reckless mercy
Matt Butler writes songs as a form of witness
Words by Rob Dalton
When Matt Butler performs, people leave a little bit changed. "Every act of kindness is revolutionary," he says. (Photo: Kaelen Barowsky)
Matt Butler has a simple story to share, and he does it with a timeless charm—a dark-haired James Dean with a sweet streak, having kicked the sauce and survived the hairpin turn.
Butler is a singer-songwriter and creator of Reckless Son, a one-man show of music and monologues inspired by more than 100 performances in jails and prisons around the country.
"If you haven't been incarcerated, prison is an abstraction—a blurred thing," Butler says. "But these people all have parents and histories and stories. I wanted to create a voice for them by writing songs about that journey."
Butler talks with the searching intensity of a man still surprised by the assignment life handed him. When he plays his songs about addiction, poverty and forgiveness, tattooed men regularly weep without apology.
"Like you said, man, we're more alike than different," a prisoner said after hearing Butler play in Virginia. "It's little things in your songs that I feel like you're talking to me. There's something about them that makes me feel like you had me in mind when you wrote it."
"Play those songs!" another added. "Because even if you just touch one person, you're touching somebody. You touched me. It's a domino effect."
The sentiment echoes Butler's song, "Just One": There are so many who feel helpless, that there's too much to be done / But I know it makes all the difference—that revolution has begun if I can help just one.
After playing in New York punk bands in his early days, Butler blew up a record deal "by being incapacitated by alcohol and bad decisions," he remembers. "I was young and extra stupid—but lucky enough to survive until I'd had enough. And that was it; I didn't look back."
Butler wrote a song about his recovery that set him on the path he's still on today. "The song was 'Good Friday,' and it affected a lot of people," he says. One of those people was Greg Williams, who co-directed Generation Found, a 2016 documentary about high schools with student bodies composed entirely of kids recovering from addiction and mental illness.
"Greg heard my music and asked me to write a song for the movie," Butler says. That song, "Just One," is the final song on his album Reckless Son, which Spin magazine lauded as "doing something special for the American arts" after adding him to their album and artists of the year lists.
Butler describes "Just One" as a gift from the universe. "I wasn't living that philosophy," he says, "but I wanted to help people and that song just passed through me. Songs are like skins you shed that are the by-product of internal change."
As the movie premiered around the country, people would ask to have it screened at their schools and churches and community halls. "I would travel with the film and perform the song live as the credits rolled," Butler recalls. "I felt like I was helping people, genuinely inspiring people as an artist. It was incredible."
He went on to perform at galas, conferences and fundraisers for organizations that support mental health and addiction, including The Columbia Center for Justice, American Folk Art Museum and the National Alliance on Mental Illness.
While Butler was writing music for the film, he saw a video of a heroin-recovery program in Virginia. "These guys were singing in a jail cell," he says, "and it occurred to me—this is why I got into music. Whatever they were experiencing was far beyond entertainment."
The glimpse inspired Butler to ask around, and in short order he was invited to play for participants in an opiates program in Albany, New York. "I was scared," he recalls. "I was walking through the jail, all the heavy doors clanging open and shut. I felt like I was walking to my execution."
He played a song called "Home for Good" about his years running wild on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. The chorus was, "Lord knows I don't know why I don't do what I should, but I swear I mean it every time I say I'm coming home for good."
Butler finished the song, the prisoners applauded, and he asked if anyone could relate. "The setting was so intimate, it felt like a campfire," he remembers, "even though it was in this stark bunk room. It just seemed natural and appropriate to include them in the process."
He describes it as the most real thing he'd ever experienced. "When I left the jail I felt like—these people are tough, and they're crying and pouring their hearts out to me. But I began to realize this is a rare gift, and for whatever reason I was built for it."
Butler performing at Kenton County Detention Center in Kentucky in 2019. (Photo: Mario Diurno)
While many have described Butler's work in prisons as "activist," he rejects the title. "That word is loaded, attached to ideologies," he explains. "The only ideology I adhere to is compassion, treating people with dignity. You could say I'm an advocate for kindness."
Butler's solo show Reckless Son is the culmination of a journey that began in that Albany jail more than a decade ago and has landed him on PBS and NPR's Morning Edition. It also led to the Generation S.O.S. Correctional Community Initiative, a program he founded that gives incarcerated people a platform to share their life experiences.
"This is my community now," Butler says of Bainbridge Island, where he arrived last year after a lifetime in New York. "I want to participate. I want to get involved."
Since swapping coasts, Butler has played at the Colville Reservation tribal jail, for schools all over Kitsap County, at bars and wineries, and the Bainbridge Island Senior Community Center.
"I'm hoping people get that I'm here and want to be part of this amazing place," he says. "And in terms of my show, I want you to see yourself in these stories."
When Butler performs, he hopes people leave a little bit changed. "I'm not expecting everyone to walk out and start playing prisons, but everyone has something to offer—whether they know what it is yet. I want to inspire people to discover the gift they have to give the world."
"Every act of kindness is revolutionary," he says, evoking his song. "There are plenty of reasons to be bitter and cynical, but revolution in its literal sense means a turning, a flipping of the paradigm. There's reason to be joyful, too."
mattbutlersongs.com