Born in the United States to an Australian father and American mother, John Butler got a taste of American culture until his parents’ split sent the pre-teen packing with dad to the southern hemisphere. On his 16th birthday, his paternal grandmother gave him an important family heirloom, his grandfather’s Dobro guitar.
Mixing college with busking on the streets, he finally chose one career path over another. A success in his homeland and France, and blossoming in other parts of the world including the U.S., solidified his selection. For him it’s not just a matter of recording and performing, but using his celebrity status for activist causes (i.e. the JB Seed which supports social, cultural and artistic diversity in Australia.)
Always intrigued about his familial roots, Butler finally uncovered the history of his ancestors as a participant in the BBC/Australian TV series “Who Do You Think You Are?” The program films celebrities as they’re guided through their family tree. Going through generations of hardship, he arrived at a matriarch who sang for her survival and on his paternal side revolutionaries who took part in the 1875 insurrection against the Ottoman Empire (a.k.a. April Uprising). The name felt right for a number of reasons and became the title of his latest album.
Recorded with his new bandmates — brother-in-law Nicky Bomba on drums and Byron Luiters on bass — April Uprising follows 2007’s Grand National as his next studio effort but travels a different course musically. Jam-oriented numbers are trimmed in favor of concise songs that maintain Butler’s mix of reggae, roots rock, hip-hop and pop.
While the conversation runs smoothly, the technology of patching in his voice from Australia to mine in America doesn’t, and we end up repeating questions and answers. It’s not surprising then that the time flew by and the publicist who set up the call pops in on more than one occasion to attempt to wrap up matters.
JPG: Let’s start in with the album cover. What led to to it and is it a Bob Marley, Rasta, lion reference?
JB: It kind of started with wanting to get my face off the cover of an album for once or my head off the album. And I’d once seen this really great album cover with the portrait of a gorilla. Knowing any of the story about the April Uprising and you may know about my ancestry in Bulgaria, on the flag of their uprising, there was this lion and so it’s kind of fitting to go looking for this great portrait of a lion…if we could find one. And I found one on a royalty-free stock image site. We worked on it a bit. Its face seemed to capture the energy in which we recorded the album, the energy in which we were putting the album out, with focus, power and confidence.
JPG: The first track, “Revolution,” I got the idea that it’s more of an inner revolution. While listening to it and reading your explanation in the press kit, are you familiar with the Adrian Bellew song, “Inner Revolution?”
JB: No, no.
JPG: You’ll have to check it out. Some of the lyrics fit well with what you’re talking about. “You say you’ve got big problems like everybody else, you won’t find any answers until you find yourself.”
JB: You’re right.
JPG: “When you face yourself and look inside you see there’s nowhere to run, nowhere to hide.” It seems as if that’s where you’ve been the last three years?
JB: Umm, I’ve been for ages. We’re always evolving, we’re always changing. Never going to be on the other side of it again. I guess as you go through periods of intense transformation, being on the other side of transformation, yeah there’s a lot of change going on. It started right with superficial stuff like getting rid of bits of my shell, having a son, and then changing my band, new lineup, a whole bunch of stuff. It tends to unfold. But then to be on the other side of it and be holy shit, god damn, there was a whole lot of fuckin’ shit going on there. I didn’t really realize what happened, you know. It was three years. A lot. It was nothing that I was really formulating. I don’t know anybody to get better connected to until now. It’s just an evolution that’s worked.
JPG: Connecting with that idea, I found it very interesting that the first thing you released when you were busking is called “Searching for Heritage,” and then you end up taking part in the BBC TV program “Who Do You Think We Are?” What is it about heritage and ancestry that has always been nagging at you?
JB: I guess coming from America and Australia I’m a part of a land that has a very ancient culture on it, the indigenous people the Native Americans and the Native Australians, they have a very strong tie to them, to their culture, their ancestry. There’s a sense of strength and a sense of spirit that these people get, the indigenous crew over here in Australia, and when you see that, hear the stories and get to see it firsthand, you almost feel it. And being that you have a relationship with land and spirit you listen for your own story; for myself, a broken storyline. My people come from the other side of the world. So, I’m always looking for my story and it influences a lot, to make our own ideas, make our own religion or…create a connection with the land that we’re on and that we love yet we’re from somewhere else. To me, I’ve always had that interest. You talk to anybody who will say, ‘We’ll fill out your family tree for you. Do you want to do this?’ Most people jump at the opportunity.
JPG: I saw a Canadian version of the show and now there’s an American version. It always seems like the participant get their mind blown by what’s told to them. Because I’ve read different versions of what you found with ancestors in Bulgaria and the April Uprising how did you apply that to yourself? Did you feel more confident as an artist, because of what you found from the matriarchal side or more as a socially conscious person from the great great grandfather’s side?
JB: It was a lot more physical and metaphysical than it was cerebral. We’ve heard the same, ‘You know where you come from, you know where you are going…’ We’ve all heard these things. So, when you go and walk on the land of your ancestors, and you go and sit in the same places, the places that they died or they walked through the woods or there’s a fireplace that they actually made, it’s quite a different position altogether. For me, yeah, it gives me a strong sense of foundation and power that I wasn’t really expecting to get from anyone. The journey itself was reclaiming, going on that journey was pretty special.
Like I said in the documentary, I’ve always known where I was going. I had my bow drawn but in the metaphor of drawing back that bow back being behind me, when you know more about it, and you can hear more about it, then you know where you’re coming from. All of a sudden, it seems like you’re able to draw back further, especially the things that I found out, it just reinforces everything that I already believed in, and felt in. Yeah, I knew where I was going, I had my bow drawn back and then all of a sudden with all this behind me, it’s like I had three generations pulling back on the bow, too.
JPG: Besides the title of the album, a lot of the songs for April Uprising were they already written or did you rewrite them after doing the show?
JB: The whole political and social uprising happened in April of 1875, but there’s a lot of revolutionary kind of sentiment on the album and in the songs. So, that mixed with 100 years later me being born in 1975, in April, and then in April me breaking up my band, and then in April me releasing an album. It can just tip that personal revolution, that metaphysical vision.
There’s about maybe half that was completely written and the rest was kind of written and some that were just barely written that I finished. Literally, I just introduced the general cords and changes to the band. And I guess for this album more so than any other album I wanted to be concentrating on songs. Not that I hadn’t before, but really, really concentrate on it. I asked myself, ‘Pick your favorite song.’ “Get Up, Stand Up.” “Superstition.” Artists like Bob Marley, Stevie Wonder, Paul Simon, Fleetwood Mac, Michael Jackson, all these great people…The Beatles, great songs! Real memorable music is great songs.
JPG: I was just going to ask you about the album being song-oriented, but you segued nicely for me. Now, is this right? I read that the album was recorded at your home studio?
JB: Yes, in my hometown but not in my home. I built a studio with some of my time off, and recorded it in my compound there.
JPG: Did that make the formation of a new band, new songs, new approach easier because all you were paying was the electric bill?
JB: Probably. Yeah, it was probably the most luxurious, most comfortable artistically indulgent thing I’ve ever done. The guys were staying upstairs, above the studio. This building that I bought, it was created completely around making the best, highest art possible.
JPG: Well, the result is very hook-laden.
JB: I’m not playing a myriad of notes. Less is more, you hear that all the time from the elders. Not so much letting my technique or my ego rule the song for once, and realizing that I had to serve the song, the song didn’t have to serve me.
JPG: I would also imagine that expanding musically is something that can be done during doing a live concert.
JB: Yeah, exactly. If a song wanted to be necessarily longer it would have and it may grow into that later live. I don’t know. Songs that I have wanted to be longer in the past have been recorded that way. I just found it a little bit trite to try to record something necessarily longer, in the context of jamband and a lot of other bands in the world. (laughs) I kept asking myself, ‘When did music become about the length of the song?’ It’s more about the song.
JPG: Maybe when you are younger you’re just so excited about playing and then as you get older you sense the idea that less is more and that you don’t have to, for lack of a better term, show off.
JB: I really wouldn’t have any clue to tell you the truth. (laughs) I’m just more a student. That’s for someone else. I’d like to think that if the song wanted to be 20 minutes long, then I would have to justify it.
JPG: That’s true. Now, you moved from Lava/Atlantic to ATO Records. How did you end up there? Does it seem more artist-friendly because it’s owned by an artist (Dave Matthews)?
JB: Actually, one of the key people, Will Botwin, who is the CEO of the company, I’ve known ever since he tried to sign me to Sony seven years ago and I went to Lava/Atlantic instead. Just knowing his passion for the band that hasn’t died over the past seven years; usually with record companies it comes and it goes. To see that kind of relentless passion was a key factor.
Lava/Atlantic wanted to go 360 [a contract where the record company promotes an artist for a long period of time in exchange for a percentage of non-music revenue such as concerts, merchandise and ringtones], and I thought, ‘Hell, they can’t even work out their own business of selling albums, why would I give them my touring when they know nothing about touring a band.’ I said, ‘I don’t think I’ll be taking up that deal.’ And they said, ‘Why not?’ And I said, ‘Because I’m taking the other deal.’ So, part ways, but you know they were good to me, as good as they could possibly be. There’s a couple great people there, and major labels are constantly downgraded by the lawyers and the accountants. It seems like there is less of that at ATO.
JPG: Trying to get a few things in here before we’re cut off. Back to the factual aspect of your Wikipedia page, are you still referred to as the Million Dollar Hippie in Australia?
JB: I don’t know. I only hear that in interviews. No one ever calls me it, which is probably a good thing because who knows what I’ll fuckin’ say back to ‘em. Million Dollar Hippie. What a name. It’s really funny.
JPG: I was going to say that probably gets thrown in there because you dare to have a social conscious and an environmental conscious and…
JB: Yeah, I think it’s that and that it’s expected that people who are completely self-funded and they come from the streets and they have ethics and they fight for things and keep their ethics, they expect them to be poor not rich. My idea and my headspace and my attitude is that anything I do is good enough to be in the mainstream and I don’t have a problem being in the mainstream. So, I take it there. Usually, what happens, my fans bust down the wall before I do. Commercial radio wouldn’t play us until so many of our fans… (publicist chimes in again)
I think what we did, you just see it live and then the groundswell and the grassroots approach just seems to bring it to the mainstream. That’s what happened in Australia and that’s what happened in France and God knows what will happen everywhere else, so we’ll see.
JPG: I saw you at the ROTHBURY Festival last July, and early on in your set there was some technical difficulty that happened. You kept playing as a roadie adjusted whatever was wrong and then the guitar could be heard through the system again. And you just laughed it off. It just seemed so nice to see a musician not get frustrated or angry about the situation. Did we just capture you on a very good day?
JB: (laughs) Yeah, that depends. That was probably trivial. When my Marshall amp goes down you’ll see me spitting like a baby. Well, not like a baby, but I’ll be a lot less…it was probably something minor where I unplugged something and he plugged it back in and we can laugh it off. But, when my Marshall goes down that’s half my sound on the guitar, so, I tend to then get a little stressed.
But, it was a good day, and I wish I could be that way all the time. So, I’ll take that on. If I know I have such a great affect on people maybe I’ll look into that.
JPG: Well it kind of applies to one of the lines in the press release for April Uprising “be happy and enjoy the present moment.” I thought, ‘Well, that’s very zen of you.’
JB: Yeah, you can’t get caught up in this whole negative thing.
JPG: My wife always tries to remind me of that
JB: It’s a journey man, it’s a journey. You hear it all the time, all those clichés, it’s so true, but it’s so hard sometimes, easier to say than do. The key word is try.
JPG: Yes, absolutely.
JB: Maybe I should just do and stop trying.
