T Bone Burnett Enters Joint Venture With Spirit Music Group

T Bone Burnett

Spirit Music Group has teamed with T Bone Burnett in a joint venture. They have also signed Burnett to an exclusive publishing agreement for his song catalog in North America.

Under the join venture, Burnett will sign and develop songwriters under the Spirit Music Group umbrella. SMG will handle song promotion, licensing, and administration on a global basis. SMG will also administer all Burnett’s catalog as well as future works.

David Renzer, Chairman, Spirit Music Group said, “We have a huge amount of respect for T Bone’s creative prowess. With T Bone’s creative vision combined with Spirit’s song marketing/ publishing expertise, our ability to find and nurture exciting talent is something the entire team is excited about. We are proud to work with T Bone, his prolific catalog of songs, and look forward to developing the best new talent through this partnership.”

Burnett commented, “I am happy to have David Renzer and his killer team at Spirit as allies as we go about discovering and, hopefully, affecting what the business of music looks like in the 21st Century.”

Burnett has earned numerous Grammys — including Album of the Year and Record of the Year — for his production work on Robert Plant and Alison Krauss‘ Raising Sand. He was also awarded a Grammy for Best Traditional Blues Album for his work on B.B. King’s One Kind Favor. He previously earned five Grammys for his work on the eight-times Platinum release, O Brother Where Art Thou? Further Grammys followed for his work on the platinum soundtrack to the Johnny Cash biopic, Walk The Line, and the platinum Tony Bennett / k.d. lang duets album, A Wonderful World.

He also collaborated with Joel Coen and Ethan Coen on their film Inside Llewyn Davis which followed his successful collaboration with the Coen Brother on The Big Lebowski, for which he served as “Musical Archivist.” Burnett is also the Executive Music Producer and Composer for the HBO series True Detective, which stars Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson. He was Executive Music Producer and co-composer for the first season of the highly-acclaimed ABC television series, Nashville. That show spawned two best-selling soundtrack albums as well as millions of individual song downloads. He has served as Executive Music Producer on numerous films, including Across The Universe, Walk The Line (he also composed its score) and The Divine Secrets Of The Ya-Ya Sisterhood. He was nominated for an Academy Award, along with Elvis Costello, in the category of Best Original Song for “The Scarlet Tide” from the film, Cold Mountain. For his work on that film, Burnett also earned the BAFTAs Anthony Asquith Award for Achievement in Film Music.