— by Alyssa Rashbaum, with additional reporting by Celeste Joseph
Though he has been named Australia's best male artist by the country's Recording Industry Association, roots rocker John Butler would be just as happy busking across the globe.
"I started off [performing] in a market," Butler said. "I got kicked out eventually because the crowds that were watching me were too big. Their backs were against the stalls that were selling stuff and [the vendors] were all paying rent to be there and I was just this busker in front of a trash can."
Butler's laid-back approach to his musical career is the sort of attitude that might prevent most aspiring musicians from ever leaving their parents' basement. For Butler, though, it allowed him to climb to fame from a grass-roots level and release his music in his own time.
"It was just logical," Butler said. "It was never like a philosophy or anything that I was trying to adhere to. It's the fact that I wanted to play music live and I wanted to sell my music and people wanted to buy it, and the best way to do that is to play it and to sell it straight to them. That is what I have always done, whether it be on the streets or at the gigs."
In fact, Butler sold more than 30,000 copies of the debut album from the John Butler Trio (whose fluid lineup currently features Shannon Birchall on bass and Michael Barker on drums) in the markets in Fremantle, Australia, and his album, Sunrise Over Sea, (which will be his first full-length U.S. release in February 2005) was the first independently produced and released album to debut at #1 on the Australian albums chart when it was released there in March.
When Australian major labels finally tuned in, Butler didn't need them.
"In Australia," he said, "the only time people were interested in us is when they realized that we were selling 30,000 albums. So to me, it was a little bit too late, you know. We were fine."
Over here in the U.S., however, they needed a little help, so the trio signed with Lava and released the EP What You Want in August. A rock album with inflections of blues, funk and soul, What You Want evokes comparisons to jam-band music, but it's a far cry from Phish or the String Cheese Incident: The spotlight is shared between textured instrumentals and lyrics that alternate from peppy rhymes to crafted poetry. Political lyrics imbue the infectious "Something's Gotta Give," while a cover of The Beatles' "Across the Universe" offers an inventive take on the classic tune.
The John Butler Trio's indie success hasn't had much of an effect on its frontman, however, who sees each new achievement as just another chapter in his life.
"I didn't plan to be here at the moment, you know," he said. "I just wanted to busk in the streets, really, and I made that decision when I was 21 ... and all of a sudden, I am here five years later. It's a good place to be and I am stoked to be here, but it was never an aspiration to be a traveling professional musician."
In fact, childhood ambitions for Butler — who lived in a rural part of Torrance, California, until he was 8 — ran the gamut from professional skateboarder to Green Beret.
"I was a very well-indoctrinated young American man who wanted to be G.I. Joe and save the world," he said. "I don't know how that happened. I think I just really like climbing trees and being in the bush. At the age of 13, my girlfriend found my clubhouse with toy guns [in it], and I remember being extremely embarrassed, and that was kind of the end of that — you can't really expect a woman to take you seriously when you play with toy guns. I [also] had a daddy who said, 'You are never going to go overseas and die for an oil company.' I am glad he said that. It ended up filtering through and changing my mind."
After milking goats at home in California — "I was raised on goat's milk," he said — Butler and his family moved to Australia. There, his father gave him his first guitar: a 1930 Dobro that had belonged to his grandfather.
"I got that guitar when I was 16," Butler said, "and being the first child to learn on that after he died, I didn't really take advantage of what that guitar was made for until I was 21 and I started playing slide, and that's kind of when it all came together for me."
On October 17, things came together on another level for Butler who, along with his band, took home three awards at the ceremony for the Australian Recording Industry Association, including best male artist, best indie release, and best blues and roots for Sunrise Over Sea.
Will the album fare as well when released to the finicky ears of American audiences?
"I am just excited to show the music to people who are not turned on to it, to tell you the truth. As long as people are not throwing rocks at me and they are digging the music, I think it is a positive thing."
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