With the release of his 2007 album, "Grand National" John Butler embarked once more on a tour to share his musical mission with us. The album is chalked full of pushy ska beats such as "Funky Tonight" as well as slow, thoughtful ballads such as "Losing You". As powerful as the tracks may be on the album, the intensity, the power and the raw spirituality of the songs is doubled in live performance, such as the one he gave at the Rothbury Music Festival, where we were able to catch up with him for an interview.
UG: So I got to know about the fingernails, did that hurt?
John Butler: No, it was really natural. It hurt when I didn't have fake nails, they were just bleeding nubs, and that hurt. So once I got these it taught me a lot of sense. I tried finger picks but they didn't work for me because I like to do a lot of down stroking and with finger picks, it doesn't really work, it's all with the upstrokes.
For me a lot of the draw to the John Butler trio was in the jams, such as Ocean, are those jams effected by the crowd that your playing for?
I guess the first thing that I have to remember as a musician is that I'm employed by the song. My boss is the song, my duty is to represent the song as best as possible. So first of all just making sure the song keeps it's integrity, and then if it wants any improvisation or anything like that, then I have to call it on the night. If the audience wants to go on a trip, I go okay, these people want to go on a trip, I leave a bit more of a door open to do that. It's not compulsory, not contrived.
So during a jam, how many of the runs that you do as a trio are pre-arranged, how much of a jam is planned?
Well assuming movement, arrangements that we work out, I'll usually throw a bit up in the air and extend. You always know where your going to come back in, you always have your exit point, but you don't know what's going to happen in the middle.
You talked earlier about the audience taking a trip with you. How much of what you do on stage is a spiritual connection with the crowd, or something beyond just sitting playing?
Well when it's good that's what it's meant to be. When it's good we come together for some kind of universal truth. Something that binds us all together as one. As cliché as it sounds, that's what musical performance is for me. It like going through a gospel church or an indigenous corrorboree or like a Native American pow-wow, like a ritual, when all the stars align music can be a really great vehicle for people elevating, people evolving, people resonating at a higher frequency then when they entered. That's my mission, my intention is to try to leave everybody vibrating at a higher frequency then when they entered. Including myself. It's not like I'm just here to provide something, I'm here to get something out of it as well.
"The first thing that I have to remember as a musician is that I'm employed by the song."
No, it was just kind of always there. It's a very yin-yang kind of a thing. The music that I play is extremely self-indulgent in a sense, I write it from my point of view about the things that I see. You know even if I go into somebody else's point of view it's very much my expressions and my opinions. I make the music that I want to hear. And if people don't like it that's unfortunate. So that's one half of it and the other half is that I make music to make the world a better place and to bring people together and hopefully everybody likes it and gets as much out of it as I do. But it's a duality, if nobody liked my music I wouldn't really change what I'm doing, I just wouldn't have a career and people wouldn't know about my music and that would be alright. I don't really make music to make people happy, but at the same time when I get onstage then I do, make music to bring us all together. It's a f****ed up thing that I don't necessarily understand but that's the yin-yang for you, that duality.
So it's definitely something that you would continue to do, even if the venue, the people weren't there.
Yeah
A lot of musicians that we talk to, treat music as a career, as just a 9 to 5 kind of job.
This is more of a life, more of a life mission for me this is why I came into this body to do what I do.
You seem to have developed your own technique with ocean and songs like that, they sound like they've came from you playing a lot. Now it seems like whenever one goes to play music people are pushing music theory all the time, whenever you go to play with anyone that's all they talk about, they all seem to subscribe to the one common practice and not necessarily do their own thing, so how much does the theory aspect come into your playing?
We all kind of attract different things to ourselves at different times for different reasons. You might get to stage where you hang with a lot of people that don't even read music but right now you seem to be attracting that. But for me, I'm really lazy, when it comes to learning other peoples stuff, or learning how to read music, I don't know how to, but I'm eager to learn things so I'll ask people how they do it. I am happy to be a student, always be a student. But I think what really moves people is not technicality or any kind of academic approach it's about how you use your techniques and your knowledge to give voice to spirit and your heart and that's the really important thing. I think that's what moves people. You get someone like Neil Young, you wouldn't say he's technically the most proficient guitarist but like when he f***ing hits a note, it's everything he has, and you feel that. I think that's what it's about. For me, I'm just constantly playing, looking, asking questions. Then just realizing that the most important thing for me as an artist is to have my own style and my own voice, I'm not interested in sounding like anybody else. All I can do is express the beautiful, freaky animal that I am. We all have different flavors and different colors that's why we come into the world to bring something special, to mix into the big recipe.
So when you were learning how to play, you didn't go the theory direction, so what kind of tools did you use to help you learn how to play?
I had a teacher and he taught me a bit of TAB, which I don't know how to read anymore, he taught me other peoples songs, Stairway to Heaven, some Pink Floyd songs, so I learned other peoples stuff for a while. Just things that I loved. I wanted to learn Jolene by Dolly Parton because I thought it was the most mad fingerpicking in the world, he couldn't teach me and I still don't know how to play it. I think I just try to write songs that sound like Jolene all the time. But I did about 6 months of that. He basically taught me how to teach myself. Taught me how to use my hands and how to find stuff and I kind of just made it up as I went along after that.
So writing your own material right off the bat was really important?
Yeah, before I even had a teacher I learned a few chords and it gave me a voice to write my music. I was always writing my own songs. It's like a diary entry, pressure release.
"My intention is to try to leave everybody vibrating at a higher frequency."
Yeah, I was singing until the time I was 16 to 20 then I discovered open tunings and realized I could just play guitar and not strum as well which is an amazing insight, to get a bit more instrumental and I kind of stopped singing for about a year. Then I copied Jeff Lang and Tony McManus, a great singer/songwriter/guitarist, and they inspired me to put my songwriting back into my instrumental playing and I've never looked back. I think the mixture of both of them is the most powerful thing. When you can do both like Hendrix, to be able to play instrumentals, go on roaring solos and make great songs, great arrangements, great words
It gives you some freedom
Yeah, it just broadens the scope up to be able to touch people and express yourself.
You talked earlier about using your songwriting as an outlet, as a diary entry, so do you find that a lot of your songwriting goes on when things are sh***y in your life or when your more removed from the situation, or problems that you would draw that inspiration from?
I think that a being is the most creative when their resonating in the most healthy and positive way possible. I try not to advocate the tortured artist theory because it leaves everybody fu**ing dead to young and it's a bit of a martyr approach. It's like “I have to be a tortured musician to make good music” There's enough fu**ing misery out there. You don't have to be a poor fu**ing white boy whose grown up really well and complain that your life's to tough, just put yourself in somebody elses shoes and write about it. Just fu**ing go on YouTube for five seconds and see somebody living in a trash can and you can go “I think I have something to write about.” There's a lot to write about. The most important thing is that your writing about something that you feel passionate. It doesn't always necessarily have to happen to you. I have peers that have written about women being raped and their men. Or I've written songs about being a soldier and not being one, there's ways to connect into other. But I don't think you need to be tortured and all fu**ed up. I can't afford it. I got children and I got a life, I'm not interested in living a miserable life. I don't think evolution and all those things take place in a situation of turmoil. I think good things can come from turmoil but I don't think that's the only recipe.
So most of your inspiration for your songwriting is drawn from the external.
No, I mean it's personal, it's external, it's everything between. Sometimes I write about something that's very close to me, sometimes I'm making up something. Like grabbing five different situations of all similar themes and putting them into one story. Like Take Me Up, off the next album, it's about two love hungry individuals getting together for a one night stand and one turning cold and the other turning completely obsessive, it's pretty raunchy and dark all In one. It's all twisted. It's fu**ing really sexy and then really fu**ing scary. I've experienced glimpses of those things, never that situation. It's like Caroline off the last album, it's one story that I've heard from everywhere funneled down into something. There's other songs like Johnny's Gone which is just my take on watching my last prime minister In Australia run around like a fu**ing lunatic.
Do you find that your songwriting takes place in a really short period of time or is it something that you refine slowly?
I think I do some of my best work fast, but I tend to write a few words, a few bars then leave it and come back to it. A lot of times I'll write the verses pretty quickly but the changes will just have to come whenever they come. Sometimes the lyrics will be written while I'm recording the vocals; that doesn't sound good, find another word, another verse. They all have different ways of coming. Sometimes they come in one instant and other times they come over years. There's just no recipe. That's why it's such an alluring mistress for me, she keeps me guessing. She doesn't just hand it over really easy, really nice, or else I'd probably be doing something else.
"The music that I play is extremely self-indulgent in a sense, I write it from my point of view about the things that I see."
There's definitely things I love. I think I'm a bit of a minor kind of guy, I'm not a big major cat. I think the biggest thing that keeps it going are the bends in my soloing, but other than that, I'm a pretty simple guitarist. I didn't start writing lead breaks until I was 21. I was just strumming chords until then. I didn't really think about anything else until then. So a lot of times it's pretty much a fifteen year old approach to guitar, but realizing that it's not necessarily about how good I am, but what I have to say and how I have to say it. Some of the best guitarists are doing very simple things. You just have to take your head out of that whole thing and go into your heart.
What advice could you give young musicians trying to make a career in the music industry?
I'd say just play as often as you can and jump in head first. That means you don't know exactly where your going to land and that's a little scary but that's what the great spirit asks of you. It asks you to be fu**ing alive and take an adventure, not to play it safe. Say yes to everything unless you know better. That means taking every gig for nothing, even if it costs you money, I still do gigs that cost me money. Your just trying to get out there, I played at parties, I played at weddings, I played on the streets, I played at every open mic night, I played at every benefit, until I couldn't, until I was too busy doing something else I wanted to do. You have to go, you have to put yourself out there, you can't wait for the magical musical gandolf to wave his magical wand over you and make it happen. It happens like that for about one out of a billion people and everybody else makes it happen with their own two hands.
So you view it more as a business?
No, I see it more as a mission. The biggest step of the journey is the first step and you have to walk that road if you want to climb that mountain. It's a mission and you have to walk it, get the strength up, take the falls, learn, pick yourself up and keep on going and ask other climbers how they did it, and learn from their mistakes. That's what it is it's more of a mission. For me it's a lifestyle, it's not a career, it's what I came here to do. Until my mission changes, this is what I'm here to do.
Thanks again to John Butler and Phil Stevens for the interview!
Interview by Nic Cole-Klaes
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