We caught up with Matt Butler, founder and conductor for the Everyone Orchestra, to discuss everything from his inspirations to his role in the band, and even the time a presidential candidate sat in on tambourine! L4LM writer Jack Sheehan sat down with Butler, and you can read the full interview below:
L4LM: How do you and the bands that you put together decide what or which music you perform, for those not entirely familiar with what you do and your process?
Matt Butler: You know with Everyone Orchestra, it’s mostly, I mean, I would say 99 percent of the time, improvisation. The music that we choose is simply affected by personalities and instrumentation that make up that particular orchestra. My role as conductor is to create a framework for the improvisation to have a little bit more structure, to take some of the responsibly off the musicians on which way its going to go, but not necessarily telling the musicians what to play. There’s a lot of variables they have control over, I call it “riding the bull”, you know? Trying to direct it in different directions. Really there’s no preconception other than instrumentation and personalities that I put into it
L4LM: So it’s really based on the players, what instruments they play, and your shaping of dynamics, keys, etc?
MB: Yes. Also beginnings middles and endings; the whole idea is that was taking the group songwriting process and were putting it into a performing space and conducting improvisation. That’s the mode of approaching it.
L4LM: That’s fascinating. You make it look so simple. If there is one, what is the most difficult part of conducting for jam band music?
MB: I think I’m getting over the hump of educating people on the concept. That initial question that you asked me, it’s still hard to get peoples brains around it, which we’re completely improvising, and trying to get to subscribe to the spontaneity aspect. That, I think, is the biggest challenge of what I created with EO, to get the audience to understand.
Sometimes when you see it, you don’t think it is because we have a chorus, and reprise the chorus and now the audience is singing along like “wow they must know this song.” Well, they don’t know the song, they were just part of the creation of it. That’s where the framework of conducting changes it a little bit.
I’m pretty blatant with the dry erase boards as they were like this in your face tool of this is what are happening now. There’s no question about the key or bass and drums or what I’m asking people to say. For the musicians I’ve been able to get recently, its just gotten better in the way that the musicians have been able to approach the team building aspect of writing songs together on the stage through improvisation. The musicians that keep on coming back and that are getting off on it are totally into this idea creation cycle that we get in when were really in the groove with EO.
L4LM: Musicians have to have that communication down. That’s great that you’ve been getting better and better with each group and audience you perform with.
MB: That’s how it feels. I’m doing some shows up in Canada in September where I’m only bringing 1 or two musicians who have done it before and I’ll have 9 musicians on stage. The language has been is interesting, I have to repeat myself; there’s no writing. Some will be like “what are we gonna play?” and I’m like “No!”(laughs). And then there’s the Ah-haa moment once you get into it. When Adrian Belew first did it, he was full of questions and not really quite getting it going into it, but in 2 minutes of doing it he looked at me like “I got it, this is so fun!”
L4LM: That’s wild! That’s the joyous yet challenging part of improvisation. Whether you are acting or preforming, you can’t rewind. You can’t stop in the middle like oh that doesn’t work. You have to follow through.
MB: There are no mistakes, just opportunities. That’s a big one.
L4LM: You’ve said that you conceived the idea for EO while in India. What it was about that trip that brought you back with the concept of EO? Did Indian/Carnatic music have any direct influence over it?
MB: Hmm… I would say that I didn’t have the complete vision for EO while I was in India, but it did have this realization that music as a language just crosses so many borders. Basically the experience that I had was that I was at an open jam in Darmsala. There were a lot of Tibetans there, a handful of Americans, a ton of Europeans, a handful of Indians; it was a full on mish mash of international intercultural groups. Kind of the way our world is.
English was a common thread, but there were so many people who didn’t speak the same languages. There were some jam session there, and we’re all connected. We we’re all communicating. I had this feeling, a spontaneity gathering that made me feel there’s something different than the normal band, a normal approach to music I’d been doing over the years and wanted to explore more. It inspired me to hold an open mic that had drum circles, improvisation, which bit by bit, led me to EO.
L4LM: Wow. You’ve had a holy host of musicians, artists, and entertainers perform with you. You even had a presidential candidate on stage with you once! Care to tell who that was or will the secret service not allow it?
MB: The secret service will allow it, and they were there by the way. It was in Portland, Oregon. This had to be in 2005, 2006.
They were nice and really serious. Just really serious. It was Dennis Kucinich. He was super sweet and on the campaign trail. Someone who worked on the campaign contacted me and said they were a fan of EO and it was a show with Jon Fishman and Kayak Art and Julia Butterfly Hill and he basically said that Dennis was interested in coming by and wanted to know if he could be a part of it. I said he was welcome to come, but I didn’t want him to just campaign for himself. We were raising money for a group called Pangea Project, and he came out with his tambourine and was jamming! He did some spoken word on how music is love and music is the language of peace. He was so awesome and it was so perfect. It was definitely a highlight.
L4LM: That’s good you told him he had to be jamming.
MB: Yea, he had rhythm.
L4LM: Well that’s awesome! Looking forward to catching you guys on the road… Thanks for your time!