{"id":2409487,"date":"2026-05-09T21:42:35","date_gmt":"2026-05-09T21:42:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/?p=2409487"},"modified":"2026-05-09T21:42:35","modified_gmt":"2026-05-09T21:42:35","slug":"from-australia-to-aspen-arts-entertainment","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/from-australia-to-aspen-arts-entertainment\/","title":{"rendered":"From Australia to Aspen | Arts & Entertainment"},"content":{"rendered":"

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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.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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\n Courtesy of Daniel Romanoff<\/span>
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When John Butler takes the stage at Belly Up tonight, his goal is to not just entertain the crowd but to blow them away.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cEverything I do basically boils down to giving people the chills,\u201d Butler told the Aspen Daily News. \u201cIf there\u2019s one word I hope to instill in the people at my shows, it would be wonder.\u201d<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

Butler plays a hybrid of rock, reggae, acoustic soul, blues, folk and funk. There aren\u2019t 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.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Butler takes many of his jams far out into the cosmic heartland, with live songs often charting at well over 10 minutes.\u00a0<\/p>\n

He was born in California before his family moved to Australia, his father\u2019s native country, when he was 11 years old. He spent his early years chasing very different ambitions.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor a long time I wanted to be in Special Forces,\u201d he said. \u201cThen I wanted to be a professional skateboarder.\u201d That second dream was derailed, repeatedly, by broken bones.\u00a0<\/p>\n

After a few failed attempts at learning guitar, Butler was given his father\u2019s slide guitar at 16. Around the same time, he\u00a0 found a teacher who taught him classics like \u201cStairway to Heaven.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Butler played through his teens but admits \u201cI wasn\u2019t very good at it.\u201d It wasn\u2019t until his early 20s, when he discovered open guitar tuning, that everything clicked.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt made me sound better than I was,\u201d he said. \u201cBut more importantly, it gave me a voice I didn\u2019t know I had.\u201d<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

Butler released his self-titled eponymous album in 1998 with drummer Jason McGann and bassist Gavin Shoesmith rounding out the trio. An EP, \u201cJBT,\u201d followed in 2000.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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. \u201cSunrise Over Sea\u201d (2003), \u201cGrand National\u201d (2005) and Sunrise over Sea (2010) all went platinum. In 2011, Butler released a live album\/dvd of a sold out Red Rocks concert.<\/p>\n

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John Butler was born in the United States and moved to Australia when he was 11. He is one of Australia\u2019s most popular rock artists of the last 25 years. He plays at Belly Up Aspen tonight.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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\n Courtesy of Daniel Romanoff<\/span>
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Songs as survival<\/strong><\/h3>\n

While his guitar work often draws the spotlight, Butler sees songwriting as equally essential \u2014 less performance, more personal necessity.<\/p>\n

\u201cSongs were always a form of journal entry for me,\u201d he said. \u201cIt was a way to write in a diary and to understand life and to assimilate, digest and metabolize the craziness of the world.\u201d<\/p>\n

Butler cites songwriting influences ranging from Leonard Cohen to Dolly Parton, Tracy Chapman, Gillian Welch and David Rawlings.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Fans may notice a subtle but important shift over the last 15 years: Butler moved away from the \u201cTrio\u201d moniker that defined much of his career. Now performing simply under his own name, he said the change reflects clarity rather than reinvention.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve been playing with four or five people for years,\u201d he explained. \u201cCalling it a trio didn\u2019t make sense anymore.\u201d<\/p>\n

Butler did offer a primer for newcomers coming to see him for the first time, suggesting they listen to \u201cOcean,\u201d \u201cZebra,\u201d \u201cLosing You,\u201d and \u201cThe Way Back.\u201d Together, they offer a snapshot of his range\u2014from intricate instrumentals to emotionally resonant songwriting.<\/p>\n

Music and the modern world<\/strong><\/h3>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are many that see the world as a corporation and as a business and the people as the employees,\u201d he said. \u201cWhite supremacy and racism, colonization and stealing \u2014\u00a0 when you have that as a basis it\u2019s never going to end well for the greater whole.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThings are tricky and complex but there are some things that are not,\u201d Butler continued. \u201cDecency, respect, being a kind empathetic person, being adverse to genocide, these things are not complex, they\u2019re 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

Butler feels like that\u2019s where music comes in, that\u2019s where he comes in.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cIf people at my shows can have a brief moment where they\u2019re like, \u2018Wow, something bigger is going on in the world, and this is helping me feel it in the confusion and the mayhem of industrialization,\u2019 I think that I\u2019ve done my job.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

\u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n

\u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.aspendailynews.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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.\u00a0 Courtesy of Daniel Romanoff When John Butler takes the stage at Belly Up tonight, his goal is to not just entertain the crowd but to blow them away.\u00a0 \u201cEverything I do basically […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2409488,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25172],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2409487","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-entertainment"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/From-Australia-to-Aspen-Arts-Entertainment.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2409487","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2409487"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2409487\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2409489,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2409487\/revisions\/2409489"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2409488"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2409487"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2409487"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2409487"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}