Jon Butcher (born 1955/1956) is an American

rock Rock most often refers to: * Rock (geology), a naturally occurring solid aggregate of minerals or mineraloids * Rock music, a genre of popular music Rock or Rocks may also refer to: Places United Kingdom * Rock, Caerphilly, a location in Wale ...

blues Blues is a music genre and musical form that originated among African Americans in the Deep South of the United States around the 1860s. Blues has incorporated spiritual (music), spirituals, work songs, field hollers, Ring shout, shouts, cha ...

songwriter A songwriter is a person who creates musical compositions or writes lyrics for songs, or both. The writer of the music for a song can be called a composer, although this term tends to be used mainly in the classical music genre and film scoring. ...

guitarist A guitarist (or a guitar player) is a person who plays the guitar. Guitarists may play a variety of guitar family instruments such as classical guitars, acoustic guitars, electric guitars, and bass guitars. Some guitarists accompany themselve ...

and

freelance ''Freelance'' (sometimes spelled ''free-lance'' or ''free lance''), ''freelancer'', or ''freelance worker'', are terms commonly used for a person who is self-employed and not necessarily committed to a particular employer long-term. Freelance w ...

multimedia Multimedia is a form of communication that uses a combination of different content forms, such as Text (literary theory), writing, Sound, audio, images, animations, or video, into a single presentation. T ...

producer.

Influences

Many people have made comparisons between Jon Butcher and

Jimi Hendrix James Marshall "Jimi" Hendrix (born Johnny Allen Hendrix; November 27, 1942September 18, 1970) was an American singer-songwriter and musician. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest and most influential guitarists of all time. Inducted ...

particularly in the early stages of Butcher's career. These comparisons were fueled by Butcher's onstage appearance and mannerisms, patterned after Hendrix, and his choice for the band name Axis, a reference to Hendrix album '' Axis: Bold as Love''. Butcher's stated influences are

Richie Havens Richard Pierce Havens (January 21, 1941 – April 22, 2013) was an American singer-songwriter and guitarist. His music encompassed elements of folk music, folk, soul music, soul (both of which he frequently cover song, covered), and rhythm and b ...

John Lennon John Winston Ono Lennon (born John Winston Lennon; 9 October 19408 December 1980) was an English singer-songwriter, musician and activist. He gained global fame as the founder, co-lead vocalist and rhythm guitarist of the Beatles. Lennon's ...

Phil Lynott Philip Parris Lynott (, ; 20 August 1949 – 4 January 1986) was an Irish musician, songwriter, and poet. He was the co-founder, lead vocalist, bassist, and primary songwriter for the hard rock band Thin Lizzy. He was known for his distinctive ...

Bob Dylan Bob Dylan (legally Robert Dylan; born Robert Allen Zimmerman, May 24, 1941) is an American singer-songwriter. Described as one of the greatest songwriters of all time, Dylan has been a major figure in popular culture over his nearly 70-year ...

, and

Taj Mahal The Taj Mahal ( ; ; ) is an ivory-white marble mausoleum on the right bank of the river Yamuna in Agra, Uttar Pradesh, India. It was commissioned in 1631 by the fifth Mughal Empire, Mughal emperor, Shah Jahan () to house the tomb of his belo ...

, and he maintains that the Hendrix comparisons are superficial, saying "... outside of the surface aspect, I don’t think there was much about me that was Jimi Hendrix-like, if you disregard the fact that I’m black and play a Stratocaster."

Johanna Wild

During the middle to late 1970s, Butcher toured the Northeast U.S. with the Boston-based band Johanna Wild. Other band members were Jeff Linscott (guitar), Derek Blevins (drums) and Troy Douglas Sutler III (bass). Their song, "Suzanne" was played on local radio stations such as WBCN. Johanna Wild opened for Foghat at the Alosa Civic Center in Concord, New Hampshire on May 2, 1977.

Jon Butcher Axis

Butcher appeared on

MTV MTV (an initialism of Music Television) is an American cable television television channel, channel and the flagship property of the MTV Entertainment Group sub-division of the Paramount Media Networks division of Paramount Global. Launched on ...

and radio station WBCN in Boston, Massachusetts. He formed Jon Butcher Axis with Sandy Higgins (guitar), Chris Martin (bass) and former Johanna Wild drummer Derek Blevins and the band opened for

Kiss A kiss is the touching or pressing of one's lips against another person, animal or object. Cultural connotations of kissing vary widely; depending on the culture and context, a kiss can express sentiments of love, passion, romance, sex ...

in Fort Worth, Texas) in October 1979. Soon after, Higgins left to be the front man for Balloon, while Charlie Farren fronted the Mk3 lineup of

The Joe Perry Project The Joe Perry Project is an American rock band formed by Aerosmith lead guitarist Joe Perry (musician), Joe Perry shortly before his departure from Aerosmith in 1979. They almost immediately signed a record deal with Aerosmith's label, Columbia ...

. Later Axis became a power trio and performed throughout New England.

American tour opening for The J. Geils Band

Jon Butcher Axis was toured with J. Geils Band on their 1982 '' Freeze Frame'' American tour. Jon Butcher Axis secured an international record deal with PolyGram Records which led to the albums ''The Jon Butcher Axis'' and ''Stare at the Sun'', both produced by Pat Moran, who produced for

Robert Plant Robert Anthony Plant (born 20 August 1948) is an English singer and songwriter. He was the lead singer and lyricist of the rock band Led Zeppelin from its founding in 1968 until their breakup in 1980. Since then, he has had a successful solo ca ...

Edie Brickell Edie Arlisa Brickell (born March 10, 1966) is an American singer-songwriter widely known for 1988's ''Shooting Rubberbands at the Stars'', the debut album by Edie Brickell & New Bohemians, which went to No. 4 on the ''Billboard'' albums chart. ...

and

Lou Gramm Louis Andrew Grammatico (born May 2, 1950), known professionally as Lou Gramm, is an American singer and songwriter. He is best known as co-founder and original frontman of the rock band Foreigner from 1976 to 1990 and again from 1992 to 2003, ...

1983

1983 saw the release of their first and self-titled album, ''The Jon Butcher Axis'', featuring "Life Takes A Life". Other notable tracks included "Ocean in Motion" and "Walk Like This". This album reached No. 91 in the Billboard Pop Albums chart and Jon Butcher Axis' video "Life Takes a Life" became one of the few videos by a black artist to receive airtime on MTV. At that time, the following black artists had appeared on MTV: Tina Turner, Prince, Michael Jackson, Eddy Grant, Musical Youth and the Busboys. The band's second album, ''Stare at the Sun'' (1984), reached No. 160 on the Billboard album chart. The result of these two albums' successes afforded further growing popularity for the band, which added the opportunity to tour with Rush ('Signals' tour '83), Def Leppard ('Pyromania' tour '83) and Scorpions ('Hurricane' tour '84), among others.

1985–1986

In 1985, Jon Butcher Axis signed with

Capitol Records Capitol Records, LLC (known legally as Capitol Records, Inc. until 2007), and simply known as Capitol, is an American record label owned by Universal Music Group through its Capitol Music Group imprint. It was founded as the first West Coast-base ...

and released ''Along the Axis''. The track, "The Ritual", earned multiple writers in the band a

Grammy The Grammy Awards, stylized as GRAMMY, and often referred to as The Grammys, are awards presented by The Recording Academy of the United States to recognize outstanding achievements in music. They are regarded by many as the most prestigious a ...

Nomination for Best Rock Instrumental Performance. On that same album, singles and videos were released for the songs "The Sounds of Your Voice" and "Stop". "The Sounds of Your Voice" (written by band member Thom Gimbel) was the only single to hit the

Billboard charts The ''Billboard'' charts tabulate the relative weekly popularity of songs and albums in the United States and elsewhere. The results are published in ''Billboard (magazine), Billboard'' magazine. ''Billboard'' biz, the online extension of the ' ...

Hot 100 reaching No. 94. Quotes Jon, "The Capitol Records experience was a positive one. Jon Butcher Axis frequently toured major venues across the US during this period, opening for

INXS INXS (a phonetic play on "in excess") were an Australian rock band, formed as the Farriss Brothers in 1977 in Sydney. The founding members were bassist Garry Gary Beers, main composer and keyboardist Andrew Farriss, drummer Jon Farriss, gu ...

1987–1989

The following releases, ''Wishes'' (1987) and '' Pictures from the Front'' (1989) were simply recorded under the Jon Butcher name. ''Wishes'' was Butcher's most successful album. Rumored to have achieved Gold Award status, there is no evidence of this on the RIAA database. MTV videos released from both of these records included "Holy War", "Goodbye Saving Grace" and "Wishes".

Barefoot Servants

In 1991, Jon Butcher Axis ended its run. Jon Butcher himself spent most of the '90s on various multimedia projects. In 1994, he formed Barefoot Servants which released their self-titled album on

Epic Records Epic Records is an American record label owned by Sony Music Entertainment, a subsidiary of Sony Corporation of America, the American division of Japanese conglomerate Sony is a Japanese multinational conglomerate (company), cong ...

. The band included

Leland Sklar Leland Bruce Sklar (born May 28, 1947) is an American bassist and session musician. He rose to prominence as a member of James Taylor's backing band, which coalesced into a group in its own right, The Section, which supported so many of Asylu ...

(bass), Ben Schultz (guitar) and Ray Brinker (drums). Their second record, ''Barefoot Servants 2'' was released b
Atom Records
in August 2005. Drummer Ray Brinker was replaced by Londoner Neal Wilkinson.

Solo endeavors

In the mid 1990s, Butcher released two solo blues albums, ''Positively the Blues'' and ''Electric Factory'', a title loosely derived from

's ''

Electric Ladyland ''Electric Ladyland'' is the third and final studio album by the Jimi Hendrix Experience, released in October 1968. A double album, it was the only record from the Experience with production solely credited to Hendrix. The band's most commercial ...

''. In 1998, Razor & Tie released ''The Best of Jon Butcher – Dreamers Would Ride''. In November 2000, Butcher released a CD exclusively through his web site ''A Long Way Home''. ''A Stiff Little Breeze'' was released o
Atom Records
in 2001 and was Jon's first solo project with the independent label. This CD resurrected the Jon Butcher Axis name, and again the Hendrix reference. 2002 brought an additional Jon Butcher Axis release, ''An Ocean in Motion – Live in Boston 1984''. Jon joined the Chris Pierce band in 2008 as guitarist and released a live CD ''Live at the Hotel Cafe''. Jon is currently working on Chris' third studio release.

Video

Butcher's first DVD video release came in 2004. ''Live at the Casbah'' was filmed in December 1984 at The Casbah concert venue in

Manchester, New Hampshire Manchester is the List of municipalities in New Hampshire, most populous city in the U.S. state of New Hampshire. Located on the banks of the Merrimack River, it had a population of 115,644 at the 2020 United States census, 2020 census. Manches ...

. It contains several never-released songs, and additional music from his first three Jon Butcher Axis releases.

Multimedia projects

In addition to touring all over the United States and other countries to support various incarnations of both Jon Butcher Axis and Barefoot Servants, Butcher created his own production company and state of the art recording studio "Electric Factory" located in the San Fernando Hills of

California California () is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States that lies on the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. It borders Oregon to the north, Nevada and Arizona to the east, and shares Mexico–United States border, an ...

. In addition to providing music production services for recording artists, Butcher through his company "Electric Factory Music" spends a great amount of his time scoring music for television, film and computer gaming. Recent projects include music for the

HBO Home Box Office (HBO) is an American pay television service, which is the flagship property of namesake parent-subsidiary Home Box Office, Inc., itself a unit owned by Warner Bros. Discovery. The overall Home Box Office business unit is based a ...

series '' Deadwood'' and A&E's ''The Life and Times of Wild Bill Cody'', '' The Hughleys'' (

UPN The United Paramount Network (UPN) was an American broadcast television network that operated from 1995 to 2006. It was originally a joint venture between Chris-Craft Industries (later sold to News Corporation)'s subsidiary, United Television, ...

), ''

The Unit ''The Unit'' is an American action-drama television series created by David Mamet that aired on CBS from March 7, 2006, to May 10, 2009, with the total of four seasons and 69 episodes. The series focuses on a top-secret military unit modeled ...

'' (

CBS CBS Broadcasting Inc., commonly shortened to CBS (an abbreviation of its original name, Columbia Broadcasting System), is an American commercial broadcast television and radio network serving as the flagship property of the CBS Entertainme ...

), ''

Ugly Betty ''Ugly Betty'' is an American comedy-drama television series developed by Silvio Horta, which aired on American Broadcasting Company, ABC from September 28, 2006, to April 14, 2010. It is based on the Colombian telenovela ''Yo soy Betty, la fea' ...

'' ( ABC), '' Star Trek: The Next Generation'' (UPN), ''

My Name Is Earl ''My Name Is Earl'' is an American television sitcom created by Greg Garcia (producer), Greg Garcia for NBC. It aired for four seasons from September 20, 2005, to May 14, 2009, with a total of List of My Name Is Earl episodes, 96 episodes. It wa ...

NBC The National Broadcasting Company (NBC) is an American commercial broadcast television and radio network serving as the flagship property of the NBC Entertainment division of NBCUniversal, a subsidiary of Comcast. It is one of NBCUniversal's ...

, and ''Hendrix: The Movie'' (Wood Harris).

Discography

Albums

Singles

References

External links

* * * {{DEFAULTSORT:Butcher, Jon Living people American rock singers American rock guitarists American male guitarists African-American guitarists Musical groups from Massachusetts 20th-century American guitarists 20th-century American male musicians 20th-century African-American musicians 21st-century African-American musicians Grahm Junior College alumni