Butch Walker was supposed to be one of the headlining artists at this year’s Sunset Junction Music Fest but due to some pesky street fines and fine print on contracts, the festival was cancelled. That didn’t stop Butch and his army of Black Widows from performing, however. “We were all dressed up and nowhere to go when they canned it,” joked Butch. The guys made the best of it, with plan B being a 30-minute set in the courtyard of their new label, Dangerbird Records. The show consisted of the band performing the entire track list off of the latest and greatest Butch Walker and the Black Widows release, The Spade. A giant crowd packed into the outdoor courtyard and even Justin Kirk (Andy Botwin on Weeds) came out for the soiree.

Prior to the performance, Butch sat down with ChinaShop to discuss the new album, embarrassing tattoos, and his distaste for synthesizer music.

Is this going to tide you over until your tour kicks off?

Yeah. I mean we’re actually going to do some more little secret unannounced shows. We’ve been doing those all throughout August and I think we’ll do some of those in September since we’re not out till the first week of October.

You’re new album just came out with the Black Widows. Are you planning on keeping the band going for a while or will you be going back to the solo stuff at some point?

I definitely will do a solo record soon but right now I’m really enjoying rock and roll, I forgot how fun it was. I always did a rock and roll show but the records for myself haven’t been based on that. They’ve always been more introspective lyrically and sometimes more of a mellow side. With these guys that I’ve been touring with, it’s been more of a rock and roll band so we wanted to go into the studio and figure that out on tape and see how that would come to fruition. It really did and it sounds like a rock band on the record so we’re really excited.

It sounds like they are going to be really fun songs to perform live.

I think it will be really fun. We’re gonna do the whole thing today.

I have heard that “Day Drunk” is near and dear to your heart. Is that literally about drinking during the day or is there more to it?

There’s more to it. I don’t do that often. It’s actually one of the more bittersweet songs on the record because it comes from a place of getting drunk during the day back home in Atlanta whenever I went to visit my dad. He’s ailing right now and we’re best friends so it was kind of going home to say goodbye to my hometown and all of my friends because I kind of packed up and went West and decided to cut my ties there. Then to find out the seriousness of my dad’s condition, right when I was leaving, was a big blow. I just went to my old neighborhood where I lived for 20 years in downtown Atlanta and went to my favorite bar and got drunk and wrote that song. I wrote that song right then and there.

I heard a funny story about your Elvis Costello tattoo and you running into him drunk at the bar.

That’s one thing I try to tell people always is please don’t ever get someone’s likeness on your body if they’re still alive because you’re going to run into them and you’re going to have to show them because you’ll be so excited. They’re going to freak out and think you’re a real creep and then they’re not going to be able to get off the elevator fast enough. That’s pretty much what happened with me and Elvis Costello which sucks because now I’ll never be able to just bro out with him, you know, have dinner. I’ll be the creep with his face on my arm.

You’re a big motorcycle fan. Do you take your bikes out on the road with you when you travel?

I do. I take my bikes out a good bit on the road – as much as I can and as many as we can fit in the trailer with the gear. My tour manager hates me for it but life’s too short and I’ve been doing this a long time and I like to try to have as much free time and me time as possible when I’m touring.

You have your own iPhone app. That is very modern of you!

Well, I don’t have anything to do with it. If I had anything to do with it, I would have never been able to program anything. I honestly have never seen it. I don’t even know what it does. I have my iPhone, but I don’t have the app on here [Laugh]. That would be quite narcissistic.

You don’t need to check up on yourself?

I know what I’m doing at all times.

You’re known for being anti-music industry. Do you have any survival tactics for up and coming bands that are dealing with the corporate side of the industry and all the politics?

I guess the biggest thing I’ve learned over the years is the minute you listen to other people that work anywhere – label or management or anywhere – and not listen to yourself, then 9 times out of 10, you end up being pissed that they’re wrong. You’re better off making your own mistakes I think than somebody else making mistakes for you. It’s better to just stick to what you want to do I suppose and really own up to it; then if you screw up, you have yourself to blame only. It sucks to have a long list of people that you despise because they misguided you and you’re bitter and it’s just no fun. It’s better to just say, “No I’m gonna do things my way and if I mess up then it’s my fault.”

Speaking of that, is “Synthesizers” a dig at the music industry?

It’s very light hearted. I can’t honestly say that I love synthesizer music but it’s kind of a little bit of a light hearted dig at how trends will come and go and right now one of those seems to be electronic music. It’s not that I don’t like it or can’t do it, I just think that a lot of people may end up regretting it if they do it. It might not be what they really ultimately want in life; therefore, it’s the same thing. You should just do what it is your heart tells you do to I guess. I think that’s just a little war cry for that.

Signing with Dangerbird, is that pretty recent?

It was. We did that just in the past few months actually. I already had the record done and didn’t know what I was going to do with it and so I ended up calling Jeff and saying, “Can I give you my record to listen to and see what you think of it. ”I didn’t want to shop it. I almost didn’t want to be on a record label to be honest with you; I just wanted to do it myself. We had met through a thing he did for LA Weekly on the label talking about his son who had cancer and we just bonded through that. I ended up sending him the record before I let anybody else hear it and he said, “Man we love this and we want to put it out.”

They seem like a good fit for you.

Yeah they are. They are cool people. It happened organically. I’m not expecting the world at this point in my life and as much as I’ve done, I’m not in this to become some big huge rock star and get songs all over the radio. I’m just not holding them accountable for that.

In your producing role, do you get approached by a lot of projects that you turn down?

I tend to turn down most everything just because I don’t have a lot of time. I have a four-year old boy and I make my own records and tour and I don’t want to say yes to everything just to increase my chances of success. I don’t care as much about that as I used to.

So now you just produce projects that you are really inspired by?

Or just something that really seems interesting. You can’t be inspired by everything. There’s so little inspiration out there to draw from – not knocking it but labels sign a bunch of bad stuff sometimes so more than anything I just look for something interesting; maybe something I haven’t ever done before – If it’s going to be a little bit of a challenge, and a good one.

What’s the last project that you produced?

I just worked on this record for this girl. She’s in Australia and her name is Gin Wigmore and it’s really a fun, really cool record. I was really excited about that one just because I thought it would be an interesting thing to do. She had a quirky voice and wanted to do this sort of spaghetti western style record – not a pop artist at all. I do pop records sometimes, just because it’s lucrative, but mostly my heart is in doing things that are off the beaten path a little bit – the things that don’t sell and sadly most of the time don’t even come out on records or don’t ever get put out there that the world gets to see.

You are a songwriting machine and seem to be able to churn out material pretty quickly. Is it your vast life experiences that inspire you?

Well, when it’s a song for me I’m pretty precious about it so I don’t write a lot. I write more songs probably for other people than I do myself. When I do write songs for other people, it’s not coming from my own perspective. I’m pretty critical of my own perspective so those songs are fewer and far between but yeah I try to at least make sure that they all reflect some sort of identity or a situation that I’ve been through or maybe will go through. I’ve been more nostalgic lately on records and I think that’s just me getting old. I used to be more into fiction and now everything seems to be about some reflection.

Words and interview by Nicole Pajer. Photos by Catie Laffoon.