John Butler Trio
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John Butler Trio

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“Every album is a sum of the last few years and everything I’ve done or written in between albums,” Butler says. “But two songs from this album came from a really deliberate writing session that I had with Nicky (Bomba, drums) and Byron (Luiters, bass) where we got together and I didn’t bring my songs in. We just jammed.

Because we all have so many great flavours, and a lot of times when I write a song, the song dictates quite a lot of the flavours right away, so we wanted to see what we could create without any input. And working with (producer) Jan Skubiszewski, he was instrumental, a fourth member of the band. He was a great conduit for all of us: me as an employer, a band leader, a co-producer and songwriter I can get a bit heady and probably a bit confusing, kind of this multiple personality that understands itself but I’m starting to understand that not everybody understands what I mean by ‘funky, dirty and angry!’ So Jan was amazing; a great producer and a great engineer.”

One of the tracks cuts particularly deep for Butler: “Wings Are Wide is about my grandmother Phillipa passing away,” Butler says. “She is the matriarch of my family, the one who, when I was 16, passed me down the Dobro guitar which once belonged to my grandfather John, whom I’m named after. She’s the reason why I play music; the cornerstone. It’s about her going to see her man again, after all this time.” The delivery is especially goosebump-raising.

At this point it’s pretty damn firmly established that people are going to buy John Butler Trio records: it’s going to have to take a pretty monumental clanger for that to ever change and it certainly won’t happen with Flesh & Blood. With that in mind, does Butler feel pressure from listeners, knowing that his music will be heard and that people are waiting to attach their own resonance to it? “There’s a bit of that, I think. I don’t think people listen to me because I write for them. I write strictly for my ears and for the Trio’s ears and what we want to hear and what we want to express. And we trust what we do enough to say ‘This is what we’ve done and this is all we know how to do.’ I’m sure there are some people who would like me to play more funky reggae all the time because that’s what Zebra was but I just can’t do that because then I’d become a parody of myself. So all I can keep on doing is to do what’s in the moment and hope for the best. I’ll be the first to say I hope people like the album, but if they don’t I don’t think I’d have written it any other way. I don’t think I’d know how to! I hope I’m never in that position where I have to write something to keep someone else happy.”

BY PETER HODGSON