There is something inexplicably earthy about John Butler. He’s not dirty, he’s natural. His movements are curiously measured and placed. He and his trio can stand about idly as a group of cotton-swaddled willows when not in song and you’ll learn just as much from their silence as you will from their strains. There’s an awful lot to hear, though. John promises to deal in an intense brand of guitar-led roots – that’s how he gets you to come out, see – but he also offers his audiences loads of sagacious chatter in between.
Indeed we’re dealing with profound stuff from troubadour John now that he’s 15-odd years through his artistic passage. The existentially-minded Flesh & Blood is the trio’s most recent record, which is to say it’s the most recent record from the trio we saw at the Palais Wednesday night, who also happen to be part of the most recent version of the trio. Butler is for obvious reasons the only mainstay and has changed his trinity about three times now – that’s three different trios or thereabouts – but it doesn’t seem to matter. He chooses friendly-looking musicians technically better than him so as to concentrate solely on his part of their isosceles setup. No criticism from me here; it’s a smart way to not have to stress and he didn’t stress.
So the three played Spring To Come, Blame It On Me, Cold Wind and Only One from Flesh & Blood fairly early on. I became chagrined when John embarked solo upon Ocean, his nine-bloody-minute-long-Philip-Glass-circularity guitar piece, because he always dives into it as if he’s doing everyone a righteous favour and w/r/t technicality it’s superficially flashy. All joy and gusto was lost on the crowd about five minutes through and besides a few dread-locked guys down in front who cried out and waved like Pentecostals after a series of concatenated Butler hammer-ons signalled the finish most other punters teetered on their haunches like protestants, hands respectfully knotted behind backs. Ocean is a number for guitar geeks I suppose.
Funky Tonight was funky as hell. John jiggled about like a giddy bluegrass savant and has a sincere half-smile that carried him through to Better Than. Zebra and another tune from F & B followed. The former gave every semi-initiated JB fan – of which I’m assuming there were many – the chance to do the da da DA DA DA, da da DA DAS they came to do and the latter wrapped things up real tight.
John Butler and his trio are singularly great to see because they are comfortable with their craft in a way that looks enviably effortless. Humble Butler’s been places, seen some shit, and I’ve now shared in some of it so I feel pretty humbled. Remove a few spurts of unnecessary guitar-wankery and essentially what we Melburnians saw was an organically structured, organically performed set of organic roots jams.
BY NATHAN HEWITT
Loved: The way Grant Gerathy patters his hi-hat like a bloody speed-ball and can consistently stop on a dime.
Hated: When Zebra came on, the wave of inebriated blokey philistines pushing toward the stage to sing at JB. I think he was a little distracted by it.
Drank: A club soda which my girlfriend picked up for me in a moment of utter confusion and distress after saying she’d love to go get drinks.
