Anna Butterss on touring with Flea, and the ‘counter-cultural antidote’ of live music
When one of rock’s best-known bassists needs a bassist, who do they call? On his debut solo album Honora, Red Hot Chili Peppers co-founder Flea tapped Anna Butterss, the Adelaide-born musician making a deep impact in America’s modern jazz scene.
Anna Butterss had only been at Marryatville High School for a few weeks when a well-meaning teacher took the eighth grader aside. The eastern suburbs high school is famous for its music program, and a 12-year-old Butterss had arrived bearing flute.
“He was like, ‘Look, there are a bunch of flute players here, and you’re the youngest. Why don’t you pick up another instrument?’” Butterss recalls over two decades later.
They chose the less popular, and far more cumbersome upright bass – an instrument the teenager could barely hold or read the sheet music for.
“Once I held it like the first time, I really connected with it in a way that I hadn’t connected with anything else up to that point – and then I was just hooked.”
The teacher was onto something: Butterss got the call to join their first orchestra around a year later.
When InReview catches up with Butterss, the now-35-year-old is sitting in a Berlin hotel room about to embark on the European leg of a tour that must count as one of the most validating – and daunting – gigs in bassdom: providing low-end for one of modern rock’s most recognisable bassists, Red Hot Chili Peppers co-founder Flea.
Butterss and Flea first connected in 2021, when the Melbourne-born rock star was looking for a teacher of his own to share some jazz pointers during the pandemic downtime.
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“Luckily for me, I didn’t grow up listening to the Chili Peppers,” Butters says.
“So at least I wasn’t coming in with that kind of relationship with him – that’s a lot to be dealing with when you’re also trying to meet someone on the same level, so you can make music together.”
Butterss initially moved to the United States in 2012 after graduating from Adelaide University’s Elder Conservatorium. After two years spent completing their Masters in Indiana, a move to Los Angeles saw them fall in with the city’s jazz scene, playing three to four hour sets most nights of the week.
“I was immersed in music in a way that just isn’t possible in a small place,” Butters says of the leap from Adelaide to America.
Butterss soon connected with a group of musicians playing regular spots at venues like ETA – a small bar in LA’s Highland Park that became a mythologised epicentre for new, improvised jazz. While ETA was shuttered in 2023, Butterss continues to play with musicians like Tortoise guitarist Jeff Parker in a group dubbed the ETA IVtet.
“It’s a state for me that feels like the most natural way of communicating,” Butterss says of improvising onstage. “Much more intuitive to me than communicating with spoken or written language.
"When you’re improvising with someone, you’re getting to know a really deep and kind of vulnerable, personal part of them in this really intimate way."
“It’s something that’s so related to your relationship with everyone as a person, and I think that’s the really special thing about it; when you’re improvising with someone, you’re getting to know a really deep and kind of vulnerable, personal part of them in this really intimate way.”
Beyond LA’s jazz bars, Butterss has also spent years in the studio and on the road with high-profile acts like Phoebe Bridgers, Jason Isbell and Jenny Lewis – YouTube is peppered with clips of Butterss holding it down in the background of Tiny Desk concerts and late night television appearances (“The first tour I did was with Phoebe Bridgers was her first headlining tour, which was kind of crazy to think about now,” they say).
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But it’s the connections Butterss made on those smaller stages that led to being recruited to appear on Flea’s 2026 solo album Honora alongside Parker and their ETA IVtet.
“It was also helpful that he was coming in, really deliberately wanting our particular band, and really wanting everyone – being very explicit about how he wanted everyone’s voice to be heard on the record. It wasn’t just like, ‘I’m making a record and I’m going to tell you what to do’.”
Butterss performed double bass for much of the Honora sessions, while the Melbourne-born Flea jumped between bass and trumpet, and shared the microphone with guests including Nick Cave and Radiohead’s Thom Yorke.
“He really wanted input, creatively and artistically, from everyone. That made it a much more comfortable environment – to not have to be freaking out about ‘playing bass with Flea’.”
In addition to touring and recording as a session player, Butterss has also cut two solo albums – 2022’s Activities and 2024’s Mighty Vertebrate – while keeping busy with the increasingly acclaimed group SML alongside guitarist Gregory Uhlmann, saxophonist Josh Johnson, drummer Booker Stardrum, and electronic artist Jeremiah Chiu.
“I think we thought that it would be easier to get people interested in the music if we presented it as a band rather than each of our individual names,” Butterss says of the group. “Surprisingly, it really took off.”
Like the original ETA IVtet, the group’s live shows are entirely improvised – but carefully committed to tape.
“To make the records we mine through our catalogue of pretty much every show we’ve ever played; some of the tracks that make it onto the record are pretty much just straight cuts from the live show, and some of them are much more constructed.”
The group’s latest record, Spontaneous Music Live, lands on June 26, and consists of two long, unedited pieces recorded over a three-night residency in December 2025. It’s a gift for fans hooked on the live, communal experience Butterss likens to a “sacred spiritual experience” – particularly in an age of social media and AI.
“I see it as a real kind of counter-cultural antidote, to be in a physical space with a bunch of people, you know, with an extended concentration for 45 minutes straight,” Butterss reflects.
“It’s comforting to be in surrounded by people, so many nights of the week, who are all interested in that thing makes me have faith in humanity.”
SML’s new EP Spontaneous Music Live is out June 26. Listen to Butterss’ solo album Mighty Vertebrate is out now.
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