Musician John Butler in Mouat Street, Fremantle. His eighth studio album Running River is out now. Photograph: Frances Andrijich/The Guardian
Butler was buckling under the strain of multiple life stressors. His father and father-in-law died from long-term illnesses within 40 hours of each other. He was getting his son, Jahli, through year 12 amid Covid shutdowns and reeling from burnout after touring his 2018 album, Home, and disbanding the John Butler Trio.‘This idea kind of landed in my lap that I needed to heal, I needed to go back to where I started.
Sign up for the fun stuff with our rundown of must-reads, pop culture and tips for the weekend, every Saturday morning We take a seat on the boardwalk at Bathers beach and Butler tells me about his decade touring the US – often with his kids and wife, Danielle Caruana, in tow, using cloth nappies and living on a tour bus. “We’re still recovering,” he says, laughing.The band went from huge sold-out gigs across Australia to playing at dingy bars to five or six people in the States, but they stuck at it, eventually cracking one of the world’s toughest markets.
In 1997 he met the group of activists fighting to save the forests of Western Australia’s south-west. “It was like a lightning bolt,” he says. “I got completely enamoured with that culture and decided that if I was to do this self-indulgent act of making art, then let me be a conduit.” Almost an hour into our chat, when time is running short, I land on a topic that really gets Butler fired up: fake news and the erosion of democracy.
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