Matt Butler has visited more than 100 prisons and jails throughout the country, performing concerts for the incarcerated. His one-man show, “Reckless Son,” will bring those stories to audiences at the Lafon Performing Arts Center on Oct. 25 at 2 p.m. Tickets are $45.
This will be Butler’s first time performing in Louisiana.
Butler has never been incarcerated, a fact he makes sure to announce before he performs for incarcerated audiences. But he has written about his own experiences with addiction and mental health issues. He shared those songs with the incarcerated for the first time in 2016 when he visited Albany County Correctional Facility in New York. It was a powerful experience, he said.
“I kind of felt at that moment that I had never been listened to or seen or heard by an audience the way I had that day,” Butler said. “And I’d never felt such a sense of purposefulness.”
During his visits to prisons, Butler hears the stories of the incarcerated. Those stories inspire more songs. Butler said the biggest takeaway from his visits to prisons is that, at the end of the day, many of us want the same things.
“I met a lot of people who just wanted to get up, go to work, come home and take care of their children, have breakfast with their families on Saturday morning, like really basic things like that,” he said.
We tend to think of the incarcerated population as an abstract group of people, he said. But they are people who have their own stories and their own experiences. Butler sees himself in them – a reckless son.
“It’s humbling because I’ve realized that, if there were certain things that had been a little different in my own life, there’s no reason why that wouldn’t be me in the cell, wearing a uniform rather than with a guitar,” he said.
Even though he is now playing for public audiences, Butler still visits and performs at prisons.
“When I do the show for the incarcerated, it’s like I’m standing in front of them saying to them, ‘hi, I’m going to tell your story,’” Butler said. “It’s important to me that it speaks true.”
When he gets an applause, sees someone shed a tear, or hears someone laugh, it affirms that he can keep going.
“A prison can seem like a pretty rough place [to perform], but you get a lot of credit almost right from the beginning just by showing up,” Butler said. “There was a lot of gratitude.”
In “Reckless Son,” nine monologues, or stories, are followed by a song that tells the story.
“For the public shows, it’s like I am a transmitter,” Butler said. “I’m trying to bridge the world momentarily. I’m going to bring the stories from behind the walls out of the walls. There’s a real sense of responsibility to that. I’m wanting to handle the material with respect and sensitivity and honesty.”
The show is not setting out to teach a lesson or moralize, he said.
“I just want to hold up a window to something,” Butler said. “But I do think that art in general – when it’s working well – should sort of challenge the way people see certain things. It should expand viewpoints and ask people to be more open minded and flexible.”
You can find more information about Butler and his music at his website, https://mattbutlersongs.com.
