‘F*ck It, Let’s Do A Tour’: Letlive. Are Back With The ‘Care & Compassion’ The World Needs

Jason Aalon Butler is having some revelatory feelings when he pulls his car over for a chat.

The letlive. frontman is bubbling with positive energy (“y’all are about to get a really enlightened version of Jason Aalon Butler today!”) – unsurprising if you’ve actively followed the band’s career or attended their incendiary live shows.

In February, the American soul-punk outfit announced that they’d officially put an end to their eight-year hiatus and would hit the road again this year to say a proper farewell to their devoted fans.

Since their formation in 2002, letlive. have released four albums: Speak Like You Talk (2005), Fake History (2010), The Blackest Beautiful (2013), and 2016’s If I’m The Devil. After fifteen years, the band broke up in 2017, and Butler became a member of the band Fever 333.

However, last year, he indicated that he’d like to get the band back together and end things on better terms. End things on better terms they will: from June to November 2025, letlive. will tour across the US, Europe, the UK, and Australia on their sincerely yours tour.

In 2025, letlive. comprises founding members Butler and guitarists Jeff Sahyoun and Jean Nascimento. For the tour, they’ll be joined by Point North drummer Sage Webber and Issues bassist Skyler Acord. The band will head to Australia in September.

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Actually coming around to the band’s shock reunion was something that surprised all of letlive.’s band members, but it arrived as Butler was experiencing a months (or years) long period of emotional, spiritual, and intellectual exploration.

“It’s been a lot of ebb and flow, a lot of volatility,” he admits. He’s currently experiencing quite an important breakthrough: “In the last 20 minutes, I’ve been hit with this idea of surrender and trusting in my ability to forge a path that is fruitful for myself, and I don’t just mean financially or materially, but spiritually.”

What’s wild about his idea of surrender, though, is that nothing makes sense at the present moment in time. But for the first time in his life, Butler is okay with that. Comparing his 38-year-old self to where he once was, he tells, “Old me would be feeling a sense of anxiety or need for control, to control the outcome so that I don’t get hurt or have perceived damage.

“I think now I’m able to put trust in knowing that whatever the best possible outcome is, is the only possible outcome. I have to be able to frame my mind and perception in that way. So, that’s what I’m doing amidst some chaos [laughs].”

letlive.’s reunion partly stems from Butler’s moments of revelation, and the more he digs into them, the more he realises that maybe those existential ruminations have been with him for his whole life.

Butler ponders, “I’m a grown man with all these new responsibilities and life experiences. And I realised that who I was, especially in letlive., was someone who was having a very, very, very difficult time articulating to himself his issues, you know, really talking to myself.

“I was able to talk to y’all [fans] about it, I could write it, I could perform it, and I could believe that that was enough. But speaking and dealing with myself in these issues has been proven to be quite the feat for going almost 40 years.”

In years since letlive.’s 2017 disbandment, Butler has continuously performed with Fever 333, founded the clothing line Gentlemen In Real Life (or G.I.R.L.), and the not-for-profit independent record label, 333 Wreckords Crew.

Happenings in his personal life have had an even larger significant impact on his outlook on life. Butler married New Zealand musician Gin Wigmore in 2014, and in 2017, they welcomed their first son, Pascal. In 2020, they welcomed their second son, Izaiah. The family recently moved to New Zealand, a life change Butler aptly describes as a “culture shock” while in Los Angeles for some press.

“Being married to [Gin] and living in New Zealand, I see that this Australasian oceanic energy is something that I just am so drawn to,” Butler shares. “It’s absolutely a culture shock, but I appreciate it. I appreciate being—I’m not going to say forced, but encouraged—to slow down [and] opportunities to be more present.

“There’s much more socialisation of civic accessibility, to health care and to opportunities and to education. I love that for my children. There’s just an energy that I really do appreciate in that region of the world, and I’m just so happy to be able to bring my art to it.”

His children are excited to see their dad performing on stage, too. “Yeah, it’s pretty cool! They’re so cute. They made these… their grandma is quite into the arts, so she’s got a kiln, and they do clay, heat it up, and they can create ceramics. And they made me letlive. and Fever plaques—you know, letlive. 2025—just so beautiful.

“My seven-year-old has seen me before, but my five-year-old, he was born literally the day Los Angeles went into lockdown. He’s a COVID baby; he’s a living manifestation of COVID-19, like, the length of time. He never got to see me like that, so I’m really excited to make that happen.”

Butler, Sahyoun, and Nascimento got together last year, just checking in and catching up with each other. In doing so, Butler recalls how he and his bandmates “exhibited a type of care and compassion for each other” that they might have forgotten.

That care led to the “inevitable nostalgia” of the past, “talking about the world and how we thought that what letlive. was, and we believe still is, may actually be beneficial for a lot of people with the current state of the world,” he says.

The trio dug into conversations of the collective consciousness and class consciousness before settling on a spontaneous decision: “Fuck it, let’s play a show.” Then, “Fuck it, let’s do a tour.” Those decisions stemmed from something beautiful: friends checking in on one another. “That’s a pretty genuine, organic place to decide to go on tour again after eight years.”

When the trio first reunited, Butler was honest and discussed the existential happening he was facing in his life. He remembers telling them, “I don’t know what anything means right now and what anything is worth outside of what I can experience in this moment. I came to them with that mindset and that energy, and they were so respectful of it. They even joined me for some meditation classes and groups that I was doing!

“They were so open to where I was, and with that, eventually, I was like, ‘Maybe we [should] do a show,’ and then we’re like, ‘Oh, we’ll do a few shows in these areas in America.’ And then we’re like, ‘What about the UK?’ And we loved Australia, and what about you [fans]? It just evolved because we evolved. We were able to get more comfortable with each other over a really short amount of time, and we were like, ‘We could handle this.’ So, we’re doing it.”

Up until their 2017 hiatus, letlive. were frequent visitors to Australia, playing Down Under in 2012, 2013, and 2014, and a huge tour in 2017. The band performed at the Soundwave and UNIFY music festivals, representing their brand of soul-inflected punk rock music and feeling their dreams come true on the other side of the globe.

“Soundwave was like living in a dream,” Butler shares. “It was like actually living in a dream being in Australia, which I’d never been to, and it became one of my favourite places on Earth so quickly. It was surreal just existing as a musician, as an artist who was able to be in Australia, and people caring, like, that was crazy!

“I’ll never forget my first stepping off the minibus that took us from the airport to our hotel, and being around Tom DeLonge [blink-182] and Anthony Green [Circa Survive, Saosin], just these people that I’m like, ‘Whoa! Like, I’m in this community too, in some regard, with these people on this festival.’ It felt so fantastical.

“And then there’s something really special about that UNIFY festival that we played. I remember speaking on the mic in between songs, and it just felt like I was talking to my friends. But friends that were quite radical and emotionally available to have those conversations. I just remember that festival being really beautiful. I also remember getting inside of a trashcan on top of the crowd at that festival [laughs]. So, yeah, many, many beautiful and quite significant, indelible moments in my mind, like, moments I’ll never forget.”

If letlive. hitting the road again doesn’t feel real yet for the fans, then rest assured: Butler feels the same, and he’s not sure how it’s going to feel on stage performing letlive. songs again.

“[It doesn’t feel real] Not yet! I’m still curious as to how I’m going to experience all of this and how it’s gonna turn out for me,” he admits. “Again, one big realisation I had over the last year regarding my relationship with letlive., is who I was in that project, who I am now, and the level of vulnerability I’ve been able to achieve recently while trying to do this work and do some healing.

“I'm sure it’s going to lend itself to the traditional idea of letlive. in an emotive sense, but I also want to make sure that I’m able to step back on stage and perform these songs and immerse myself in these feelings in a healthy way, so that I can be more exemplary rather than a display, right? I’d rather be an example and demonstrative of a healthy sort of exploration of feelings, rather than the spectacle or display of a man unravelling.”

Butler asks himself what letlive. fans have been wondering ever since that February reunion announcement: what does a letlive. show look like in 2025?

“That’s the question I’m asking too,” Butler remarks, but he has a very good answer: “I believe that letlive. inherently carried a spiritual aspect to it—however people choose to identify with spirituality, that’s not for me to navigate or encourage. I’m just saying the spiritual element overall was with letlive., and not only I, but the three of us: Jean, Jeff and myself, have had quite a rich spiritual exploration individually.”

He continues, “Coming together, we realised that we’ve been on a similar path with this level of understanding in the world and ourselves. I think that we’re going to be able to offer that same level of spiritual experience that we tried to promote and enhance with each letlive. show. I think we’re going to be able to do it in a way that is even more pointed, even more realised and understood now, because we understand it, and we’ve given in.

“We’ve surrendered to it, understanding that it’s a type of beauty that is within us but is also outside of us. It’s allowing for it to exist versus trying to control it all the time and have our signature on every single thing that happens and letting these things happen organically, if not cosmically. I think that’s what we’re going to be able to see and able to offer. That’s what I hope for.”

Letlive. will tour Australia this September. You can find tickets via The Phoenix.