Matt Butler is a singular entity in the jamband world. His Everyone Orchestra project has brought together pretty much, well, everyone, including members from basically every imaginable band in the scene, since the revolving-door series of supergroups started in 2001. Butler is the conductor of the whole operation, leading the collectives through all-improvised setlists and guiding them to compose on-the-spot songs with hand motions, directions written on dry-erase boards, vocal cues and more, all the while bringing the crowd into the action in various interactive ways.
Butler, who arrived in the jamband scene in the early ’90s as part of the group Jambay, is also passionately committed to giving back to the community—not just his own, but also those of the world at large. Here, during a conversation aboard last month’s Jam Cruise 15, the EO conductor discusses his extensive charity work with Jam Cruise, Positive Legacy and beyond and how Everyone Orchestra is changing the way musicians interact on stage—plus a quick walk-by cameo from Twiddle frontman Mihali Savoulidis.
You’ve been on your fair share of Jam Cruises—how has the event changed over the years, from your perspective?
The only main thing that’s changed, for me, is that when I was first on, the Jam Room was set up in a hallway venue. It was a really small, kind of jazz venue, and it was all backlined. There was a sound guy, and if you had an artists’ laminate, you could get up and you had access to it. It was pretty much open. Not 24 hours a day, but from 4pm, or 3pm, on until the early morning. It wasn’t scheduled. I have this memory of walking down the hallway with Reggie Watts and running into some ALO guys and all of a sudden, two minutes later, we’re just jamming and a huge crowd comes in, and all these other musicians. Three hours later, it ends. It was completely impromptu, and the ability of really spontaneous collision between artists, that was one of my favorite things about Jam Cruise then. It doesn’t really have that now—it’s a little more planned. There’s a lot of collisions still, but it’s more planned out. Even with Everyone Orchestra, that’s kind of what I do. That’s really the only difference. I feel like it’s kind of the same. They love the artists. Cloud 9 is all about nurturing the artists’ experience and creating a fun, safe place for them to be in the sandbox of their life, which is metaphorically exactly what I do on my stages. Here, a lot of artists get to bring their spouses or their friends, and you have this really intimate thing and meet all these other musicians. They’ve cultivated a community around that. It’s really special.
Can you talk about your involvement with Positive Legacy as part of Jam Cruise?
I’m really involved and have been for a long time, and my wife was one of the founding members when they became a non-profit. It’s Cloud 9’s nonprofit that basically does outreach in the ports. Now that they do land events, you know, they do outreach in the communities where they do those events. They’re trying to have some sort of cultural interaction that goes beyond the jam tourist, and it actually gives a way for the cruisers and the musicians to give back to the communities that they’re in and bring awareness to the environmental aspects—or lack of aspects—of the cruise ship industry, or what’s going on in the communities. They’re trying to bring enlightened, awakened participation to what we’re doing. Early on, [for example,] we’d contact an orphanage in Roatán, and members of Everyone Orchestra—you know, [Jon] Fishman and Jeff Coffin and [Steve] Kimock—would all grab a box of school supplies and stuff, and we’re walking off the boat and we’d walk a half a mile to the orphanage to deliver the goods. They invite us in and we start to play a little music. It was kind of impromptu, very low-key, but it was magical. You come away from these moments going, “Wow, that’s a whole other level of what this is about, if we could actually bring something to these communities and get to know people and what’s really going on there.” That program, now, is a whole organization that has built multiple bathrooms and hospitals and schools and roofs on schools and supported after-school programs. I just feel like it does a lot of good, and it’s great to see that aspect evolve. I’ve been involved in that year after year.
[This year,] we’re supporting an after-school program at a BMX track [in Jamaica], and a hundred cruisers signed up. The executive director and some of the employees, or the people on the board at Positive Legacy, do research in Jamaica—What’s the biggest problem? Gang violence is huge. The kids go to school, and after school they don’t have anything to do. There’s very little organized activity. This program, it’s a BMX track that was founded by a nonprofit that was founded by Island Records’ founder. They helped make this nonprofit that gives kids an after-school program, a place to go, a place to learn some skills and do some stuff. So, we’re bringing in a hundred people there to help beautify the track, meet some of the kids, meet their families. Then, we’re all going to James Bond beach which is right nearby. All the kids and their families are coming, and we’re having a big feast for them and for the cruisers with live music.
That’s the format, and we’ve done it in various communities. Different aspects have changed a little bit depending on what kind of a program it is. It’s part of why I’m here. I love the music, I love Cloud 9, I love what they do, but to be involved in Positive Legacy makes me feel more attached and committed to it all.
Everyone Orchestra has also done a lot of good charitable work. Can you talk a little bit about that and also how it started to become such a large part of your career?
I’m a drummer. I was in a band in the ‘90s called Jambay, so I met a whole bunch of people in the jam scene—before it was called the jam scene. I always say, “Before JamBase, before Jam Cruise, before Jambands, there’s Jambay.” We really embodied the ethos of it all. Everyone Orchestra came out of me looking to do something different, to bring groups of musicians together in a unique way, and it kind of incorporated all my experiences: Growing up in an orchestral household; coaching tennis and running drills and building teams; playing in a band and understanding the band dynamic and jamming with people; and then living and working with Ken Kesey, and him always trying to get the audience involved in a unique way. Then, my experiences with Zambiland Orchestra in Atlanta, seeing how they did it and learning.
I was facilitating drum circles and doing stuff like that, but the whole using signs as an obvious way to conduct and to produce live in the moment, I had an epiphany [about that] participating in Zambiland back then. And, also, trying to do good in the world—I had a mission. Part of my upbringing was being part of this youth group, and I had a life-changing experience as a teenager working in an orphanage outside of Tijuana. It really changed my outlook on the whole world. Ever since then, I was always trying to incorporate some sort of giving back as my path, as my spirituality. Which is undefined—I’m not religious in a specific sense—but helping people through music, combining those things, has always been the dream. In the beginning, with Everyone Orchestra, pretty much all the shows were benefit shows. I brought it together with the concept that it’s going to benefit a nonprofit, and we had all these different components. We did that for a number of years, and it became apparent to me that there was this potential of exploring the creative musical aspect of it deeper, and to put on a huge benefit show every time we do it was too much. I’m always trying to partner with nonprofits, always trying to raise awareness. We still do some benefit shows, but I wanted to focus on the creative aspect of what it was.
It’s been a process of training the audience and the musicians to the new mindset, because it’s different. The group composition through improvisation is a little bit different than playing as a cover band, or just any kind of way. At Summer Camp, I partnered with Make a Difference, so we had this extra intent. We did this Rex Jam for years—it was all raising money for music and schools. It was a natural fit for partnering with Cloud 9 and Positive Legacy to try and bring people together in this unique, improvisational way, with the intent of “Let’s do some good.”
How do you typically bring a a specific Everyone Orchestra group together?
Well, you know, at this point I’ve been doing EO since 2001. I’ve been part of the jamband scene since…God…holy shit, ’92? I don’t even know if Mihali was born yet—[motions to a nearby Mihali Savoulidis]
MS: I was born, man! I listened to Jambay, you guys were awesome.
[Laughs]. Anyway, a long time ago. A lot of the foundation for it came from me calling my friends and being like, “Dudes, I got this idea,” and them trusting me to try it. It spread from there, really. The foundation of [String] Cheese, Fishman, Leftover [Salmon], moe., all those cats I knew from back when I was playing drums. That was the foundation where it eventually grew from. Now, I have a team. I have two other people that run the business with me, two managers. The three of us basically put together lineups, and we have a booking agent, we all have different roles. Some festivals I still do entirely by myself, and they support me. It doesn’t fit into the normal mold of a band or a singer-songwriter with a booking agent, when he just books it—“Okay, we got 40 dates booked and you have to play these songs.” Everyone’s a little different. It’s a wild ride. Sometimes what makes it so beautiful makes it really a logistic-heavy kind of deal.
Do you still do any drumming outside of EO?
I don’t have time. My last drumming gig was with Hot Buttered Rum. Actually, there’s a record coming out that I’m on with The Contribution, which is with Tim Carbone and Jeff [Miller] from New Monsoon, which is a singer-songwriter project. For a couple of years, it was a side project, and then Keith Moseley from Cheese was on bass and I was on drums, and we recorded a bunch of tunes, and the drummer for Widespread Panic [Duane Trucks]. He’s awesome. He sat in one time in EO. The guy kills. Totally kills. It was amazing. I feel like he’s totally elevated Widespread’s thing. We shared the album because at a certain point I was like, “Guys, I can’t travel anymore.” There’s EO, I have two kids—my wife works full-time and I’m raising my kids. I’m a scout master.
I have a studio, and it’s turning into my kids’ studio, and they’ve got a couple drum sets set up, facing each other. Jambay played over eleven hundred shows. That’s a lot of setting up my drum set, taking my drum set down, so I feel like I still consider myself a drummer, and I perceive everything from that place, but I’m not as interested. I don’t have that desire to go out and play and put energy in drumming at the moment. There’s so many other things. The palette of Everyone Orchestra is so broad, and the possibilities are so tantalizing. I know so many good drummers that are so stoked to do that.
Just a last question, and I don’t know if you can answer this—over the 15 or 16 years of EO, are there any big collaborations that stand out, any lineups that you were like, “Oh my God, we killed it that night”?
Truly, every show builds on itself. It’s hard to compare—it’s like apples and oranges. Some of the ones that stand out are the ones where the sound system sucked, or the backline sucked. It’s weird how sometimes you remember the train wrecks. It wasn’t because the musicians were bad or anything; it was things out of our control. One year on Jam Cruise, this storm hit and we ended up having to move to the disco. I had a whole lineup of musicians, and the room was set up so the sound guy is in back, the PA is in front of him, and the band is in front of the PA. It was so fucked up. But we had a great show—it was packed! It was kind of like, “Oh, Jesus, please get me through this.” I just did shows in Colorado that were some of the best shows that I’ve been a part of. I had young musicians, members of Turkuaz and Dopapod and [Michael] Travis from Cheese was on drums, so it was him and I and all these young cats. It was fucking awesome. Oh, and Mihali was on it, too.
There’s this understanding and a deepening grasp of the potentiality of the Everyone Orchestra process. The musical community that I’m bringing together to do this, it’s not just for a superjam. We’re writing, we’re composing music on the spot, and people are bringing their A-game, and they’re so aware to be spontaneous, and we’re just carving these incredible pop songs, if you will, and then jamming them out. They surprise everybody. As long as we keep on doing that, every show seems to be the best one after the last.
