After walking out of the bright and beautiful Thursday evening sun into the large and darkened edifice know as First Avenue to go check out the John Butler Trio, I surveyed the 18+ crowd and immediately started wondering, had I walked into a Dave Matthews concert? Apparently sometime between the beginning of last year, and last Thursday, Butler went from a virtual unknown to a frappie (frat hippie) hero, taking the place of Jack Johnson, O.A.R. and Matthews. He’s even signed to Matthews’ management company, Red Light.
Presumably, the lack of new material from the aforementioned frat rockers with their brands of smeggae (smooth reggae) has caused this loud and obnoxious group to seek out a new acoustic performer to… well, I’m not sure what, because they sure as hell don’t LISTEN to the music. Instead, they talk really loudly, scream any time the music takes a soft turn, after every interlude or solo, and make out in the middle of the set. Oh yes, and they obstruct your view the entire fucking time. And I thought the trustafarians were bad. To my dismay, they found whatever they were looking for in the acoustic Ben Harper-esque blues/jam of the John Butler Trio. Oh, and did I say acoustic? Hey John Butler, you are playing through a Marshall JCM, a slant cab, a pedal board and a rack at least three feet high. I have an instrument you might want to check out. It’s called an electric guitar. Try it some time.
When Butler is on, as documented on tracks off of Three or Live at St. Gallen, the guy burns. Searing up the six-string Weissenborn, on tracks like "Pickapart," or long impassioned rockers like "Betterman," and even on the new Grand National, the pocket-packed "Funky Tonight." His work is some of the more interesting new blues/rock/folk music on the scene these days. Unfortunately, little of that was on display on Thursday.
The show was… lopsided. The first half or so was a lesson in how not to control a crowd as a performer. When you have a crowd that is loud and not paying attention, you have two options: the Dylan approach and the Wooten approach. The Dylan approach, as anyone who has heard the legendary bootleg Live at the Royal Albert Hall knows, is to “play it fucking loud!!!” Faster, louder, harder. Tear the roof off the sucka, as our good friend Mr. Clinton might say (not the 42nd United States President). The other approach is to play softer and force your audience to listen closer or miss the show. Either approach can be effective. Butler used neither.
Instead, he was content to run through lackluster, mid-tempo songs and ballads like “What You Want,” “Treat Yo Mama,” and tracks from the new Grand National. Meanwhile, the frappies ran amuck. Butler brought on a guest to do Dylan’s “The Times They Are A-Changin’.” The frappies went nuts. Finally Butler did a low key solo piece with dynamics and whipped the hippies into line. For the remainder of the set, the trio picked up the slack with versions of more harder hitting tunes including “Zebra.” Butler got better and better at whipping up the crowd, and brought the house down with the encore, “Funky Tonight.”
So yeah, the group picked it up at the end, but it was a long time coming. So, if one had the opportunity to see the Live at St. Gallen Butler, with the old, raw and in your face Weissenborn laced grooves, I’d recommend it fully, but this new Red Light-era frappie songster, well, I’d just say caveat auditor.
