Coming home to roots: John Butler says he's mellowed

JOHN Butler admits that earlier in his career he had trouble letting go, allowing others to help shape his vision of his music.

JOHN Butler is a more trusting individual than he used to be as a musician. The 38-year-old singer, songwriter and head honcho of the John Butler Trio stops short of calling himself a control freak, but admits that earlier in his career he had trouble letting go, allowing others to help shape his vision of his music.

"I'd say I had trust issues," he says, reflecting on it at his recording studio in the heart of Fremantle, which serves also as the Butler family headquarters.

He's pleased, then, that the result of his latest endeavours, the new John Butler Trio album Flesh & Blood, has a more collaborative spirit within the grooves of its 11 songs. He co-produced the album, released yesterday, at his studio, the Compound, with Melbourne producer Jan Skubiszewski. Three of the tracks were co-written with his JBT colleagues, bassist Byron Luiters and drummer Nicky Bomba.

"I'm proud of the horse I ride, but sometimes I hold the reins too tight," is the analogy he puts forward. "That's all I knew before, but now I'm trying to let go of that more and more. Sometimes the players have a better idea of where I'm going than I do. Letting go and trusting more is a hard thing to do. Maybe I'm mature enough now to do it."

Whatever the change in method, the result on Flesh & Blood is not a radical departure from the Butler trio formula of old, a mix of funky jam-band grooves and more acoustic-based soul-searching balladry. It's a style that has been a constant in the trio's output thus far, which includes the albums John Butler (1998), Three (2001), Sunrise Over Sea (2004), Grand National (2007) and April Uprising (2010).

Less permanent has been the line-up underneath the JBT umbrella. Bomba, Butler's brother-in-law, has been in the band twice, but left for the second time in September last year, months after the recording of the album had been completed. The brother of Butler's wife Danielle Caruana, Bomba has opted to concentrate on his own recording and touring projects, which includes the Melbourne Ska Orchestra. He joins Jason McGann and Michael Barker in the ranks of former JBT drummers.

The new addition to the ranks is Byron Bay drummer Grant Gerathy, who has worked with Angus Stone and Bobby Alu, among others. It's this new JBT line-up that has just gone off to tour the US and Canada (tonight they are in Chicago) before an extensive Australian tour that begins in March. All up the JBT will be on the road for about eight months of this year. Butler is pumped to be returning to the stage, he says, although he welcomed some time off to take stock between April Uprising and Flesh & Blood. It's also a year since he finished recording the album.

"In the history of the JBT it always takes about 2 1/2 months to record an album," he says. "Now, with the one that took 20 days, it takes a year to release it. I don't get that, but there were a couple of factors. My wife, Danielle, had an album out and Byron had a great opportunity to work on [television show] The Voice for six months. I feel rejuvenated now having had a bit of a life away from it all," he says.

Butler's trajectory has been steadily upwards since he emerged from life as a busker on the streets of Fremantle and Perth in the late 1990s. After the moderate success of his debut album, he teamed up with fellow WA act the Waifs and both acts' manager Phil Stevens to form the Jarrah Records label, a move that has seen Butler remain independent and become reasonably wealthy in the past 15 years ("the millionaire hippie", as he was once dubbed). Multiple awards and hit songs such as Better Than, Zebra, Close to You and Funky Tonight, alongside extensive touring, have kept him in the spotlight and in the hearts and minds of a loyal following.

It has been a factor also that Butler, through his music and otherwise, has been politically, socially and culturally motivated. His musical passions have been accompanied by - and have intertwined with - his strong views on issues such as the environment and indigenous rights. He has been a supporter of the Wilderness Society for many years and has campaigned and performed in aid of the Save the Kimberley project, efforts that manifested most successfully in front of 20,000 in Fremantle last year, when he, Missy Higgins and Ball Park Music staged a free concert.

There's a veiled reference to that campaign and those who oppose it in the song How You Sleep at Night on the new album, with lines such as "Do I dare to believe in something more than what you're telling me/ 'Cause all I hear is lies dressed up in fantasies."

Butler says the song "is just talking about being on different sides of warfare, about taking different sides. It's about the emotional side of that and about how to keep your morale high when it seems like we're being driven into the ground by Neanderthals who only care about money."

Not all the material on the album has a political bent. There's a romantic touch to the opening Spring to Come and Young and Wild, while one of the co-writes, Devil Woman, has a playful lyrical musing on temptation, atop the familiar funky JBT rumble. The latter track is a step away from the more personal aspects of Butler's songwriting. "The longer you go down the road as a songwriter, writing in the first person all the time, you eventually run out, so it's nice to magpie other stories," he says. "I'll pick a story from when I was 16, or about another guy, maybe a girl. It's kind of fun and it's a good way to find different emotions and different styles."

Devil women are not an actual problem or occupational hazard, then. "I'm a smart man and I know where my bread is buttered," Butler says, laughing. "I have too much to lose."

No doubt Caruana, who has her own singing career under the stage name Mama Kin, would agree with that assessment. The couple have two children, daughter Banjo and son Jahli, and part of Butler's time off was to allow his wife to concentrate on recording and touring. Her most recent album, The Magician's Daughter, attracted rave reviews.

Butler says they are each supportive of the other's music careers and value each other's criticism as well as encouragement.

"We are constantly talking about it," he says. "She has a great grasp of music and poetry and metaphor, so I'm running everything past her. And she has a great instinct about knowing when I can do better. I like to chip in my opinion about her music as well."

The couple rarely performs together, but there are plans afoot that could include a recording and performing project next year. In the meantime Butler will be kept busy as the tour bus rumbles on from town to town and continent to continent.

As a musician who has found his way largely under his own steam, with the aid of manager Stevens, he's grateful the momentum continues to build from those early days making and selling cassettes in the street in WA.

"I still have a career and it's amazing that the records keep selling more each time and I'm still touring," he says. "I'm amazed that that gradient is continuing."

And just as maturity has loosened his grip on control, it has mellowed his anxieties and sense of urgency about his career. One might even call him content. "When I was younger I kept wanting it to happen quicker," he says, "but now I like that it has taken time. We've built this amazing foundation. Luckily I've reached this point where I've ticked all the boxes I wanted to. I'm 38 years old. For a long time I have been very driven and focused, almost a tunnel vision kind of guy. It was always about what was on the horizon, never about where I was at. There were amazing things that were going on, but I was always somewhere else when the magic was happening. I was in the middle of it but I was staring at the next peak. Now I'm just going to enjoy it."

Flesh & Blood is out now through Jarrah/MGM. The John Butler Trio's national tour begins in Fremantle on March 27 and ends in Thirroul, NSW, on April 13.