Issue 501

John Butler One thing you can't deny, is that after twelve years, John Butler has been a part of a lot of change in music. "The physical album and the idea of the album is completely in metamorphosis at the moment," says Butler, because I couldn't help asking him about his recent iTunes EP exclusive, which might seem out of character for such a fiercely independent artist. Perhaps it's a sign of the times. "Where you used to be able to judge the success of an album based on how many you sold, strangely enough, now you can't anymore and that's really weird," Butler continues. For someone like me, who sold cassettes as a busker, I feel like I'm right in the middle of this twenty-year transition. I've found as our music has gotten more popular, and we've played to more people in Australia and around the world, they seem to be loving the new stuff, but we're selling less. So ok, how do you judge it now? I guess all you can really do, when you get into the cold face of it all, which is touring, the people who turn up and want to celebrate your music live with you, if you needed a common denominator to work off that's probably the most steady one at the moment. You surely can't judge anything by how much you get played on radio, or sales." Mind you, the business side of things of probably isn't Butler's main focus presently for the coming tour. Family is becoming an increasingly important factor in the touring schedule, with wife Danielle touring as Mama Kin with The Cat Empire the day after Butler's Adelaide date. Looks like she'll watch the kids one night, he'll have them the next. "The kids handle it better than us most of the time," Butler says, with an undertone of pride. "We're often somewhere, at a gig, a park or an airport and it's amazing how well they make themselves at home. They're kind of gypsies. My daughter has been on the road ever since she was six months, so she's definitely comfortable. Home is very important as well for us, but I think the most important thing, for children, is happy parents and that they see the healthy relationship between their parents." "You can try to formulate it, but the best analogy I can think of is; people try to become totally prepared to be parents, but you just can't, until you're a parent. Then when you're a parent, you just make it work. So far we've done a pretty good job, our kids don't have a stuttering problem, they don't have and twitches we know about. They're pretty healthy and dynamic, well adjusted, happy children." After what has been something of a hiatus for JBT (it's been almost eight months since they toured), Butler is naturally anxious to make his way back onto the road, and also hopeful of the fact that the time between tours will have re-invigorated his fans who may have become slightly nonchalant do the his saturation of the national live music landscape. "It got to a point where I just got tired of the circuit," Butler confesses. "You get to a point where people know you when you see them, and that's great, and I'm not saying that people got sick of us. But there's a fine line; you want it to be a special event not just, 'Oh, John's coming back again. Maybe I'll go along.' We've had fun all over the world making music and we've been developing the set, and the current set extends from my busking tape to the latest album." An album that many may note, was uncharacteristically conventional considering Butler's often elaborate arrangements, extended guitar solo's and unbridled willingness to experiment. 'April Uprising' was perhaps the more of a 'pop' album rather than a roots album in a traditional sense, but Butler was more than pleased to explain the songwriting process from his latest recording, which will of course be played live in Australia for the first time on the coming tour. "I think that was just where I was at. Even after recording Grand National I was just discovering as an artist and a songwriter, through all my favourites, what it was about them that I liked. Anything for Fleetwood Mac to Elton John, lots of Bob Marley and The Beatles and even things like Fiest and Gillian Welch. What I was noticing for the majority was these great parts, like in reggae all minimal parts together all work with the rhythm, and for me I was just getting right into discovering how much fat can we cut off it to leave the gold. I didn't necessarily have a lot to say on the guitar, as in I don't have 10 minutes of blistering solo's to do. I mean, I could've done something that would have satisfied a lot of people, but for me I guess I'm just looking to dig deeper all the time. And so, sometimes less is more and I thing I just really wanted to explore that." John Butler is playing at the Entertainment Centre on Tue 31 Aug, with Blue King Brown in support. By Ryan Winter