Still Searching (2024)
Get this album: CD Vinyl Record Tape 24-Bit Download Stream Tracklist 1. Banjo Loop2. Celt Blues3. East and West4. Remembrance5. Running To Keep Up6. Sunrise Credits Written, Arranged & Produced by John Butler Recorded at Crescent Moon Studio, Santa Fe, New Mexico, U.S.A Thank you to KT Tunstall and Chris Light for taking me into your home and letting me be the first project recorded at Crescent Moon. I owe you one. To James Raymond for listening to an inordinate amount of guitar takes, all my strange grunting whilst playing percussion and somehow still being able to pull a great sound. Engineered by James Raymond Mixed by James NewhouseMastered by Zino Mikorey Instrument Photography by Duncan WrightJB Photo by Nick McKinlayArt Concept by Kester Sappho AlbumArtwork by Tom WalkerTitles by John Butler Thank You toMaton Guitars, Seymour Duncan Pickups & D’Addario stringsfor all theiryears of support Banjo LoopJB: 5-String Banjos ● National Lap Steel ● Percussion ● Moog ● Vocals Celt BluesJB: 6-String Banjo ● 11-String Guitar ● PercussionJames Raymond: Piano ● Moog East and WestJB: Weissenborn Lap Steel ● Guitar Percussion ● Percussion James Raymond: Additional Programming RemembranceJB: 6-String Banjo ● Percussion Running To Keep UpJB: 6-String Guitars ● Weissenborn Lap Steel ● Moog James Raymond: Clavinet ● Piano James Newhouse: Additional Programming SunriseJB: 6-String Guitar Percussion ● Weissenborn Lap Steel ● Percussion
Running River (2024)
Get this album: CD Vinyl Record 24-Bit Download Stream APRIL 10TH 20024 SEASON ONE: HEALING – RUNNING RIVER There is a fundamental principle in ancient Vedic philosophy that asserts the nature of all manifestation is that it moves between the states of creation, sustenance, and destruction. Things begin, they have a middle, and they end. That’s the universal deal. The idea is not to resist or rush any stage of the cycle, rather stay in the flow of where you are at. John’s journey of creating this new album, Running River was a direct reflection of that principle, and a beautiful reminder of the power of going with the universal flow. After the release of his 7th studio album HOME and the subsequent global touring, tumultuous times lay ahead. Not only had the world gone crazy with Covid 19 and the Russian invasion of Ukraine, but his own world was turned upside down with the loss of his father, the disbanding of the Trio, the continuation of personal anxiety and weariness from years of being on the road away from family. Within this crazy backdrop, John returned to the studio to generate new restorative music. This recording proved difficult with John fighting to produce and engineer the album himself, diving deeper into a world that was technologically challenging and not proving productive. The harder he tried, the further he pushed, the more lost he became. Somewhere amongst it all he hit a wall and admitted defeat. He didn’t want to listen to any of it anymore. All that exertion, all his futile attempts to think his way into fixing it, amounted to nothing. This album returned to a dormant state. It was not ready to be born. But in that crash, in things falling apart, came true surrender. In Sanskrit, the word swaha means to offer it up to something higher, to the divine. It’s not a renunciation or throwing in the towel. It’s letting it go and offering it up to the light. In the failure, John did just that. The surrender was like a giant exhale, the ultimate offering up. Surrender provided space. In the pause there was deeper listening, instead of trying so hard to say something. For too long he had been too much in his head, and in now, in the exhale, he could let go and just be. In the quiet, he could move from the external to the internal, the gross to the subtle. “Out of the chaos, came the order.” It was this stillness and space that allowed John to get clarity to see his way forward in the recording process. A way to “rebuild” himself for a new era that may lay ahead. The “download” he received in the silence and surrender contained a structure: a form of scaffolding almost: Four Seasons: each season a different album of music. 1. Season One: Ambient, starting simply. Heal first. 2. Season Two: Instrumental, beginning again from where it all started busking on the streets of Fremantle, Western Australia. 3. Season Three: Solo song album. 4. Season Four: Back with a band. And so here we are at the offering of the first Season, Running River. Over the years John had found himself drawn to the soothing sounds of ambient music that brought him back into balance. Using it on the long passages of travel to gigs or backstage to block out the industrial noise of festivals. He found listening to this style of music allowed him a little peace and sonic space to maintain wellness practices such as mediation, yoga, breathing, exercise amongst the backdrop of generators and blasting backstage sounds. As he leaned more deeply into these lulling compositions, a desire emerged that he wanted to create this kind of work so others could benefit in the same way. “It’s the continuation of an agreement I made a long time ago which is: if I’m going to do this thing that seems so self-indulgent, making music and “playing with glitter”, let me be a conduit for the divine. Let me be a vehicle for healing. Let me be a vehicle for change. Let me be a vehicle for something bigger than myself.” He had always loved the meandering, improvised, introductions of Blues, Eastern and Celtic compositions and having incorporated that approach over the years with songs like Ocean, decided to expand on that approach. Fuelled by the need to make an album that could offer greater healing he departed from his characteristic progressive blues roots & rock dynamism and threw himself into recording an ambient album. The way back into the first season was slow, quiet and spacious. John kept it simple. He gave up trying. He stopped over-thinking and over-complicating and instead sat in the surrender. He went into the studio, open and ready for what came out of silence, and received a three-hour download. Rather than rushing through a three-minute rollercoaster that so many songs can end up being, he stripped the music back, let it come slow and steady. Songs were minimal, and he lingered in them for long periods of time, ten minutes or more. Where there would usually be up to twenty different takes on other albums, here they only recorded one or two. In this subtle realm, it became about the feeling, the music taking the listener to places the mind can’t. “I’m always taken by how music by itself can make you feel and go to places that you can’t get to through intellect. I love when the lyrics of a song pass the baton onto the music to say everything the lyrics couldn’t” John’s hope is that people will connect to the album in the same way it was created. Slow gestation, slow time, slow music, finding the people it needs to find when they are ready. Perhaps it changes their states and provides space for healing in some way. He envisages it will live in places people are seeking calm and peace. The length and tone of the music will be conducive to many areas including: • Meditation • Yoga • Breathing • Sweat ceremony and/or sauna • Plant medicine journeys. Going up, duration or coming back down. • Travel • Massage • Acupuncture • Kinesiology • Osteopathy • Putting kids to bed • Waiting rooms • Hospitals • Movement expression • Rituals of