A lot has been written about how singer-songwriter Butch Walker’s house burnt down in 2007’s California wildfires or how he’s co-written and produced songs with Avril Lavigne and Pink. As if these facts were the most compelling things about him. This level of interest is akin to asking Einstein why he wore his hair like that; sure, it’s interesting on some level but it won’t get you anywhere close to the theory of relativity.
By high school, Walker was already spending six nights a week performing in small clubs around Atlanta and itching to take off for Los Angeles. The day after high school graduation, he fled his hometown of Cartersville, GA to try his hand with SouthGang, a pop-metal hair band that formed in 1998. The death of hair bands at the hands of grunge gave Walker the opportunity to stop, as he puts it, “butchering” himself and begin finding his own voice.
By the time his pop-rock band Marvelous 3 arrived in 1997, Walker had emerged as an intrepid and audacious songwriter. From his first onstage performance of Bryan Adams’ classic “Run to You,” Walker had an ear for a well-honed pop tune that has only grown along with his catalog. Now a solo artist, that catalog includes six solo albums (two live) and a seventh,
I Liked It Better When You Had No Heart, recorded in five days and due early next year.
For a guy who has written hits for and produced a wide variety of artists such as Weezer, Katy Perry, Pete Yorn, NeverSayNever and Tommy Lee, Walker has never rested on his laurels, “I think if I was complacent and content with everything I’ve done I don’t know if there’d be any room for improvement, or if you’d want to,” he says. He could probably abandon touring to stay in the studio and make far more money but his interest lies in growing as an artist. His shows, in smaller venues, are packed affairs with audience members singing every word. They abound with energy and electrifying guitar and piano skills. A live Butch Walker show is like watching the Red Hot Chili Peppers if they were all one guy. He is
that entertaining live.
Gibson: SouthGang was your first professional band - were you writing the music back then?
Butch Walker: Yeah, I definitely was all things considered. I was new at it and very young so I don’t think I really knew what I was doing yet, but I guess we sounded like every other band at the time and we were good at sounding like that.
G: You formed Marvelous 3 with two of the guys from SouthGang, Jayce Fincher [bass] and Mitch "Slug" McLee [drums] but not Jesse Harte [lead vocals]. Why wasn’t he involved?
BW: He and I built up plenty of bitter animosity towards each other back then – we were just young and immature. I think I had bigger aspirations then being just a guitar player in a hair band so maybe that was part of my glitch. So I ended up fronting a new band and Slug and Jac joined me and we stayed together for the better part of 15 years in different incarnations including Marvelous 3. Those were my brothers. I’ve since made nice with Jesse years ago.
G: That’s good.
BW: It’s all good. What was he gonna do? He was the singer and I was ready to be the singer so it didn’t really make much sense to continue on with him.
G: This is a kind of random question – What were you like in high school?
BW: I was a complete loner. I didn’t have that many friends, but everyone liked me – I do have a lot of people from high school who claim to be my friends now though. I was the only guy in my school into rock music with long hair, earrings, and eyeliner. I just didn’t relate to anybody in my high school, I didn’t feel like I had any kind of a connection with someone who was also 17 for some reason - my girlfriend was older and my bandmates were 10 years older. I think that’s probably made me who I am today; I’m very proud of the fact that I never followed or settled into a clique because I think it’s allowed me not to still to this day.
G: You’ve said you started getting calls after doing all the instruments (except drums) and producing 2002’s Left of Self Centered. Is that when people started to seek you out as a producer as opposed to you having to look for work?
BW: Yeah, I think that record definitely served a purpose where there were enough musicians who bought [the album] and then thought it would be a good idea to let me come in and help them make records.
G: Do you usually pursue the artists you produce or do they come to you?
BW: I’ve never pursued anyone – they’ve all come to me. I’ve never once tried to pimp myself out as a producer because it’s really something I stumbled into anyway. I never really set out to do it for a living. I’m still an artist and tour half of the year doing dates, putting out records and playing to a really great fan base. It’s a fun job so I’ll keep doing it, but I don’t think I’ll ever go to my manager and say, ‘Get me on that record.’ I’m not that way competitively.
G: When you’re producing, do you go into an album with preconceptions about what you think it should sound like?
BW: Some days I will, but not always. Some days I’ll have a concept of what I want the band to sound like and what it’s gonna take to do that. Other times it’ll be let’s just see what happens. I don’t think it should always be so planned out and methodical because that can cause a huge let down if you don’t achieve what you set out to do. I think a lot of that is just knowing what I want anyway so subconsciously I think I kind of know what I want going in.
G: Have you ever taken on a project where you weren’t sure you could deliver?
BW: Yeah, that’s happened several times. Also sometimes you get to the halfway point of a record and don’t know if you want to finish because you don’t know if you’re connecting with the artist. But that’s really rare, and if it happened all the time, I wouldn’t probably want to do it ‘cause it sure doesn’t sound like fun.
G: You’ve said that producing yourself is great because you hear how you want things to sound and you can cut out the middle man. How do you work on your own albums in a methodical rather than emotional way?
BW: I think I may have changed my perception on that since I said that.
G: How so?
BW: Well, just because that may have been how I felt at the time. The last record I did, Sycamore Meadows, I did all by myself pretty much. On the new record [I Liked It Better When You Had No Heart], I wanted to have my band [The Black Widows] in here and have it be more of a collaborative process. I really enjoy letting go of the reins right now and having a little help because it’s making things just a little bit more dimensional for me.
G: How was the new album approached differently from your previous albums, specifically your last album, Sycamore Meadows, where you played all the instruments and produced?
BW: It’s a band record. A lot was recorded live so it has a live band approach. The sound is little bit more lush. Everybody had a part to play and something to say at every given point so, somehow, making that work and not be jumbled was the task. But it’s not a rock record, it’s a song record.
G: You’re a very prolific storyteller – not just a songwriter, but also a sort of short story writer who blurs the line between fiction and non-fiction. Are there specific stories you feel are about you as opposed to songs that are telling a story about something you’ve seen?
BW: There are a lot of them that are introspective and a lot that are just coming from being an observer over the years. You see a lot, or you hope to, by the time you’re 40 [Walker turns 40 this year]. I don’t really know if I have a knack or a vantage point for a certain perspective, I just like telling stories and I think it’s one of the things that’s cathartic for me. These are my diaries; they’ve always been my diaries.
G: You seem very emotionally available in your songs; would you consider yourself an emotionally available person?
BW: Sure. I like wearing my heart on my sleeve. I don’t hide things well and I’m pretty confrontational. It’s just that in lyrics, it’s easier to get it out. Most people have no problem writing things down, in an email or whatever; it’s a lot easier for them than speaking.
G: Ok, speaking of lyrics, was there really a “Joan”?
BW: Yeah there was. Not named Joan, but there was definitely a Joan.
G: “Passed Your Place, Saw Your Car, Thought of You”?
BW: That was a true story.
G: Do you feel like getting older has made you more honest as a songwriter or do you think you’ve always been open?
BW: No, I haven’t always been and it took me until about the last record to figure that out. It took the fire to really level me and mellow me, so, yeah, I feel like I’m definitely a little more honest with myself lyrically. I mean critics didn’t really care about my records until the last record because I guess they felt like maybe I was being insincere or something, I don’t know. Although I really backed everything I wrote or said, sometimes it wasn’t about me and some people just want it to be all about you.
G: When you write a song that isn’t commissioned and then you decide it’s not for you, what’s your criteria for that?
BW: It’s just usually because I don’t feel like I’m comfortable with it for myself. But most of the time when I set out to write a song, I know if I’m writing it for myself or not.
G: From the get-go?
BW: I’ll know right away if lyrically I’m doing it from my own perspective or whether it’s just fiction.
G: The not always reliable Wikipedia says that David Bowie co wrote “Cigarette Lighter Love Song” with you. What’s the story there?
BW: David Bowie is a happenstance as a co-writer on that song because I used an interpolation of the melody of “All the Young Dudes” which he wrote for Mott the Hoople and instead of risking getting sued I went to Bowie’s camp. It’s not like we sat on a yacht in the south of France with two acoustic guitars and a bottle of wine and co-wrote “Cigarette Lighter Love Song” together. I can honestly say I wish that was the case but it’s not.
G: That would have been a cool story.
BW: Yeah, maybe I should just change my Wikipedia entry to say that. It’ll be faction instead of fact/fiction.
G: What’s your involvement with Original Signal Records?
BW: It’s just some friends. I have a very controlled deal where I have a lot to do with it and it’s not like just being assigned another record deal. They just administrate it and distribute it. I don’t really care about being on a standard record label. That’s not going to do anything for me. Nobody buys records in any of the rock formats, not the kind of records I put out; they’re savvy enough to find them for free and that’s fine by me so why give a label 85% of my record. I don’t need them to help me make it. I can make a record in my bedroom.
G: Are you teaching your 2-year old son to play music?
BW: I don’t have to teach him. He already can do it. It’s in his blood – he’s beating on everything and playing guitars.
G: Kind of like Spencer Tweedy, Jeff Tweedy of Wilco’s son.
BW: I love that band. I read that article in Spin that Spencer is featured in. I think it’d be pretty cool to have a dad like Jeff Tweedy.
Photo credit: Christopher Martin