It's a pretty safe bet to name John Butler Trio as Australia's biggest independent act. Since their humble beginnings with the 1998 LP John Butler, the singer/guitarist and his regularly-rotating musical partners released Three to wide acclaim in 2001 and have continued to grow in stature ever since.

Butler owns Jarrah Records, an independent label created to release his band and The Waifs; in 2005, he and his wife inaugurated the JB Seed grant program to support artistic expression and encourage social, cultural and artistic diversity in Australian society. In the last five years, Butler and his supporters - including Paul Kelly, Missy Higgins and Blue King Brown - have given away somewhere in the vicinity of $500,000 to Australian musicians, managers and social activists through (the recently-renamed) The Seed.

Above all else, though, John Butler is known for his music, a heady mix of blues, roots, rock, and - more recently, with the release of April Uprising - pop. When TheVine reaches John Butler, he's on a tour bus somewhere in France, having just played at a music festival. He and his current band - drummer Nicky Bomba and bassist Byron Luiters - have spent much of 2010 overseas. The trio completed their most successful US tour thus far, which included their biggest headline show to date at the sold out, 8,500-capacity Red Rocks Amphitheatre in Colorado. Ahead of his biggest Australian tour since the release of 2004's Sunrise Over Sea, there's a lot of ground to be covered. Butler is up to the task; he speaks with TheVine for over 40 minutes.

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It’s been interesting to follow you over the years, because it seems your outspoken nature and what you and your name stand for are all ideas that many Australians can identify with. Besides your music, which obviously resonates with people, I wonder if this idea, that people feel like they can identify with you, speaks to why you've achieved so much as a public figure. What do you think John Butler stands for in the eyes of the Australian public?

Wow, what an introduction. That's great. A real journalist, this is refreshing. Well first of all, who I am and how I define myself is a work in progress. And in another way I think it would be kind of pretentious to think of what I stand for to people. It would be almost a little bit too self-concerned to presuppose what anybody thinks about me.

I think to some people I'm a loud-mouthed fringe hippie who hugs trees. I think other people think I'm a blues artist. Some people think I'm a sensitive new age guy who writes songs about his children and his family. Some people think I'm somebody who's lived in Australia for 24 years, and is Australian, and loves Australia but still has an American accent. [laughs] I think I'm many things to many different people. I think some people hate me and some people love me and there's probably a lot of people who don't give a shit and that's probably a healthy thing.

Your comments about how some people might view you as an outspoken hippie; does that align with what you'd hope people see in you?

I've tried to let go of what I hope people see in me because for quite a long time I kind of felt misunderstood. I have these ideas: I do care about peace and justice and truth and my country and the land and the culture of my country. For that to be pigeonholed, and that multidimensional kind of point of view being put into a single point of view of a tree-hugging hippie, was for a long time very frustrating. I felt that a lot of things I'm talking about are not fringe issues. They inter-concern us all and they're everyday people stuff. We're all going through this together.

I've learned not to care so much about that misunderstanding. There's bigger fish to fry. I've got two children who are amazing. I've got an amazing band I work with. I have a fantastic, amazing wife. I need to worry about what they think about me more than how the general media is going to misconstrue it and try to pigeonhole me to make it more palatable to a reading audience.

I've stopped being worried about the misunderstanding that some of the media have with me. To me, I'm just the same as anybody else out there. I'm making sense of the world, I'm completely boggled by the politics of my country and world politics and wondering why grown men and women can't get along and not fight each other, and not let their country be raped by resource companies. Why can't our teachers be paid better and have better schooling? I've wondered all those things, just like anybody else. I'm just in it with everybody else, [to try] and make sense of the crazy world we live in.

The fact that you've not just remained independent but taken it to the point where you're the biggest independent artist in Australia - and one of the biggest artists, period - is inspiring for many musicians. Would you think that's a fair comment?

I was inspired by people who came before me like The Waifs, who took me under their wing and showed me how to do it. When I met Donna, Vikki, Josh and David, I’d never heard of  them and I hopped in a van with them and we rocked up to The Hi-Fi in Melbourne and it'd be sold out. We'd go to the Metro and it'd be sold out. I'd never heard of these people, they're not on the radio and they're playing to 1,500 people everywhere they go in the country. [I was like] “What the hell is this?”

It was musicians going out there and taking their audience by the hand and earning them, one-by-one, the old-fashioned way. For somebody who back in the day [just] a few record companies knew about, but didn't want anything to do with [me] because they didn't see me as viable or marketable, we weren't waiting for any record company to come and do it for us - some musical Gandalf that was going to grant us our dreams. We just went out there and made it happen.

By the time that our album Three went gold, the next week a major record label called us. But it was too late by then. We were very much inspired by The Waifs, and how they did it; they have had some great success which has been made by our fans, our fans under the record company [Jarrah]. And if that can be an inspiration like I know it has been to other musicians and other bands to think there is another avenue there, I think that's the most important thing. I think for all of us, in that we have a choice, that we don't feel there's only one monopolised way of doing anything - from going shopping for food to getting petrol or having a music career. I think for a lot of bands it's like "Great, there's another avenue. I can pay the rent and feed myself through other than just waiting for the 'cool' guys to think I'm cool."

I'm interested to know how big you see The Seed becoming. Do you have an endpoint in mind?

We'd like to see this get as big as it wants to get. It's a lot of work for my wife Danielle, who runs it, and my cousin Stacia and our committee. We basically started it to be for the community, by the community. That's what we wanted it to be and that's why I keep my name off the front of it. I never wanted it to be called "The JB Seed" but I think it needed to have that so there's a point of reference, that it was an organisation that had experience in the music scene, and [showed] where the money was coming from in the early days. Not just funded by myself but so many other people in the community.

It's very important for The Seed to be seen and known as something that's by the community, for the community. It's funded by Paul Kelly and managers like Bill Cullen and John Watson, Missy Higgins, The Cat Empire, Blue King Brown; a lot of great people who’ve helped and been a part of it. They wanted to get involved in The Seed and help the music community create more culture, essentially. I believe there is so much great musical and managerial talent in Australia and we have so much to offer. The more money there is to give to people the better.

In an interview with Andrew Denton on Enough Rope a couple of years ago, you said that "the quest for a good gig is addictive." Denton asked you what a great night feels like, which makes me wonder; how did the recent show at Red Rocks feel for you?

Kind of very similar to the experience that I explained to Andrew Denton that time. It was exhilarating. What I relate it to is skateboarding. When I used to skate really heavily - I mean I still skate - but when I was riding and trying to get sponsors I'd climb these eight stair handrails and ollie, 50/50 grind on ‘em. It always scared the fuck out of me. It was the most exciting, scary thing to do. I was thrilled by it, I wanted to do it, it excited me, and at the same time it scared the fuck out of me. That's sort of what it was like.

I played Red Rocks seven or eight times beforehand and always opened up for other people. To be headlining that show, on an "on" night, playing to 8,500 people - which was the biggest audience you've ever had anywhere in the world - it came like a huge fucking wave, a big wave that I dropped into and I was just trying to make sure I didn't fall off. [laugh] If I fell off it would kill me and consume me. So it was exhilarating, and it was scary, and it was real exciting and daunting, all those things. It was like an eight stair handrail. You just hope you landed it, wanted to land the trick. Then once you did you'd be like "Whoo! That was exciting! That scared the fuck out of me but it was exciting!"

That's what happened to me the first time I played the Palais [Theatre] in Melbourne, this big beautiful venue there. I dreamt about that place for years and to play that place was just so heavy. It wasn't until my third time I played The Palais that I was able to enjoy it, really let loose, and I'm sure that will be the same way with Red Rocks. The third time I headline I'll be able to quit freaking out. But it was great. It was exciting. It was great. It’s yin/yang; all things, they’re all yin and yang.


John Butler Trio - 'Zebra' live at Red Rocks, June 2010

Red Rocks was the biggest headlining show of your career. When you stepped off the stage, did it feel like that show was some sort of apex? Like everything up until that point had been working toward that show?

No, not really. In America yes, and I suppose an American career yes because we worked so hard in America and it takes a long time to be able to headline that venue. That's not small fish to fry. You can't stumble into that venue. So for America yes, but as far as career – I kind of based everything off Australia. If Australia is not happening, if I'm not relevant as an artist in my own culture, or if I'm not having a good relationship with my own fan base in Australia, it kind of doesn't matter what else happens in the world.

The foundation of my career is Australia. I can't have a good career and I can't have an apex for anything unless my foundation is there. In America Red Rocks was the highest that we've ever gone, but I guess the apex to my career, hopefully that hasn't come yet. [laughs] We've had a bit of a different trajectory. It's been gradual and I'm not even sure if we’re plateauing yet. It's been a gradual incline, and that's a good thing. It's a good thing to be constantly journeying and getting better at what you do and still being challenged and not to feel like you've reached your peak.

For me, I'm constantly trying to – like any relationship, look at marriage; the longer you're together the deeper it gets and more profound and more multidimensional [it gets], and life gets quite deep and spiritual. All I can ask for is that my relationship with my fans, my fan base in Australia and all around the world gets deeper, more real. I believe it's a very deep relationship I have with my audience and I just want it to get deeper. That's the most important thing. It doesn't necessarily have to be bigger or better. It can become a deeper relationship with the people I make this music with. And I make this music with my fans. They are part of it; they are part of the band. That's the apex I'm heading for, which is no apex; it's a good moment.

[As far as] Red Rocks, on the American mission - and there's definitely been an American mission - that was a definitive moment, for sure.

How important it is for you to maintain a connection to Australia while you're touring overseas?

My biggest reminder is my family and the people that I love, and that's not only my blood relatives, but my family up in Broome who are fighting off the gas plant or my family on the east coast on the land that my two children were born on, inland from Byron Bay. I think about Australia like we all do, as Australians. We think about our land and we think about our people. I kind of keep in contact with Australia that way.

I’m one who takes it wherever I go. I know that sounds almost like a Qantas ad or something, but wherever I go in this world I'm taking the spirit of our country with me. Every day when we go on stage, different places in the world and different people who don't speak our language, what they're tasting, hearing, seeing is part of the spirit of Australia. It's like when they see AC/DC or The Cat Empire or whoever else. We all are ambassadors for our culture so every time we play, we're kind of – in a slightly, kind of defiantly arrogant way, but with great respect, it's like "This is how we fucking roll. This is recipe and this is how we cook. Come to our kitchen and let's get it on."

I think a lot of Australian bands come up with pride in what we have to offer is special and unique and we don't want to blend into a U.K. or American sound or scene. We want to go "Hey, this is our own music, and it's from Australia and we love it." So that's how I stay connected. I bring the spirit of Australia with me wherever I go and that's very important to me, very important to me. Without it I don't have anything to draw from. Wherever I go in the world, I'm connected to the planet, and that's very important, I'm connected to the Earth. I need that as a human being, to feel connected to the planet.

But Australia, that's my stomping ground, that's my country. That's the place I've had my children in. I've had ritual there, and I've cut my teeth there and my blood is in that soil. I don't have that connection [anywhere else]. I don't know if I have the juice; I don't have what it takes to go and travel the world and share my culture. It's always close; it's very, very close, right under the surface. It's the foundation.

You mentioned the Qantas ad. Your song "One Way Road" was licensed to Channel 10 for the launch of their new channel. Did you have any reservations about giving permission for that one to happen?

I see these things as kind of like infiltration. I'm not really a sports fan. You know, I don't have anything against sports. ‘One Way Road’… [starts singing lyrics] “They come, they take / It's never enough because they can’t relate / To the real world, thinking that the oyster is just for the pearl…”

Oh, big lyrics! Of revolution and progression. For that to be on a TV show, like mainstream? [laughs] I’ve infiltrated these mofos! I don’t have a problem with it, in a way. I was kind of using their forum to spread a message that I thought was important. That’s how I think about a lot of those things. It doesn't mean it's a slippery slope to doing a BP ad, by any means! [laughs] It's not in the same ballpark at all. That's how I see it. I feel like, OK: the revolution will be televised.


John Butler Trio - 'One Way Road'

You've built the John Butler brand in a manner that's all about creativity and independence and thinking for yourself, and yet your music sometimes appears in commercial ventures. But you put some of the money that you make from those deals into initiatives like The Seed, which benefit the Australian arts community.

That's it. That's where the money does go. Things like touring around the world and in music, and in The Seed, and backing the band. But you know what, life is a contradiction. You should see the bus I’m in right now. It's a big fucking gas-guzzling son of a bitch. I'm up in gas-guzzling fucking planes. We all drive cars, most of us unless you're lucky enough to live in a city where you don't need a car. Life is a contradiction to a certain degree and some people are always going to try to find fault and want me to be fundamentalist and basically have a bike-powered PA system and play a guitar that's not made out of trees. [laughs]

What do I do, you know? If you want to find fault in me, you will find it. I'm a human being and I think that's an important thing to know! [laughs] But we can find it in each other, if we choose to. We can celebrate our downfalls or we can celebrate our attributes. If doing a network television ad somehow makes me a sell out, then I guess to each their own. I can't really change peoples' minds. All I can say is the revolution was televised. [laughs]

There’s not many songs that you hear on the TV talking about things, talking about resource companies sucking the fuckin’ very spirit out of our country. There are no songs on radio that are talking about that, mainstream radio, let alone on a mainstream television show. To me, I'm behind enemy lines at the moment, man. [laughs] And I'm planting fucking bombs; I'm planting seeds probably more than bombs. That's how I look at it.

Look at Rage Against The Machine. They’re telling it. Look at Midnight Oil, [they were] telling it as well. Whatever. There is always going to be people who are naysayers. I think that's what you said, you get these scales and hopefully at the end of the day, when I die, the scales will be more on the positive side because of the things I've created than on the negative things I've created. That's part of the chess game. I’m going go for the queen, but I’ll leave some pawns. If I want to make an omelette I'm going to break some eggs and go for the king, not the queen. I always think of the queen because she’s badass. [laughs]

That's how I see it. That's my answer.

In 2001, regarding online file-sharing, you said: "It's cool... I don't care... it's been done in many different mediums before this. If people download music or copy CDs and don't buy them, then they aren't supporting the artists, and that's their choice. Music will go underground and people will come to the gigs." I wonder if your feelings have changed on that in the last nine years?

That's a very paraphrased quote of mine. Yeah, that's what I feel. I feel that people have always ripped off music. They've done that, that's fine because they end up buying the album if they really like it because the cassette tape sounds like shit. The problem is everybody has a computer nowadays and the cultural phenomenon that's taken place in computers and technology is not like a cassette. Yeah, 60% of the music industry profit is gone. I'm talking about record companies. In the last 10 years, they've lost 60% of their album sales to downloading.

My view is there are always going to be those who copy music and want to share it with friends. And that's fine with me. Hopefully if you like the music then you go and buy it. But I'm an independent company so 60% of my sale have gone down. As my music has gotten more popular, I've sold less albums. And I can understand why it's happening because the record companies to a certain degree kind of put out so much crap for so long that they lost their audience. Their audience didn't respect them, but at the same time, [laughs] losing 60% of your income makes it really hard to get out there and tour and to make albums!

I just hope the people who are doing that are realising that they are stealing from musicians at the end of the day. The musicians see very little from [it now]  – I see more than most because I'm independent. But I'm still a record company so I still need that money to tour and make albums and pay people. Musicians don't make a lot of money from albums and now they're making a lot less. That's just going to mean that a lot more musicians are going to be doing jobs that they don't like rather than doing the jobs that they should be doing which is making music for you and I.

I guess I see it as – I don't file share. I buy my music. If somebody gives me a CD and goes "I burned this for you, check it out," I'll check it out and if I like it I'll buy it. I still think it's a great way to sample music if you don't want to buy the album because you're not sure. Take it off a friend maybe, but if you like it you should buy it. I think what people are doing is stealing money from musicians and musicians traditionally don't have a whole lot of money. That's how I kind of see it, but for me, through file sharing if people start coming to the shows and end up buying the album then it's done its job. You're sharing it.

I think when it starts taking away from bands that really need it. A lot of these bands that you may hear of that you think are famous and popular, they're not making money and especially not making money any more now that people aren't buying their albums and are only stealing it. That's my opinion. That quote was very paraphrased. I think I said a lot more in that quote than what they printed.

Fair enough.

It's a funny thing, it's like you don't want to sound like Lars Ulrich [from Metallica]. But at the same time it's kind of like can you imagine any other person, say like your local deli that you love getting good food from, imagine if they lost 60% of their income because everyone was stealing from them. At some stage you want to put up a sign that says, "You're killing me"! I'm not being killed because I'm lucky enough to have a good career, but at the end of the day 60% of somebody's income I think is just a little bit too much to take from them. [laughs] I'm not just talking about myself; I'm talking about the record industry in general, which includes me. I'm not saying poor little old me.

(At the time of this interview, Australia had yet to go to the polls for the recent election - Ed.) I believe you'll be back in Australia for the next federal election next month so I wonder if you'll be interested in discussing how you'll be voting?

Okay [laughs] This will open up a can of worms, but here we go. I believe in the idea of democracy. I believe if I lived in a room with five other people and four of them wanted to do something and one didn't, then we should probably go with the majority. I believe in democracy. I don't believe the form of democracy, the political democracy that we have in our country, and I don’t know if another place like America, is necessarily a good example of democracy. I don't really believe it's democracy. I don’t know.

For example, in my state in Western Australia, [premier] Colin Barnett of the Liberal party got in. OK, get this: Labor gets more votes but between the National party and the Liberal party, they had more votes together. So, after the election's done, Liberals and in the National party make a coalition and they become the leaders of the WA government. That's not democracy. That's a fucking complete manipulation of a system right there.

I didn't vote for that guy and that guy didn’t tell me they were going to partner up with that guy. It's like that's how our country is going to run and now we have another Prime Minister. There were the two that happened, there's a fucking coup that happened and to me - I don't know a lot about it and I really don't understand Australian politics because to me it's set up in way that it's made to not [be understood].

Eventually I think the resource companies run our country and I think they have for a very long time. I think what they want – what the big resource companies want - they get, and I don't think they really like that tax that Rudd had in mind. Once that started hitting the scene, it was kind of like, “Uhh, we need to get this guy out of here, really quick”. And – I smell a rat. I don't understand it, but you know what – I don't think democracy is alive and well in our country, and I think we're being majorly manipulated by the resource industry. That's how I feel. So how I feel about this next election? I think it's going to be like it usually is. It's going to be a choice between two people who I probably wouldn’t want to see in office, but I have to pick one of them. It's the choice between two evils.

The people who probably could do a lot for our country either don't get enough votes, or are seen as too fringe and not have enough lobbying behind them. Lobbying, the fact that our political parties can even be lobbied by huge fucking corporations seems like a manipulation of democracy already. But maybe that's just me and maybe I'm just seeing things too simply and I need to get a bit more ‘educated’.

To me, it seems like they put into power whoever they want to be in power so they can get the outcomes that they like. At the same time, I vote. I vote and I encourage other people to vote and if in some way we can use that system, this limited form they've offered us to be part of, if we can make a big change then I'm down for that. But sometimes I just don't know, like everybody else: “I'm voting! I don’t know if they’re using my vote.” I encourage you to vote, to be interested in the government because the government, we basically employ them. I think we could probably do some laying off as the bosses of our country. We should go to our government and probably take a few of the parasites out of the system, but that's a big job. Do you want me to say anything else? [laughs]

I'm voting Greens, personally, but we know that a vote for the Greens is a vote for Labor, essentially.

Yeah, well, I'm not going to advertise who I'll vote for but I did something very similar. I guess if enough people vote for people like Bob Brown then hopefully, if the system actually does work, then we can one day have a Greens Party, then I'll hope for something like that. When I heard Rudd got kicked out, [laughs] I'm not saying Rudd was great. I didn't vote for Rudd, but I saw a puppet master and you can call me a conspiracy theorist or whatever; I smelt a puppet master and it felt like somebody was pulling the strings and I didn't know where the strings were being pulled from but it wasn't from the government. It was something from above, and I'm not talking about God. I'm talking about corporate, and that just pisses me off. It pisses me off that my country is run by fucking pirates.

I think I might close that can of worms again now.

Yeah, you might want to! [laughs]

Andrew McMillen

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JOHN BUTLER - AUSTRALIAN TOUR DATES - AUG/SEPT 2010

31 Aug - Adelaide Entertainment Centre, Hindmarsh, SA
2 Sep - WIN Entertainment Centre, Wollongong, NSW
3 Sep - Hordern Pavilion, Sydney, NSW
5 Sep - Derwent Entertainment Centre, Glenorchy, TAS
7 Sep - Newcastle Entertainment Centre, Newcastle, NSW
8 Sep - C.ex, Coffs Harbour, NSW - SOLD OUT
11 Sep - Reggaetown World Music Festival, Cairns, QLD
12 Sep - Tony Ireland Stadium, Townsville, QLD
15 Sep - Royal Theatre, City, ACT
17 Sep - Festival Hall, Melbourne, VIC
18 Sep - Bendigo Stadium, Bendigo, VIC
19 Sep - Geelong Performing Arts Centre, Geelong, VIC
21 Sep - The Mackay Entertainment Convention Centre, Mackay, QLD
22 Sep - The Great Western, Rockhampton, QLD
23 Sep - The Riverstage, Brisbane, QLD
24 Sep - The Empire Theatre, Toowoomba, QLD
27 Sep - The Mangrove Resort Hotel, Broome, WA,