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Rhett Butler
-Jeff Liles
I've always been fascinated by musicians who approach their craft from an unusual point of view. When I was in junior high school, it was Jimmy Page dragging a violin bow across the strings of his Gibson Les Paul. Shortly thereafter, I heard GrandMaster Flash in a New York City nightclub, pushing and pulling a record back and forth underneath the needle on a record player. A rapper named Biz Markie became known as "The Human Beatbox", after making a name for himself by imitating a drum machine with his mouth. A few years after that, I was introduced to the music of contemporary symphonic composer Karlheinz Stockhausen, a man who once wrote an orchestral arrangements that centered around the whirring blades of four helicopters. I was into anything musical that defied convention, anything that disrupted the obvious mainstream mindset.
Rhett Butler may not have a quirky personality or gimmicky name to describe what he does, but his approach to playing the guitar is anything but conventional. In many ways, (possibly because he's a classical guitarist playing an electric instrument) Butler tends to remind us of British virtuoso violinist Nigel Kennedy. Not so much from a technical standpoint, but in the respect that both musicians love to extract signature melodic figures from traditional arrangements and then juxtapose them in and out of context with other, often more contemporary, elements of popular music. Unlike Kennedy, who does this to take the piss out of crusty old folks who mistakenly happen into one of his appearances with their local hometown symphony, Rhett sees this odd juxtaposition as a way to transcend musical genres, eras, and aesthetic. Hip-hop DJs are often on the same wavelength, cutting and pasting older, shorter, fragmented tonal sequences to create brand new musical arrangements and concepts. These days, some of the most interesting music in the world is being made by cultural scavengers and aural collage artists.
Butler, however, seems to be taking this to the next level. His style of playing the guitar is a unique one, perhaps the most unusual approach you've ever encountered. If you've listened to any late-70's rock and roll, you've heard Eddie Van Halen or Joe Satriani use their picking hands to tap out harmonic tones on the necks of his guitars. If you've listened to much contemporary jazz in the last ten years, you've probably heard Stanley Jordan use a similar technique to execute more passive melodies within a more free-form context. Rhett Butler uses both hands to play two different melodic passages at the same time. It almost sounds like two piano players having their respective parts "translated" by an electric guitar. The radical dexterity involved often leaves audiences wondering how in the hell he does it, and when they hear a short snippet of "Greensleeves", "House of the Rising Sun", or Mozart dropped into the mix, they often begin to factor in a historical perspective as well. It becomes a sort of "name that tune" that moves faster than you could possibly keep up with it.
Those of us here at Substance TV are proud to introduce to an extraordinarily talented musician like Rhett Butler. His latest album is called "The Physics of Acoustics", and we highly recommend it as an absolutely glorious collection of music.
Jeff Liles is a Producer for SubstanceTV.
Web Links
Read reviews, find out his schedule, and find out more about his music.
[ http://www.rhettbutler.org/ ]
Online guitar magazine with columns, discussions, artist information, links, contests, and interactive learning tools.
[ http://www.guitar.com/ ]
The On-Line Guitar Archive, ideal for tablature and instruction.
[ http://www.olga.net/ ]
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