Butch Walker: The MuchMusic.com Interview

March 5th, 2009

butchwalkerpressphoto2009
Photo By Lucia Holm

It’s hard to explain just “who” Butch Walker is if you’ve never heard of him. For starters, he’s a 39-year-old singer/songwriter/producer from Cartersville, GA. He’s been nominated for a Grammy and was named Rolling Stone‘s “Producer of the Year” in 2005. The list of artists he’s written for and/or produced includes Pink, Katy Perry, Avril Lavigne, Fall Out Boy, Hot Hot Heat, Pete Yorn and Saosin, among many others. But it’s Walker’s own music and memorable live performances that have attracted a loyal fanbase. The former Marvelous 3 frontman embarked on a solo career in 2002 and has since released four albums, including his latest, Sycamore Meadows. The title refers to the street in Malibu on which Walker lived, prior to losing his home and studio to wildfires in November 2007. I had a chance to sit down with him before kicking off his first full tour since the album’s release. Butch Walker performs at Lee’s Palace in Toronto on Thursday night.

What can people expect from the new tour?
I’m really excited because we’re playing a lot of stuff from the new record, which I’m really happy with. And the fans are really happy with it, and that makes me happy. We’re doing different set lists every night, which is something I don’t normally do…so I’m excited about that, because we’re digging into a lot of material from the past four records. Everybody in my band is a singer in their own band, so I’m showcasing their singing abilities a lot more, and that’s fun. It should be a pretty open show. It’ll be a little bit more spontaneous.

Any nerves?
I get a little nervous that I’m not gonna be good. The first show is never as smooth – there’s gear breaking, there’s new problems that didn’t happen in rehearsal – but it’s never been a disaster.

You toured Canada with Avril Lavigne, any fond memories?
I know it sounds like lip service to say that Toronto and Vancouver are two of my favourite places to play, but they are. Even though I don’t have as big a fanbase here as I do in America. The audiences are very…respectful, and very mature. I like that, because sometimes I feel like I’m playing to a bunch of idiots.

What was going through your head when you had to fly back to California after the fire?
I think it was probably…we wished we could have gotten back sooner. It was Thanksgiving weekend, we couldn’t change our flights, the weather sucked. We were in New York, they cancel flights when it sprinkles rain. So, it really just mainly sucked not knowing what was left. But there was nothing left, and that kind of put us at ease knowing that. My friend was up there saying, “Man there’s nothing here.” I dreaded going back and seeing it, but I’m glad I did because I was able to get closure on it, you know?

Music helps people get through all sorts of tragedies, and I know your music connects with a lot of people. Was there anything that you listened to that helped you get through that?
I dunno if I really listened to much of anything at that time. I was pretty burned out on music, and that’s why I was having trouble writing a record for myself. So I think what happened is more than anything, I just ended up really coming up with a bunch of music on my own. I was inspired to start writing again after that.

Any tattoos since then?
(Laughs) No.

Why’s that?
For my mom. I just told her I wouldn’t decorate myself anymore for a while. I’m pretty covered already.

I was listening to a b-side from the last record, New York Minute. It starts with the line, “There’s a hundred other songs held hostage in my head.” Does it feel like you got some of those songs out on Sycamore Meadows?
Exactly. It’s funny you should mention that song, because that’s probably where I was really trying to come with trying to write songs to ‘be cool’ than to just write what I felt. Sometimes you’re self-conscious, like these indie hipster bands that are so self-conscious about what they say and wear and write and do, and what they like. That song is about battling that inner demon myself. I think that was just it, I was just sitting in the shower singing these songs and never putting them on tape.

You delayed the album for awhile – in interviews you said you were being more “precious” with it. How do you know when a song or an album is finished, and how did you decide that this time around?
I re-did it once because I didn’t feel like it was being recorded right, and I wanted it to still be me. I kinda let somebody else record it at first, because I was so out of it when I got back from losing everything. I didn’t have any gear, it was the first time I didn’t have my own studio or any of my own gear to make a record. I definitely needed the inspiration and the catharsis and the muse of what happened to create new music, but I wasn’t prepared. I didn’t have the tools. I let somebody else kind of do it all…and I just realized at that point that I always need to be doing my own records myself, I’m a control freak. They were turning it into their record instead of mine – I was like, “Wait. This is the wrong record to do this on, friend.”

Who gets to hear it before you decide that it’s finished?
My wife and my manager. Very unbiased opinions. Just based on if it’s the right record for me as opposed to “Are there hits on it?” They don’t care about that.

What comes easier to you, the slow emotional songs or the fun upbeat ones?
The upbeat songs are easier, it’s the same reason everybody can run before they can walk good, or play fast solos but can’t play a rhythm and play in time…or drummers that are like, mathematical, and bust their nut riffing but then they can’t play a backbeat at all – like a Beatles song throws them. I think that’s the hardest thing to do, especially when it’s stripped down to nothing and you’re just baring your soul on the lyric. You better make sure you sell it, or why record it? And I’m more precious about those, and there’s a lot of those on the record. So that’s why as a whole on the record I needed to watch my back, and not have it just come off as some sort of gratuitous, melancholy post-fire record.

You refer to the fire, but the whole album isn’t about that.
Not at all. Ironically, two of the songs were about fire before the fire. Both Ships in a Bottle and Here Comes The… were written before the fire, which is odd.

Did that give you chills listening to those songs afterwards?
Ships definitely did, and that’s why when I saw the wreckage at the house I said, “I’m gonna do a video here, because I want my son to see where he was brought into the world and how quickly it was taken away from us.” It was our dream house and the whole thing, the dream studio I’d worked my whole life and saved my money for. That being said, it was a chilling reminder, but at the same time it was therapeutic.

One of my favourite lyrics on the new album (from a track called Song for the Metalheads) is a piece of advice your dad gave you: “To want and to try is the difference why some people will walk and some run.” Tell me about that.
That song is kind of an autobiographical confessional, about my dealing with living in the shadow of my former self every time I change gears or put a record out, and the blessing and the curse that follows. It was my dad’s way of – he couldn’t even play the radio good, he was so talentless in music – but he was always pushing me to be a leader and not a follower and do what I want, and not let me suffer any consequence of doing so and being ridiculed for it. I was the only kid in high school in our little closed-minded Republican Christian town, where I had long two-tone hair and earrings and eyeliner and was a weird little metalhead kid. I went out as a teenage metalhead in a society that didn’t accept that, and he was like, “You just do your thing, man.” And the rest of it’s about the fact that it was 25 years ago, for God’s sake. I’ve moved on, I’m not 16 anymore. So a lot of the people that started following my music when I was in a hair slinging metal band that are mad now that I don’t play guitar solos and still have the hair and whatever, there’s a microcosmic group out there of people that hold a grudge.

I’ve seen them at the shows.
And they still come! What are they expecting, that I’m gonna miraculously blow up my acoustic and smash it, and have flash pots go off? It’s not that I don’t think that stuff is fun, and I loved it when I did it but some people just won’t move on. They’re scared, they fear change, and they get mad when I do. I’ve played that song to some quiet reactions, sometimes. (Laughs)

What’s the best piece of advice your parents gave you?
Probably when I was kicking and screaming to move away from home and quit school early to move to LA. My dad begged me, “Just graduate. I don’t care if you graduate with C’s. Just graduate. I want to see you at least do that and then you can do whatever you want. And I’ll support you.” They didn’t have the money to do it financially, but morally it would be there. I thought that was pretty good advice, because all I had to do was go through one more year of high school and that was no big deal. If I would’ve moved out to LA a year before that, I would have been toast. I think that the chain of events and the timeline, and the way that things worked out with me got me to a safe place now. And when it was time to get dropped off at the airport and move to LA, I was crying like a baby and scared to death. I was like, “I don’t wanna leave now I don’t wanna move out to this place, I don’t know anybody there,” and my dad was like, “No, you’re gonna do it now. You’ve been planning this and you’re gonna regret it if you stay here.”

You shot a video for The Weight of Her with Taryn Manning (singer/actress from 8 Mile and Boomkat.) What was that like?
Fun. She’s a good friend and really fun girl to hang out with. We bonded over music, and she’s also a singer. We had a lot of fun, we went out to the desert to Pioneer Town which is this crazy little town where a 1930′s movie set was built for westerns. They shot Annie Oakley and all these crazy American westerns there. The town still exists, but it’s a total ghost town. It’s untouched. There’s a little motel there that’s run by this cool couple I know from Hollywood named Rachel and Bingo, and they manage the motel where the video was shot. That’s their truck that we used in the video, and the whole nine yards. It was so much fun, because I hadn’t shot a video over the course of two days where it didn’t feel like work. We just had campfire sing a longs out in the desert at night. I kind of left there missing it, I feel like I may end up going back to maybe get a place there sometime, I loved it so much.

You played your new single Here Comes The… on the Ellen show. How was that experience?
Really fun. I hate TV shows usually, I don’t watch TV and I’m not very good at doing it – I’m like a cat in a room full of rocking chairs – and I’m nervous and out of place, and there’s cameras in your face, and the audience is all mid-40s soccer moms clapping out of time. It couldn’t be a more odd, surreal experience. But I think Ellen is pretty rad, she’s awesome. She made it fun and easy and she came to watch the sound check and was freaking out over how much she loved it, and that made it easier to go out there with some confidence instead of like, “Oh god, what if she hates it?” She loved it, and I always thought she was awesome as Dory in Finding Nemo.

You’ve worked with Fall Out Boy. They’ve worked with Elvis Costello. When are you going to cut out the middle man?
I know, man (laughs.) It’s hard for me to even use Elvis Costello as an influence to cite now, because years ago I got him tattooed on my arm. And to make things worse, I’m going blind in my old age so I have to wear glasses sometimes, and people are like, “Oh I love your Elvis Costello glasses.” I cringe at that. My love for him is unparalleled. I don’t think I could even talk to him now, because I ran into him in an elevator when I wasted once at the Chateau Marmont in LA. He got in the elevator with me at like midnight, and it was just me and him in this dark, small elevator. I just pulled my shirt sleeve up and showed him my tattoo and was just speechless, just pointing at it. He was like, “That’s nice, that’s quite nice,” and just turned around. So now I just feel like I’ve ruined my chances of working with him, because then he’d be like, “I can’t work with some psychopath that wants to kill me.” My booking agent books him, and I told her, “Never tell him I have a tattoo.”

How many songs on your iPod?
Four thousand and something? Is that normal? I think it’s because I don’t have a big iPod.

Most played?
I haven’t statistically checked that to be exact, but it would probably be something very embarrassing like a Conway Twitty song or a Bee Gees song or an ABBA song. But that’s no reflection of what I play or what I like. I can’t stop playing this new Fleet Foxes record, I love it to death.

The last concert that blew your mind was…
Gogol Bordello. At Lollapalooza and Coachella. Insane. Love that band. They’re recording a record in Malibu right up the street from me. I think I’m gonna visit a lot.

More talented Canadian. Nickelback or Pamela Anderson?
Oh god, that’s a hard one. Can you see neither? No, I’ll say Pamela Anderson, I’ve seen the video.

Links:
MySpace: Butch Walker

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