I interviewed John in January of '07, a few days before Big Day Out and the release of his Trio's latest album, Grant National, for the cover of The Brag. The interview took place in a hotel in Surry Hills, Sydney - and even when he's staying in hotels, John has his guitars and his recording equipment set up just in case inspiration comes to him.
He’s the kind of guy you can imagine will inspire future generations of musicians to spray-paint “JB 4 PM” roughly on the backs of their guitars. And if you think about it, John Butler – musician, environmentalist, philanthropist – would probably make the coolest world leader in centuries, with his brown dreadlocks and purposely-overgrown right hand fingernails; far cooler than Clinton and his toolshed shenanigans, or Castro and his penchant for fine Cuban cigars.
You can’t help but be inspired by John when he’s speaking so passionately about his beliefs. Since releasing his first self-titled album in 1999, John’s brilliant acoustic guitar skills, combined with lyrics that deal not only with his personal life but the world around him, has garnered him a massive fan base, both here and abroad. Staunchly independent, he’s released a number of studio and live albums with his revolving Trio under Jarrah Records, a label he co-owns with folk act The Waifs. In 2005, John moved into philanthropic work, starting the JB Seed program which provides funding for developing arts and culture projects.
He’s coming off the back of his band’s most popular record, Sunrise Over Sea, which not only debuted at Number 1 on the ARIA Charts, but the lead single ‘Zebra’ won a 2004 ARIA Award for Song of the Year. But John seems content as we kick back in his hotel room, a day before the Sydney Big Day Out; recording gear in one corner, a well-worn 12-string acoustic resting next to my couch which he plays for me during our chat. He’s finally finished his new beast, Grand National, a title which echoes John’s desire to create universality in music and in life.
It’s an album that’s pure JBT, but there’s a sense of something new, of a new element to the Trio. “The only direction I’m interested in is forward,” states my hypothetical future Prime Minister. “I keep on wanting to make the next album better than the last one, that’s the dream. I’m glad I’ve made something I’m very happy with and it’s definitely a great reflection of where I am as a writer and where we are as a band, and where I am in my head, talking about what’s going on inside me and around me.”
Be it the banjo on the opening track ‘Better Than’, turntables on ‘Daniella’ or the overdriven riffage of ‘Devil Running’, Grand National is – and there’s no other word for it – funky. John’s funkiness was brought out with the help of producer Mario Caldato Jr, best known for his work with the Beastie Boys. “There’s a lot of swing and groovier beats on this album that I was writing, and my aim was to make sure we got it swinging,” says John. “The Beastie Boys thing was the main inspiration. He didn’t fully understand the guitar for a while [laughs].” It’s the first time that John has had someone other than himself producing the album, and admits it was a big deal putting his “baby” in someone else’s hands. “It was definitely a big subject to broach. It’s like leaving your kids at the babysitter for the first time. You know everything about them, and you’re leaving them with somebody who doesn’t know your baby. It was a big thing, but he was the perfect guy.”
Lyrically, John doesn’t shy away from the issues that affect him the most: social justice, politics, the environment, his wife Danielle and his children. He’s known more for his political viewpoints, but on Grand National John explains he’s focusing on personal issues. “I think more and more I’m peeling off the different aspects of the human condition. Essentially politics, society, environment – all those things are human conditions. If you take the ‘ism’ off it or you take the heading off it, you get more and more down to the human condition and the human issues behind it. Essentially we all want the same things. We want peace; we want equality; we want justice. We all want clear air and clean water. Yes they’re environmental, they’re political. You can put them in those realms and you can fight them in those realms, but essentially they’re human rights and they’re things we need to survive, as well as love and all those other things. So I think I’m writing about those things in that way, as well as celebrating the love for my wife and the love for my children.”
Like Midnight Oil before them, the John Butler Trio have positioned themselves as a band who speak strongly about social issues. While there was a huge political movement in music during the time of the Vietnam War, John says the drop in people singing about these issues comes down to how they’re polarised in the media. “These are issues that are not black or white. A sliver of black, a sliver of white, and a multitude of grey layers that is life. Some of these things are real duality subjects. Abortion: nobody wants to see kids be killed and nobody wants to see a 16 year old who’s been gang-raped be forced to have a child.”
John says the “with us or against us” attitude presented by politicians and the media drives people to feel as though they don’t have the authority to talk about certain subjects. “You feel you have to have a doctorate in philosophy or environmental science, or you can’t talk about the nuclear debate without being a nuclear physicist – what a load of bullshit. That’s how the extremes want it to be. You don’t get on the playing field, you don’t feel like its part of your right to have an opinion. And when you don’t have an opinion, then you don’t vote for that opinion, and then you don’t have any power and they do what they fucking like.”
To take the issues back to the people, John talks about simplifying and bringing them down to the human element. “You don’t polarise it or dumb the subject down, you simplify it into its purest form, which is the human form.”
Well, he’s got my vote.
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