Kaitlin Butts’ breakthrough to a UK audience was at The Long Road Festival in 2024, where an Interstate stage band show, a fabulous acoustic set and a guest appearance with Lola Kirke placed her on the radar of music fans across the artificial gridlines of what makes country music in the eyes and ears of the listening audience.
Fast forward a couple of years, and following an invitation to play the Highways Festival in London, she’s been able to build a small tour around that anchor date to hopefully try and build upon that initial impact.
Looking at the stage, and confirmed later by Ms Butts herself, this is still a budget operation. There are no amps on stage for any of the instruments; everything is DI-ed, saving a fortune in backline hire. What is lacking in the accoutrements of amplification is made up for by the energy on stage, however.
Bang on time (sic) after a less than ten-minute turnaround from the support Meels (more of her later), Butts appears to a vibrant and almost glam rock take on the Cher/Nancy Sinatra classic Bang Bang, and that sets the tone for the set that follows. It’s a larger than life in your face stadium show in a Manchester club, which is either going to blow you away or blow you out; fortunately for Butts, the vast majority of the packed venue are in the former camp.
The pace is relentless; White River and Roadrunner race by before Butts starts to work the crowd with the humour and stagecraft that she’s a natural expert at. Come rest your head (On my pillow) is prefaced by Butts’ amusing tale of how Vince Gill came to sing on the song before an unprompted sing-along to How Lucky Am I. It’s a sure sign of fan commitment and investment when audiences sing along to songs of an act that’s not toured in their territory, and that was evident in spades throughout the show, with Butts becoming confident enough to let the audience take over lines and call-and-respond, much to her obvious delight.
Acknowledging the dark humour in her songs, following a semi-apologetic/not apologetic introduction to Blood, the band and Butts launched into a fiery version of In the Pines, which maintained the sinister gothic mood of The Triffids’ take on the song while layering savage guitar and cathartically howled vocals on top; an unexpected but very welcome highlight.
Wild Juanita’s Cactus Juice juxtaposed this and added some drinking-song levity before the gloriously received and delivered You Ain’t Gotta Die (to Be Dead to Me). The evening then ended with a triumvirate of covers – ending the set properly was Butts’ cover of Jimmy Eat World’s The Middle, which she introduced in a tongue-in-cheek manner as fulfilling her childhood ambition of having a wildly viral TikTok post before encore mass sing-alongs to Tulsa Time and Shania Twain’s Any Man of Mine.
Talking of covers, that would be one criticism of opening act Meels; four covers in a 35-minute set does a disservice to her own excellent songs. She’s not the first touring act who’s perhaps felt the need to overload a set with covers (Vincent Neil Emerson’s early UK shows did the same) in order to give the audience some recognisable musical touchstones, but Meels’ banjo and guitar old-timey, literate and clever songwriting stood very much up on their own. More of that, please!
Back to the main attraction, though: Kaitlin Butts on this tour is an act acting well above her current situation, squeezing stadium-friendly performances into places that you probably won’t be seeing her in next time she’s over.
This looks like the start of something seriously big.
All photos by and with permission of Nick Barber
View the full set of images here
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