Grand National By The John Butler Trio Rarity

The pigeonholes that exist have long been a bad fit for John Butler anyway. Roots band, protest band, jam band, groove band.. These labels may or may not. Discover releases, reviews, credits, songs, and more about The John Butler Trio - Grand National at Discogs. Complete your The John Butler Trio collection.

“My style doesn’t really fit into one genre,” says Butler. “My fingerpicking includes bits of Celtic, folk, blues, bluegrass, and other styles, and the acrylic nails allow me to use my index finger as a flatpick. I continuously swap between fingerpicking, flatpicking, double-thumbing, and other techniques, and, at any point, I also have the option of changing the sound from acoustic to full-on distorted Marshall tones.” Butler takes a similar tack when songwriting. While the Trio routinely performs on the jam band circuit—and is typically associated with that scene—the music on its latest release, Grand National [Lava], melds bits of rock riffing, up-tempo dance grooves, New Orleans funk, lilting reggae rhythms, rolling 6/8 balladry, plucky bluegrass motifs, bluesy slide sweeps, and Hendrix-inspired crunch chords and wah lines into a coherent power-pop hybrid.

“Plowing a lot of influences together comes naturally to me,” explains Butler. “I grew up listening to artists like G. Love, De La Soul, the Beastie Boys, and a lot of other people who fused music together into new styles. So even though I’m influenced by blues, country, bluegrass, reggae, and hip-hop, I’m not always hearing the traditional accompaniment. For example, when I was writing ‘Funky Tonight,’ I had this sort of bluegrass fingerpicking motif going on.

But as I was playing the song, the off-beat accents reminded me of ska, so I just blended the two stylistic elements together.”. Speaking of the Marshall, can you step us through your signal chain? Each of my guitars has two pickup systems with separate outputs. The Maton 12-strings are fitted with Seymour Duncan Mag-Mic soundhole pickups—I don’t use the microphone, only the magnetic part—and Maton APMic pickups, which combine an under-saddle component with a soundhole mic. The lap-steels are fitted with Fishman Rare Earth Blend soundhole pickups that have both a magnetic pickup and a microphone with individual outputs for each. So, in both cases, there are separate signals for the magnetic pickups and the non-magnetic pickups. The signal from the magnetic pickups is routed through a heap of effects—a Boss ODB-3 Bass Overdrive, a Voodoo Lab Micro Vibe, a Boss RV-2 Digital Reverb, a Dunlop CryBaby 535Q wah, and an Akai Head Rush E2 delay—into an Avalon U5 instrument DI/preamp.

The signal from the non-magnetic pickups is routed directly to an Avalon M5 microphone preamp. Naruto season 1 eng subtitles. Then, the outputs from the Avalons are combined using a Midas XL42 mixer, and the mono signal is sent to a JLM Audio custom master volume/mute/ phase switch box, before going to the house console. That’s my acoustic sound.

I also take a feed from the Avalon U5, which goes into an Ibanez TS9DX Tube Screamer and an Ernie Ball volume pedal, before being sent to the Marshall. That’s my electric sound. I use the volume pedal to blend the electric tone with the acoustic sound. The only things that change when I record are that the Marshall goes into another room, the signal from the Avalon M5 is routed to yet another amp for an amplified clean sound, and I put mics on the guitar, as well. That gives us lots of different signals to work with.