April Uprising is the fifth studio album by the John Butler Trio. The album was recorded from late 2009-early 2010 in Fremantle, Australia. The album’s name comes from Butler’s appearance on the television documentary series, Who Do You Think You Are, where he journeyed to Bulgaria to find information about his ancestors. The 1876 April Uprising was an important event in Bulgarian history.
The first single from the album was “One Way Road”, which was accompanied by a music video, and was released on 4 December 2009. The second single was “Close To You”, also with a video, on 11 March 2010.
On 30 June 2009 John Butler announced the new bass and drum musicians of the John Butler Trio to be Byron Luiters as the bassist and Nicky Bomba as the drummer and percussionist. Bomba, Butler’s brother-in-law, has previously been a member of the John Butler Trio.
The first single from the album, “One Way Road”, was released on 4 December 2009. Butler described the song as being
the combination of pretty much most of my musical influences; dancehall, roots & rock. Some how we found a way to bring all these feels in a way that sounds natural and not too contrived or cerebral. I’m really happy with how we captured the vibe of this song.John Butler
The band, according to billboard.com, recorded twenty two songs at Butler’s home based studio in Fremantle, this was eventually cut down to the fifteen that appear on the album. The album was released in Australia, Germany, Belgium, Switzerland and The Netherlands on 26 March 2010, in New Zealand and France on 29 March, in the UK on 5 April, and in the USA / Canada on 6 April.
April Uprising debuted at No. 1 on the Australian ARIA albums chart on 5 April and whilst the first two singles from the album, “One Way Road” and “Close to You”, charted at No. 15 and No. 36 on the Australian ARIA singles charts they both reached the top five in the Spins radio airplay charts, the former reaching No. 1.
On 4 June 2010 John Butler Trio played a show at Red Rocks Amphitheater, which was streamed live to fans around the world at Livestream.
In 2010, the John Butler Trio received the award for Most Popular Independent Artist at the Australian Independent Record (AIR) Awards while April Uprising was nominated at the ARIA Awards for ‘Best Blues and Roots Album’ and ‘Best Independent Release’.