Good Will Butler Hunting: One Blind Man's Quest to Find a Member of Arcade Fire with the Same Name

Illustration by Alex Cook

Hi Noisey, you might remember me from a few years back. Does #SxBlindGuy ring a bell? No? Just close your eyes and imagine you’re an unknown, penniless, blind guy wandering the streets of South by Southwest—that was me, a youngin’, when I dove headlong and with very little usable vision into SXSW 2013.

I was back in Austin again this past week. But forget the gimmicks. I was covering the festival—doing “serious journalism”—but all along there was something strange and sinister looming in the background, nagging at me, a spectral reality that, for me, could mean both fame and failure.

It was Will Butler.

If you’re confused, don’t worry—most people are. It started as a small, funny annoyance: Will Butler of Arcade Fire, and I, happen to share the same name. To confuse the matter further, there’s Win Butler, the frontman of Arcade Fire. The brothers, with nearly identical names, are confusing enough; throw me in there and it’s an SEO nightmare. But haha, no big deal, right?

Over the last several years, though, our lives started to overlap.

Continued below.

The first time it happened was as an intern at NPR, when we had the brothers on for a livechat. It was my job to moderate the chat room, which needless to say confused the hell out of everybody. But I was just a lowly intern, without my own microphone, and Win and Will were on the other side of the country. I wanted to yell out at them, share the humor of the situation, but they were a world a way and an echelon above. As funny as it was, I had to let it go.

But as the Arcade Fire’s star continued to rise, and their great mighty rays of superstardom spread out across the web, so did the fracturing of my very identity. My Twitter account flooded with confused fans. Perplexing emails poured in from friends and acquaintances who, with both of us in their address books, were starting to email the wrong Will Butler. Once I got an email from Little Scream, inviting me to her birthday party. But didn’t she know full well that I didn’t live in Montreal? Were we even on that level? But maybe we really hit it off? Maybe she meant to invite me, on the off chance that i was in town? No, of course not.

Time passed. I worked as a music critic. I would review albums and imagine indignant Arcade Fire haters scoffing at Butler’s ignorant opinions (my own). Then, about a year ago, Will Butler went solo, stepping out from Arcade Fire with his own material, and his own name! That’s when I knew everything was going to get intense. Would I have to give in? Add clarifying clauses to all my online profiles? Go to the courthouse and just change my name altogether? Unlike him, i couldn’t even go by William; it literally just says “Will’ on my birth certificate. Even if I admitted defeat, what would that look like? Was it possible that I was simply the lesser of two Butlers?

The thing is—the thing I kept telling myself—is that all you have to do was a quick Google search, even the most lazy of a Google, and you’ll realize we aren’t the same person. Surely no one of any import, any status, any real significance, could ever confuse us in any meaningful way, surely not—the New York Times?!

Let me explain why, I think, this happened. Butler released an album this month (more on that in a bit), on Merge Records, and as such, headlined many of the most high-profile showcases at SXSW this year: namely SPIN, Pitchfork, and Pop Montreal, in addition to a set of official SXSW panels and Q&A’s at the Convention Center—in a PR sense, a real full-court press.

Meanwhile Krugman, as it turns out, was invited by the Butlers to come add a little gravitas to the discussion, though admittedly, Krugman admitted to not having any foreknowledge about the state of the music industry. Either way, in advance of his debut at SXSW Music, Krugman decided to give Butler a little dap on the NYT blog—a little pre-promotion. He read my article on The New Republic, and, I don’t know, maybe he didn’t get to the part at the end that says “Will Butler is a writer from California”? [Ed. note: He must have finally read the entire article, as there is now a noted correction.] It’s OK, I still love your quirky econ videos, Paul. The real OG stuff from when Jim Lehrer was still hosting PBS Newshour.

Anyway, I was distraught (not really) but kept soldiering on. If at first, finding Will Butler was simply a flight of fancy, it had morphed, taken shape into a very serious, special ops-level mission. If I had to ride into the showcase, yelling his name with my very last breath, like Slim Pickins in Dr. Strangelove, so be it. Granted, my Google calendar had started to look like I was a little bit, hmm, crazy?

Knowing that SXSW can be stressful, I wanted to let Butler get acclimated, I wanted to meet him in the best of circumstances; really give him a shot to be a decent, honest human being. I also wanted to catch him when he was with Krugman, so I waited until Thursday morning to make my entrance into the life of this man who likely shares little to nothing with me except the exact same #brand.

12:30PM MODERATING: The Celebrity Economy in Music @NYTimeskrugman @arcadefire (Win & Will) @tatiana & Nicky Berger http://t.co/FHKpTA8ssO

— Rembert Browne (@rembert) March 19, 2015

The panel was called “The Celebrity Economy in Music,” featuring not only the Butler brothers, Paul Krugman, and music manager Nicky Berger, but also the Grantland writer Rembert Browne, as well as Nielsen’s VP #Branded Entertainment Music Tatiana Simonian who, despite having the least name recognition and most meaningless title at the table was, by a huge stretch, the only one making any sense. The panelists, all good-natured, polite and well-meaning, were sitting before a packed conference hall of people waiting to hear something profound but who knows what. Thank god for Simonian though, who, in perfect form, reminded us all that despite our hangovers, it was still entirely possible to make intelligent comments about the state of the music industry.

I crept in late with my good friend Chris Catalena, a musician from Bryan, Texas and heir to the Catalena Hatters, meaning, he always wears a cowboy hat, even indoors. That’s how Texas he is. Towards the end of the panel, he leaned over to me and suggested, in his sweet Southern drawl, “you wanna ask ‘em a question?” He read my mind. As a line started to form behind the microphone for Q&A, I knew the time was right. I was going to call out the Butlers, Krugman, and anyone else who might challenge my namesake, before an audience of hundreds, in a room full of journalists and media moguls alike. I was going to get involved.

The questions ahead of me were bullshit. One guy ridiculously, shamelessly pitched his startup instead of asking a question, to which the Butlers painfully shrugged off and Rembert Browne hilariously went “BOOM!” to dissipate the awkward silence. Then it was my turn.

But NO! It was 1:30 PM, folks. Sorry. Browne announced, “We’re going to have to cut it off there. Thanks everyone.”

I stood, stuck, in the aisle of room 18ABC, devastated as the rest of the crowd poured outside. I wandered toward the stage, in a daze, but the panelists had immediately ducked into a secret passageway behind the stage, just as i had seen Lil’ Wayne do the year before. They were all gone.

Well, Krugman was gone. But Butler—I still had his schedule memorized.

I decided to follow, with Chris, to the next venue. As we walked, I started to question not only my commitment to this absurd, lightweight-stalking, but my deepest, darkest motivations for pursuing it in the first place.

South by Southwest is about two things: you’re either promoting yourself or trying to meet or at least see people who are bigger than you. If you’re not doing one, you’re trying to do the other. If you’re not doing either, than odds are you are one of those people who leaves SXSW feeling empty—full of fried food, grimy stories and some new afflictions, perhaps—but somehow unfulfilled. To borrow a term Win used on the panel, it’s a “cesspool,” with lifeforms of every size, the biggest fish down to the smallest, and if you’re not eating than you’re being eaten. What did this have to do with Will Butler, though? Could it be that, by both sharing my name and being a celebrity musician, he fulfilled both of these SXSW fantasies—that he was both of me and above me—and that meeting him would sate not only my selfish desire to promote myself, but also check off the box for that more insidious, starfucking motivation at the same time?

I might be chasing the ultimate narcissism. The realization was almost sickening.

We had to soldier on, though. I had already dragged Chris through the cesspool, and I couldn’t let my own disgust stand in the way now. I had to complete this mission, if only for Chris’s own gleeful enjoyment of this proposed convergence. Besides, who knew what could happen? Maybe they’d call security on me, or maybe we’d just have a flat-out Butler brawl? I had to at least know that I’d received recognition from my linguistic doppleganger, and unless I kept showing up, he wasn’t going to give it to me. Like a true Texan, I had to come and take it.

When we arrived at the Mohawk, Will Butler was about to play. It was the 2:30 PM slot at the Pitchfork showcase—not as crowded as in years past, but still one of the festival’s prime spots. The sun was hot and unpleasant, but we still pushed our way forward in the outdoor venue, to the side stage area, to get as close to the artists as we could. Finally Will walked out of the back, getting ready to step on stage. We were so close.

Halfway through the set, Chris tapped me on the shoulder. His Texas accent is perhaps the most endearing I’ve heard, and he said, real slow and quiet, like Elmer Fudd, “I think his brother’s standing right next to you, man.” Just like we’d practiced, I handed him my phone to take photos and tried to look unruffled, nonchalant as I peered blindly to my left.

Sure enough, he was quite literally shoulder to shoulder with me. But the music was loud, blistering even. I couldn’t very gracefully just introduce myself, especially considering the lengths I’d gone to this week to track them down. Words couldn’t do the job. So I decided to go against my first impulse to say something, ignore my instincts as a visually impaired person, and send him a cool, nonverbal cue.

Holding my cane in the other hand, I reached over and tapped Win on the shoulder. He turned, tall and imposing in his fedora and sunglasses. I grabbed my badge, emblazoned with my name and dangling around my neck, and wordlessly held it up to his face. He squinted at it for a minute. Then he laughed. I extended my hand and, through the din, he shook it. We turned back to the stage, and enjoyed the rest of the show.

But the mission wasn’t complete. Towards the end of the show Win strolled away, and I knew I still had to catch Will, and I had to strike while the iron was hot.

Chris and I dipped out of the Mohawk and into the street, moving around the perimeter of the building to where we had seen our friends bands load in and out so many times. And there they were. Win saw us coming; i wasn’t sure if he’d shout with joy or rip off his jacket and throw up his dukes. This was the moment of truth. “Hey, Will!” he said, or something like it, “Look! It’s Will Butler!”

I don’t know what made me do this, but as I got within range, I held out my arms. Slowly, but gently, we fell into an embrace. I could feel the sweat from the show still coating Will’s back. I was surprised to find that, at maybe 6’3”, he was nearly as tall as me, too. Could it be that we were actually cut from the same cloth? Who was this long lost piece of me and what could we mean to one another?

On the sideline, Chris made small talk with Win, who, at maybe 6’5”, had played in the NBA celebrity all-star game not two weeks before. Chris picked him, deadpan: “When are you gonna quit yer day job and start playin’ for the Houston Rockets?”

I can’t really remember what was said; It was a bit of a blur. But niceties were exchanged. It seemed quite possible that Will Butler had not only not harbored ill-Will against me, but had no nefarious designs of any kind. We chatted for a few minutes, and bowed out gracefully. I was relieved to feel a low-grade but friendly catharsis wash over me.

Chris and I strolled across the freeway to Quickie Pickie and had sandwiches, iced tea, and Oreo cheesecake. All was well. For good measure, I sent Will a friendly text, to seal the deal and show him that I came to him with no harm, no foul, and nothing but peaceful vibes and maybe mutual self-promotion in my heart.

Maybe it was time to get out of Texas.

A good way to know if time's to leave SXSW is if you suddenly go blind but then are kinda into it

— Rembert Browne (@rembert) March 20, 2015

Couldn’t have said it better myself.

Will Butler is not that Will Butler. He's on Twitter.