musical soil that is Fort Worth, and it was heartening to see him receive such a fervent reaction from the capacity crowd at the Kessler. (He took care to single out multiple fellow Fort Worthians Thursday, including the late Ornette Coleman.)

If Thursday was indeed his swan song, the entire evening was a vivid, moving and masterful reminder that however far from Fort Worth T Bone Burnett has traveled, he’s kept those inspirations, connections and memories close at hand, an endlessly fascinating melting pot of his own making.