JOHN BUTLER ROCKS TO NEW BEAT
JOHN BUTLER IS USING A NEW HOME STUDIO TO FUSE HIS ROOTS-DRIVEN SOUND WITH HIP HOP BEATS
John Butler made modern musical history this year. The musician joined the Teskey Brothers, the Cat Empire, Montaigne, Boy and Bear, Emily Wurramara and others at the outdoor festival SummerSalt, which became the first touring event anywhere in the world, navigating the live landscape post pandemic.
“The only bummer is there should have been a documentary crew on that tour,” Butler says.
“We were doing something that wasn’t happening anywhere else on the planet. The promoter John Zaccaria went out with this radical hope, he was taking phone calls every five minutes from health departments, politicians, police … they had to work so quickly. It was a really special tour.”
When Butler was filming from the stage and posting it on his social media, people overseas couldn’t believe it was footage from 2021 and not a flashback. “There were people in the States and Europe who literally have not left their block in a year, they were dumbfounded.
“After I saw the comments I thought it might be insensitive, some people were posting ‘This actually hurts, I’m not happy for you’.”
ROLE MODEL
For Butler, the tour also saw him playing with artists who’d grown up with him – including the Teskey Brothers, who’d watched him when they were teenagers.
“I’m playing gigs with them as very much a current peer. The time factor peeled away. I didn’t feel like some elder, I realised there’s something timeless to what I’m doing.”
After being rescheduled twice, Butler is now finally taking his solo tour across the nation, starting this week.
“I’m really agile touring solo, it’s made touring a lot more doable. If I miss a gig due to COVID closures I could most likely just do it a week later. I can’t do that with the Trio, getting that Mack truck warmed up takes a lot of effort and logistics and finances. This tour is not even something to be entertained in any other part of the world right now.”
Losing all his touring work last year may have hurt financially, but it afforded Butler the chance to work on the kind of music he’s been trying to make for over a decade – building a home studio and learning how to make and record beats.
“My friends roll their eyes, they’ve heard me say for so many years I’m just trying to find the perfect combination between the roots music
I make and hip hop. So that’s why I’m learning to make these beats and play synthesisers. It’s still heavily roots driven – I’m not a hip hop artist, I don’t want to be, but hip hop’s been my main influence over the last 30 years. I’m getting closer.
“I want to call it primordial, it’s at the very early stages of creativity. I’m creating without boundaries, it’s a very fun time.
“I’ve always valued myself as an artist by what I do live, it’s what brings in the capital. I tour lots, I support my family, I see people in the room therefore I’m worthy as an artist. It’s a strange kind of capitalistic overview of worth.
“But when you’re not able to tour you remember ‘Oh yeah, I create, then I tour’. If I don’t create, there’s nothing to tour unless I want to be a jukebox of my greatest hits, which I’ve never been interested in doing.
“It fuels the longevity of your career, keeping yourself interested, keeping others interested. You can’t do that if you’re always on the road. It’s been nice to have a bit of a recalibration in finding worth in being the mad scientist at 4am playing the same synthesiser part for literally two hours to get it right.
“It’s an interesting time to be at place at this stage in my career. You would have thought I would have gotten there earlier but anyway …”
ON THE ROAD AGAIN
While the new music is still a while away, Butler is looking forward to connecting with audiences again. “On the SummerSalt tour it was profound to watch the audiences. They were free from the shackles.
I’m just trying to find the perfect combination between the roots music I make and hip hop
Even they didn’t know how much they’d missed it. Same with the artists,” he says.
“As much as it was great to just stop the rat race for a second, to see what we were doing and how it affected people, it felt like a real cornerstone of culture.
“We’re providing not just entertainment but this amazing service to the community. And they’re providing it to us. It’s so reciprocal, it’s such a beautiful ritual.”