John Butler Trio On World Cafe

Enlarge image i

Australia's John Butler Trio stops by World Cafe.

Marty Philbey

Australia's John Butler Trio stops by World Cafe.

Marty Philbey

John Butler got his start in music by busking on the streets of Western Australia. His style escapes simple genre classification, and the guitarist's music pits funky, spitfire lyricism against slide guitar and "open-tuning" riffs. Here in the States, his upbeat worldliness and passionate instrumental jams has set him alongside G. Love and Special Sauce and the Dave Matthews Band (he's on Matthew's label, ATO).

Recently, Butler was the subject of an episode in the Australian TV series called Who Do You Think You Are, which traced the musician's ancestry. He found out that his great-great-grandfather fought in an uprising in Bulgaria called the "April Uprising," and this discovery, amongst other April-related happenings, inspired the naming of the album.

"April Uprising became this metaphor for this huge musical revolution — spiritual, metaphysical, personal, musical revolution," says Butler. "April Uprising kind of fit because everything seemed to have happened around April, in one century or the other."

Butler also talks to guest host Tracey Tanenbaum about moving to Western Australia, hanging out with his small town's indigenous population, and how he inherited his grandfather's dobro.