Last Friday, Billy Bob Thornton and his band the Boxmasters called an early end to their tour of Canada, where they've been opening for Willie Nelson. Last week, Thornton did his part for better relations between our two countries by getting pissy during a radio interview with CBC host Jian Ghomeshi, first playing mum because he felt that, by mentioning the fact that Thornton has a movie career, he had suggested that his music career is merely a "hobby", then opening up enough to say that Canadian audiences are too "reserved" and unresponsive to suit his rowdy ways. "We tend to play places where people throw things at each other and here they just sort of sit there," he told Ghomeshi, adding, "It's mashed potatoes with no gravy." Thursday night, the Boxmasters were greeted with the responsive audience of Thornton's dreams; the group was, reportedly, loudly booed, with a few shouts of "Here comes the gravy!"

The band subsequently dropped out of Nelson's final shows in Montreal and London, Ontario, with an explanatory note on Nelson's web saying that "several" crew members and one member of the band had been stricken with flu. The web site seemed confident that everyone would be in the pink of health and ready to resume full participation in the tour come Tuesday, when the Nelson show returns to the relative safety of Stamford, Connecticut. Presumably, if Thornton feels like sharing his views of Stamford audiences with some hardy local radio personality, he'll be beating potential interviewers off with a stick.