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John Butler Trio
Los
Angeles-born guitarist John Butler was raised in Pinjarra, Western
Australia. When John was the first child in the family to learn guitar
after his grandfather died, his grandmother handed down to John her
husband's lap steel guitar. His grandfather, also John Butler, died in the
1952 Nannup forest fires in Western Australia.
It took
a while for that guitar to shape the younger John Butler's music career. At
sixteen he started strumming on it. In his early twenties, after modifying
his grandfather's guitar slightly, he started playing it in public, busking
in Fremantle with a battery powered amp he borrowed off a friend. But his
main guitar , then and now is the guitar he bought through the musician who
taught John for five months, an old Washburn 12 String acoustic.
On the
streets of Fremantle John Butler improvised on the instrumentals which
distilled into the instrumental tape 'Searching For Heritage'. The healthy
sales of that tape while busking, plus unemployment benefits helped pay for
1998's selftitled first album. the music
style is born out of everrything he's heard and enjoyed, from Black Sabbath
to Fleetwood Mac to Jeff Lang. The songs speak about life and issues. He's
been labelled a "hippy".
The end
of the busking days also called for the formation of the John Butler Trio
with Gavin Shoestring on bass and Jason McGann at the drumkit - one of the
busiest bands in the land, headlining shows and playing at almost every
festival going. The band's recording debut came in the form of the John
Butler Three EP in 2000. By the time the album 'Three' was released, the
word was out. Triple J was giving high rotation treatment to the 'Three'
track 'Betterman', and the independently-distributed CD landed the John
Butler Trio on the official national sales charts.
During
2001/02 the group recorded 4 gigs, 2 in Melbourne and 2 in West Australia..
John chose 13 songs from those shows to release and included one studio
song, 'Home Is Where the Heart Is' to what became 'Living 2001-2002',
another huge success for the fiercely independent John Butler Trio. To
quote John Butler: "Surfing's not about being sponsored, and music's
not about being signed".
The six
months John Butler took off before tackling what became 'Sunrise Over Sea'
was highly significant. It wasn't the same John Butler who returned to the
studio. He'd taken that time off to prepare for, and enjoy, the birth of
his first child. He came back to the studio inspired with thoughts of wife
Danielle and daughter Banjo. He started work without the rest of the
last-known John Butler Trio line-up. The way the new album unfolded he
could have released it as John Butler, with backing musicians, not as the
Trio. But he'd worked too long establishing the name and the music was
meant to be played live
'Sunrise Over Sea' entered the national album charts at No.1, just the
second independent Australian album to achieve the top spot, after You Am
I's 'Hourly Daily' eight years earlier. The single, 'Zebra' won John Butler
the prestigious APRA Song Of The Year award.
If
'Sunrise Over Sea' could have been a solo album, 2007's was everything but.
The creation of 2007's 'Grand National' involved a cast of
"thousands", including strings and brass, and backing vocals from
wife Danielle and Vika and Linda Bill of Black Sorrows fame. Marriage and
the birth of his two children had shown John that he was a member of a
family, his immediate family, his family of musicians and also a global
family. That thought inspired the title of the album. Somewhere between 22
to 25 songs were considered for this album, some created during or before
'Sunrise Over Sea'.
In March
2008 John Butler announced that after six years drummer Michael Barker and
bass player Shannon Birchall would play their last shows with The John
Butler Trio in April and Butler would seek new band mates as he begins work
on his fifth studio album. In June 2009 the new members of the trio -
Melbourne musician Nicky Bomba - who was the principal drummer on 'Sunrise
Over Sea', and Sydney musician Byron Luiters – entered the recording studio
to start work on the group’s next album.
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