John Butler On The Journey Behind ‘Prism’

John Butler’s deeply personal new studio album PRISM is out this Friday (September 5), will also mark the first date this prolific independent artist begins his Australian ‘PRISM Tour,’ a national run of shows in intimate city venues and across regional towns, with special guest Emma Donovan and for two shows only in Cairns and Darwin, The Waifs. Significantly, PRISM marks a formal departure from the John Butler Trio moniker. It’s an album that is contemplative and explosive, joyous and free, funk-filled, cinematic and unapologetic, with singles Trippin On You and So Sorry already released.

PRISM is Season Three of Butler’s Four Season roll-out, following Season One’s album of meditations (Running River) and Season Two’s fully instrumental album (Still Searching). Aside from solo shows in 2024 to support his two instrumental albums Running River and Still Searching, Butler hasn’t toured Australia with a band since 2019. John gives Hi Fi Way greater insight to PRISM.

It must be a really exciting period leading up to a tour and a brand new album?
Oh, yeah, I’m actually on tour as well at the moment in the United States. So touring into touring into touring. But yeah, I’m looking forward to sharing these new songs for sure.

How’s it going touring the States?
Good. It’s going well, touring like a double headline with a band called Dispatch and G. Love and Donovan Frankenreiter. We’re having a good time, a little summer camp.

Does it get easier, or does it get harder to record a new album?
Some things are easier than others. I recorded three albums in the last couple years, and the ambient Album running river was pretty easy. The the still searching album was pretty easy, but prism was really hard because I started Prism before running river. I started Prism about five or six years ago. I started recording it by myself doing all the beats, other synths and everything. I hit some roadblocks, but found lots of inspiration on the way. I then got together with James Ireland from Pond on production. We co-produced the album together. It was a tricky road to Prism coming to life. But that’s just the way some horses want the saddle put on, you know, and I all I can do as a horse rider and a wrangler is to make sure that by the time the saddle is on the horse it’s not broken, you know.

Did those roadblocks really challenge you in terms of trying to get find a way to get either through it or around it?
Yeah, I mean, there’s no way around it or underneath it or over. I just had to get through it. I think I had it. I had to have a roadblock moment. I had to have a failure kind of moment. I met my own limits, and I learned a lot along the way of how I wanted that album to sound. It’s a very particular sounding album. It’s very dense and rich. I just had to learn how to let other people in. Actually, I think I was pretty burnt out about being around people. I love being alone a lot of times being creative and having to let James and others close to that project again after working so hard on it, and it kind of still being a mess was a huge letting go process. But it was good, I find every project helps me meet myself in a way that I never thought I would and the music is just the medium for which I meet it. So yeah, it’s kind of a spiritual journey making albums and music for me. I have to do what the songs want, and somehow, if I do what the songs really want me to do, I learn something about myself.

Sonically, was it clear what you wanted to do with the album, or like you said, does it pretty much have to have the right moment or right time for it to come to you?
Oh, no, no! I was definitely creating a sound that time. Those three years alone in the studio, I was definitely finding my way around beats and making beats, and being really particular how I wanted the rhythm section to sound, and the layers of synthesizers, and then how I wanted that to meld with my finger picking. All those things, a lot of what I do on the guitar is all the back beats there in my right hand, and so I built everything off guitar percussion first, and made sure that the pocket was right there. That was the idiosyncratic nature of my rhythm. I built everything off that. So yeah, literally, sometimes we’d spend an hour trying to get that guitar rhythm right. and then we’d add to it. I’d do live marching drums on top, and everything was really into that kind of swing. That was really important to me is to have a very rhythm heavy and rich album.

Did you expect the album to be sort of as personal and as emotional as what you what you thought?
I wrote the songs all before. So, I knew the places I was going. I knew what I was going to do, and I mean it’s never really not to tell you the honest truth, if you go back to most of my albums I use it as a conduit to process information and life. It’s like a journal entry for me. So, yeah, every album’s pretty intimate. This one’s very intimate, because it’s dealing with marital distress and my father dying. Both my partner’s father and my father passed away within forty hours of each other during Covid. We’re both giving palliative care to our dads on opposite side of the sides of the country. That’s a wild and surreal florid kind of time. Then just living in the post-truth Trump era, it’s hard not to have an album that’s full of all the fields.

What was your partner’s thoughts about your album on hearing it for the first time?
She liked what I was going for. you know. I think mine’s a little bit more, it’s hard to explain. When I listened to her music I was like, oh, this is really some beautiful songwriting, some beautiful words, some beautiful exploration of our relationships., her and Dingo’s relationship, and me being part of that as far as her reaction to mine. She’s been better and watched what I’ve been doing for years, and I think she has an inherent idea of what I’m always trying to search for. We’re a highly creative family, but we sometimes avoid showing each other our music until it’s done, because we’re so influenced by each other’s opinion. So we’ve learned as artists to kind of go, yeah, we’re doing something, but I don’t want to know what you think about it just yet, because it’s not done, and when it’s done, then you can tell me, and I might take it on or not. I’m not too sure how long she spent listening to my album, you know, telling this truth.

The concept of seasons is a great one, are there more parts of this story to come?
It kind of happened after the fact. Once I gave up on making Prism and I failed, I couldn’t get the computer to work. I couldn’t get the sessions to work. Everything started crumbling around me along with what seemed to be my marriage and my mental health. I just I was like fuck, I don’t know what to do, and that was really scary. After working on something for so long, both an album and my marriage and in the surrender I had a bit of an epiphany. I think it’s interesting how that works. You know you have to leave space for something new to come in. Once I gave up on Prism all of a sudden this thing came in, and it’s just like, why don’t you go back to what you’re really first starting to do before Covid, which is making an ambient album, and more than ever you need to heal yourself and heal your nervous system.

So I think there’s an order that you need to go to get to Prism, and it was like healing again. Go solo in that fourth season, maybe make an album with a band in the studio. But it was really about healing myself. So Running River, the ambient album was like, Okay, I’ve given up Prism for a second. I’m going to actually get an engineer now and I’m going to make this very simple ambient album for myself. It’s not for the charts, it’s not for anything, you know.That was heal season one, season two was begin again. My beginning as a professional artist was instrumental tape. That’s the tape I sold on the street. I wanted to make an ambient album. I’ve always wanted to do that. I always wanted to make chapter two of my instrumental stuff. What I’ve learned from the ambient album I’m going take to a more ornate guitar driven rhythm, heavy instrumental album. Then that was the second season.

The next season was go solo. So that was like, Okay, cool. We’re going to get rid of the trio because you’ve had four people in your band for the last five years, go solo. Going solo is Prism, that’s John Butler, not John Butler. Trio. That’s me fully doing a lot of that production. A lot of that birthplace of all those beats all came from me first, and then I joined together with James to finish it off and make it so much better with him. Now there is four seasons, band I think that’s like building back to, maybe making a album with a band in the studio, but I couldn’t shortcut any of those processes. Once again it’s like the music knows what I need more than I know what I need. So I was like, no, no, no, you don’t know what you’re doing with Prism. You don’t have all that it takes to do Prism, John, you need to make the ambient album when I did, the guitar beats on the ambient album, I was like, oh, that’s how I need to do my guitar beats for Prism, sick. When I did the percussion and guitar beats for Still Searching, I was like, Oh, that’s what’s going to work for Prism. It was all these things. I didn’t know yet that I had to go back to the beginning and so the concept came, giving up on Prism and going back. It kind of came later. It wasn’t like, oh, I’m going to make a concept album called Four Seasons. It wasn’t that way just I realised what the journey I was on kind of halfway through.

Even on reflection, are you surprised with the healing power of this music experience this time around?
Letting people in again was really good making those two albums completely, making all of Running River pretty much by myself as far as production and all those instruments, I’m playing them all myself mainly with Dave Mann on engineering. It was just so good to go, Oh, cool! That’s right. It’s all here and then, Still Searching the same way. I got all these beats and all these things that was like a way of resourcing from myself, and I needed to really come back to myself after a long time on the road with band members and stuff, being a boss and being all these different things there was definitely a healing in all those different things. More importantly, the four seasons narrative was just in a way, a practical scaffolding back to myself. It was giving me baby steps of regaining confidence because my band quit before Covid, I put together another band, I had to finish my contracts around the world, and then got off the road, and I was like, I want to go solo. I just need to play by myself for a while and then Covid happened. I spent three years trying to make an album by myself that didn’t work or know I couldn’t finish and so that was extremely humbling. I lost a lot of confidence and the four seasons concept gave me this like little diagram back to myself and to the songs.

This tour has so many possibilities, are you looking to play Prism in full? It is going to be interesting to see how everything pieces together with the live experience.
I don’t think we’ll play the whole album. I very rarely ever play a whole album, but some songs are really good for the studio. They’re just an expression of art and of themselves. There’s other songs better on stage. I want to play old songs because they’re they’re fun to play, and the audience love them as well. There’ll be a mixture of both, and there always is. I don’t think I’ve ever gone out and played just the whole new album, and no old songs. It’s always about trying to make the right journey, the right kind of ride for all of us.

Playing the Adelaide Guitar Festival is a nice inclusion on the tour?
It’s a great festival. It’s nice to be invited and to be a part of it. There’s so many fantastic guitarists out there and to be just amongst them is is lovely.

Interview By Rob Lyon

Catch John Butler on the following dates, tickets HERE…