John Butler and his band will perform at Belly Up Aspen tonight at 9 p.m. Butler is a multi-platinum selling musician from Australia.
When John Butler takes the stage at Belly Up tonight, his goal is to not just entertain the crowd but to blow them away.
“Everything I do basically boils down to giving people the chills,” Butler told the Aspen Daily News. “If there’s one word I hope to instill in the people at my shows, it would be wonder.”
Butler gives himself plenty of time to take the audience to another mind space. He plays two-and-a-half-hour shows that span his almost 30-year career that started as a busker in Australia in the late 1990s before he became a top charting artist down under and went on to achieve international success in the early aughts.
Butler plays a hybrid of rock, reggae, acoustic soul, blues, folk and funk. There aren’t that many bands that blend folk and funk, but Butler fuses the two genres to great effect with lyrics that blend metaphysics, politics and everything in between.
Butler takes many of his jams far out into the cosmic heartland, with live songs often charting at well over 10 minutes.
He was born in California before his family moved to Australia, his father’s native country, when he was 11 years old. He spent his early years chasing very different ambitions.
“For a long time I wanted to be in Special Forces,” he said. “Then I wanted to be a professional skateboarder.” That second dream was derailed, repeatedly, by broken bones.
After a few failed attempts at learning guitar, Butler was given his father’s slide guitar at 16. Around the same time, he found a teacher who taught him classics like “Stairway to Heaven.”
Butler played through his teens but admits “I wasn’t very good at it.” It wasn’t until his early 20s, when he discovered open guitar tuning, that everything clicked.
“It made me sound better than I was,” he said. “But more importantly, it gave me a voice I didn’t know I had.”
Open tuning unlocked a world of influences, from Indian classical music to Celtic folk and American roots traditions. Butler immersed himself in the guitar and developed the intricate, percussive guitar style that would become his signature.
Butler showcased his skills by busking on the streets of Perth and Fremantle, and he began building an audience after releasing a homemade cassette featuring his own instrumental songs.
Butler released his self-titled eponymous album in 1998 with drummer Jason McGann and bassist Gavin Shoesmith rounding out the trio. An EP, “JBT,” followed in 2000.
By this time, Butler was a star in Australia. In the next 10 years he released seven records that elevated him from Australian sensation to international star. “Sunrise Over Sea” (2003), “Grand National” (2005) and Sunrise over Sea (2010) all went platinum. In 2011, Butler released a live album/dvd of a sold out Red Rocks concert.
John Butler was born in the United States and moved to Australia when he was 11. He is one of Australia’s most popular rock artists of the last 25 years. He plays at Belly Up Aspen tonight.
Songs as survival
While his guitar work often draws the spotlight, Butler sees songwriting as equally essential — less performance, more personal necessity.
“Songs were always a form of journal entry for me,” he said. “It was a way to write in a diary and to understand life and to assimilate, digest and metabolize the craziness of the world.”
Butler cites songwriting influences ranging from Leonard Cohen to Dolly Parton, Tracy Chapman, Gillian Welch and David Rawlings.
Fans may notice a subtle but important shift over the last 15 years: Butler moved away from the “Trio” moniker that defined much of his career. Now performing simply under his own name, he said the change reflects clarity rather than reinvention.
“I’ve been playing with four or five people for years,” he explained. “Calling it a trio didn’t make sense anymore.”
Butler did offer a primer for newcomers coming to see him for the first time, suggesting they listen to “Ocean,” “Zebra,” “Losing You,” and “The Way Back.” Together, they offer a snapshot of his range—from intricate instrumentals to emotionally resonant songwriting.
Music and the modern world
Butler has always been a heady musician and he opened up on his life views in these dystopian times in which the values and politics of the day go in stark contrast to his beliefs.
“There are many that see the world as a corporation and as a business and the people as the employees,” he said. “White supremacy and racism, colonization and stealing — when you have that as a basis it’s never going to end well for the greater whole.
“Things are tricky and complex but there are some things that are not,” Butler continued. “Decency, respect, being a kind empathetic person, being adverse to genocide, these things are not complex, they’re quite simple. I believe in Earth, I believe in wisdom and that the highest technology is already amongst us, if we only look for it and listen to it.”
Butler feels like that’s where music comes in, that’s where he comes in.
“If people at my shows can have a brief moment where they’re like, ‘Wow, something bigger is going on in the world, and this is helping me feel it in the confusion and the mayhem of industrialization,’ I think that I’ve done my job.”
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‘ Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.aspendailynews.com ’
