These days, actor turned drummer Billy Bob Thornton is busy with his new band the Boxmasters, touring in support of their debut double album. The actor is nothing if not prolific as a songwriter, as his three-man group’s 2009 follow-up is already essentially done and a separate Christmas album is in the works. The Yuletide CD will mix seasonal classics with three original Boxmasters compositions that take a cynical view of the holiday.

“One of the songs is called “Slower Than Christmas,”” he tells Flagstaff Live!. “It’s about this guy talking about how Christmas is the slowest day of the year ‘cause he’s in this horrible dysfunctional family. It’s kind of like a Bad Santa Christmas song I guess you’d say.”

“Then there’s another one we have called “I Won’t Be Home for Christmas” that’s about a guy in jail,” he continues. “The other one’s about a kid who wonders why every year at Christmas it just so happens that all these things happen with his parents and Santa doesn’t show up either. And then by the end of the song, you realize he’s figured it out… He knows that mom and dad’s troubles are the reason that he doesn’t get anything, that they are Santa. So they’re all sad, basically.”

In cinema parlance, Thornton’s current tour with band mates J.D. Andrew (guitar, bass) and Mike Butler (guitar, other instruments) is generating mixed reviews. After a July 11th concert in Santa Rosa, CA, the Press-Democrat’s John Beck opined that when the actor took the stage, he was ‘stiff and wooden, with all the stage presence of a Hollywood cardboard cutout.’ Meanwhile, in setting the stage for last night’s Boxmasters concert in New Mexico, Santa Fe Reporter writer Gabe Gomez was full of praise. ‘Rather than crumble to the pre-existing stigmas of actor-turned-rock star,’ he raved, ‘the Boxmasters’ release of a double album of 1960s-era country music puts Thornton on par with [Johnny] Cash as a rebellious musician.’