T Bone Burnett dishes on the Coen brothers, Bob Dylan and Ringo Starr

Grammy-winning musician T Bone Burnett has an unusual mission when he comes to perform in Minneapolis this week: Visit the St. Louis Park house where the Coen brothers grew up.

That's because he is their longtime collaborator who produced soundtracks to such Coen brothers movies as "O Brother, Where Art Thou?," "The Big Lebowski" and "Inside Llewyn Davis."

"I'd love to see where they grew up," said Burnett, who performs Wednesday at the Parkway Theater. "Do you remember a few years ago [Bob] Dylan got arrested in New Jersey walking around with a hood on? The reason he was there is he was looking for the house where Bruce Springsteen wrote 'Born to Run' at. Everybody who is in show business, so to speak, is a fan first. As a fan of the Coen Brothers, I'd love to see where they grew up."

Better known as a producer than a performer, Burnett is on tour for the first time in 18 years to promote his 2024 solo album, "The Other Side." It's a familiar yet fresh collection of folkie Americana tunes about love and longing, with shades of the Burnett-produced Robert Plant and Alison Krauss collaborations.

On the record, he is joined by vocalists Rosanne Cash and Weyes Blood as well as the harmonious duo known as Lucius, who appear on five of the 12 songs.

"I feel like they made the record," he said of Lucius, namely Jess Wolfe and Holly Laessig. "They orchestrated it with their voices. They added this incredible mystical layer to it. They make up sounds. They're tone masters."

In concert, Burnett will play the entirety of "The Other Side" as well as a 10 or so songs from his solo catalog. His accompanists include country-blues guitarist Colin Linden and mandolinist/fiddler David Mansfield, who has worked with Burnett for 50 years.

"The band I'm on the road with we've been playing together collectively for over 100 years," said the singer/songwriter who seldom tours. "When I was a kid, I wanted to be Burt Bacharach. I never wanted to be a performer. Springsteen has done over 3,000 concerts and that doesn't include all the honky-tonks he played as a kid. Dylan is over 3,000. I've played well under 100. I played like the average of two a year. I've never had an ambition to be a performer. I wanted to write songs and music for movies."

Speaking of Dylan, Burnett produced the recent Ionic series of re-recordings of the Minnesota bard's early songs including "Blowin' in the Wind" and "Masters of War."

"He had just finished the three American songbook series. He treated those songs with great respect. Like classical music," Burnett recalled. "So when we went back and addressed those songs he had written 60 years earlier, he treated them with the same respect. He sings the original melodies with beautiful tone and incredible soul and all this extraordinary experience in the performances that he didn't have in his 20s."

As a producer Burnett has worked with a who's who of popular music including Roy Orbison, Elton John, Elvis Costello, Willie Nelson, Gregg Allman, Leon Russell, Los Lobos, Counting Crows, Brandi Carlile, Rhiannon Giddens and Robert Plant and Alison Krauss.

He's finishing a country album with Ringo Starr that was actually the impetus for Burnett's "The Other Side," his first solo record in 11 years. Starr approached Burnett to write a song.

"Knowing he's called Ringo Starr [born Richard Starkey] because he wanted to be a cowboy when he was a kid, I decided to write a Gene Autry song. It's 'Come Back (When You Go Away).' And he asked me to write another one."

Burnett ended up writing nine songs for the Starr album due in January.

"While I was writing these rockabilly songs for him, I started writing every morning. Songs were coming like crazy. So I ended up with all these songs on 'The Other Side,'" Burnett said. "I'm still writing. I write every morning. I wrote this morning. I'll probably record another album pretty soon. I'm 76 now. So I don't have time to shilly-shally anymore."

Friends call him Henry

Growing up in Fort Worth, Texas, Joseph Henry Burnett got the nickname "T Bone" from a neighborhood pal in childhood. But his wife and friends usually call him Henry now.

After witnessing the Beatles on "The Ed Sullivan Show" as a teen, the guitar-playing Burnett formed a band with some buddies. After high school, he started hanging out in a local recording studio, and he dropped out of Texas Christian University to work as a music-biz talent scout.

He moved to Los Angeles where he worked as a producer, and his break came when he landed in Dylan's band as a guitarist for the Rolling Thunder Revue in 1975-76.

Along the way in his acclaimed career, the 10-time Grammy winner encountered Prince, when they were working in the same studio complex at Sunset Sound in Los Angeles.

"We used to meet frequently on the basketball court," said Burnett, whose sport is golf (he played on the high school team). "I shot maybe a couple of shots but he got very serious about playing. He had these big bodyguards who would play. He was in like four- or five-inch [platform shoes]. These bodyguards were all like 6-5 and weighed 250, and he'd make a move to the basket and they would all fall down. 'Great shot, Boss.' He was gifted at basketball. He was a gifted person period."

Among Burnett's recent projects are a documentary on Jerry Lee Lewis "Trouble in Mind" (directed by Ethan Coen) on Netflix and a radio play with Costello, "The True Story of the Coward Brothers," (directed by Christopher Guest), for which they wrote and recorded 20 songs.

Burnett is working on a series about the Telluride Bluegrass Festival, in talks for about four or five movie projects, and has a Roy Rogers musical pending.

The music maker described his schedule as "overamped" but he views things one day at a time.

"My main focus is writing songs," he said. "Every day I wake up and take care of what's right under my nose."

T Bone Burnett

When: 7:30 p.m. Wed.

Where: Parkway Theater, 4814 Chicago Av. S., Mpls.

Tickets: $45-$85, theparkwaytheater.com