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 JOHN BUTLER tells ALASDAIR DUNCAN about the recent line-up change in his trio, the risks and rewards of being an independent artist, and the fan fall-out from cutting off his famous dreadlocks.
John Butler Trio are one of Australia’s most beloved musical acts, but their popularity spreads well beyond these shores – in the middle of this year, they embarked upon a four-month long tour of The UK, Europe, North and South America and Canada, stopping in at Japan’s Fuji Rock Festival before finally heading home. At the conclusion of the tour, lead singer John Butler was clearly very glad to be back somewhere familiar – so glad that he took to his Twitter and said: “HOME!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! GOING SWIMMING NO MATTER HOW COLD THE OCEAN IS!”
The first thing I’m keen to ask Butler is how that first swim back home worked out. “It was cold and it was good!” he laughs. “Swimming in the ocean is an elemental reboot. I’ve lived on the west coast all my life – the west coast of America, then the west coast of Australia, and it’s sunsets, big sky country. I’m not a surfer, I’m not like an avid snorkeler or anything, but I love the ocean – there’s something big and mysterious about it.”
John Butler Trio’s fifth album, April Uprising, was released in March of this year. The band’s densest and catchiest release to date, it earned good notices from critics, but I’m curious to know, from Butler’s perspective, what the fan response to the record has been like so far. “Yeah, most people love it,” he says, “most people really love it. There are a few people out there who’ve reacted to change for change’s sake. I cut my dreads three years ago, but there are people who are still talking about that, like the dreads somehow made the music better!”
Kind of like what happened when Lenny Kravitz cut off his magnificent tresses and outraged a fair percentage of his fan base, I venture. “Yeah,” Butler says, ‘although I remember now that I was one of those people, so maybe I shouldn’t be that surprised! I think changing the band and cutting my hair shocked a few people. But yeah, there’s been a great response overall. In the moments when people are having a barbeque or they’re dealing with a broken heart or they’re hanging out with their children or just going out to skate, if my music can be a part of that, if it can deepen their moment and make it a more vivid and colourful place to me, that’s a great thing.”
Speaking of changes in the band, there has been a lot of talk recently about Nicky Bomba and Byron Luiters joining the trio full-time as drummer and bassist, replacing long-time members Shannon Birchall and Michael Barker. At the time, Butler said that the line-up change was for artistic rather than personal reasons – what inspired it, I wonder? Butler explains that, at the conclusion of the band’s last tour, he was talking to Birchall and Barker in the back of a tour bus, attempting to explain his vision for the next album. “I told them it was most likely going to be business as usual,” he says, “maybe with a couple of different players here and there, but at the time, it hadn’t quite revealed itself to me, so I told them to stay tuned.
“I cut my dreads three years ago, but there are people who are still talking about that, like the dreads somehow made the music better!”
“I thought that was that,” he continues, “but then I got together with Nicky Bomba, my brother-in-law, who I recorded Zebra and Sunrise Over Sea with, and we were just having an innocent jam at my house when I had an epiphany moment, when all the confusion cleared up and I realised exactly what I wanted to do. I wanted to make an album with Nicky, I wanted to record it and tour it with Nicky, and I needed a new band with Nicky and another bass player.” Butler didn’t necessarily want to change his band – “I love Michael and Shannon very much,” he tells me, “and they contributed a lot of soul and a lot of positivity to the trio” – but he felt that it had to be done. “It was sad saying goodbye, but it was very exciting and inspiring starting a new trio with Nicky and Byron. I knew that it was my job as an artist to follow what the art wanted, even more than what I wanted.”
In all the write-ups I’ve read on April Uprising, one phrase – ‘feel-good’ – comes up again and again. It’s true that the record, for all its political content, does leave a sense of contentment in its wake. Was April Uprising a specific attempt to write a feel-good album, I ask? “Not really, no,” Butler tells me. “It’s funny, some people say it sounds more aggressive and angsty, others say it sounds more feel-good. These were just the best songs I had out of the thirty or so I’d written, and I tried to put them together in a way that really made sense just for the songs. It felt good making it – we had a ball making it. When the documentary of the making-of comes out, you’ll see that. It was a lot of fun, we had a lot of freedom.”
Freedom is an idea I’m keen to talk more about. Butler releases his music on Jarrah Records, the label he co-owns with The Waifs – does doing it independently give him a greater sense of freedom? “I’ve done major label deals before,” he says, “but when I signed them, I always demanded a hundred percent artistic freedom. Financial freedom is different – they took a lot more money and they spent it a lot differently, sometimes in good ways and sometimes not. Being independent, I do have more control over how my money is spent. Making those kinds of financial decisions is a great freedom, even if once in a while, it can be annoying.
“For example, we have these JBT water bottles, and we’re going to sell them on the net – so how much are we buying them for wholesale and how much are we going to sell them for? It’s discussions like that, moments like that where I wish I wasn’t as involved as I am,” he laughs. “At the same time, if I leave a decision like that to someone else and later hear that the water bottles are made of dodgy aluminium or we’re losing money on them, I’d get mad. I’m lucky that, in the years I’ve spent doing this, I’ve assembled a great team around me, of people I can trust to make the decisions when I don’t want to think about the profits from water bottles. I’m happy to be a part of those decisions, as long as they don’t eat away at what I’m meant to do, which is write a good song.”
My final question for Butler is what fans can expect from his band’s upcoming Australian tour. “Passion, honesty, no less than a hundred percent,” he says. “You can expect fun, and watching three brothers do everything they can to make the best music they can. I’ve said that before – we don’t come back every time with a new circus show or scantily-clad women, we play good old-fashioned music as a trio, and sometimes we can sound like six people, or we can sound like three. We’re a powerful unit, but it takes everything we have every night to do that, to play our music the best it can possibly be played. We respect the craft. If the audience brings their best game, then special moments occur.”
JOHN BUTLER TRIO play the Brisbane Riverstage on Thursday Sep 23, and Toowoomba’s Empire Theatre on Friday Sep 24. Both shows with Blue King Brown. THESE ARE THE DAYS, a behind-the-scenes documentary on the recording of APRIL UPRISING (Jarrah), is out now on MGM. www.johnbutlertrio.com
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