John Butler @ Hindley Street Music Hall, Adelaide 6/11/2024
John Butler is a diamond in Australian music history. Multi-talented, multi-award winning musician with a soulful voice, he could be considered one of Australia’s prime poets. So tonight, having him gracing the boards in Adelaide is fantastic.
However, tonight is a twist, as Butler is promoting his new album, the instrumental piece Still Searching which landed last week.
In some ways it’s sad we don’t get his unique Australian/American vocals for most of the evening however in others we get the uninhibited talent and thoughts in different ways.
Playing the new album full through, Butler knows to engage the audience in between songs with stories, the ideas behind the songs and general humour, keeping it light while the music transcends consciousness allowing yourself to interpret the sounds.
Celt Blues is epic mixture of Celtic rhythms with acoustic blues which merges into tribalistic patterns as Butler’s wingmen Michael Barker and Michael Boase pound drums and percussion in tandem.
Breathing Cedar is a slower pace as Butler switches to playing a flute before moving to Banjo for Remembrance, a song that has sprinkles of other Butler tracks saying hi like a long-lost friend deep within its musical crevices.
Butler during the night performs on acoustic, steel and slide guitars, each one uniquely conveying Butler’s message of serenity, nature and peace.
One interaction with the crowd speaks on making the right decision in life ‘hanging out with shit people, not check, hanging out with good people, check’ and somehow ends up inadvertently propositions a member of the audience to laughter. Check.
A standing ovation greets the climax of Running To Keep Up, a musical journey of chicken picking, instrument changing and rolling rhythms greeted accordingly.
The encore, or really part two, delves deeper into Butler’s catalogue and after a dialogue about keeping faith, maybe with a mind of that day’s political news forefront, Butler embarks on a solo fifteen-minute rendition of Oceans. The song itself, like an ocean, comes in waves as the one-man band that is Butler – is easy to forget he started as a busker so this is second nature – takes you throughout all the sounds one man can make on a guitar. They are plentiful.
A couple of John Butler Trio tracks, ending with a rowdy Better Than has the audience singing and dancing along and with that, the show finishes. Butler tried a difficult task of performing an album in full, that album also being instrumental, and still getting an ovation at the end. It was a serenely beautiful and magical evening.
Live Review By Iain McCallum