The horse kept yawning. Not the polite, suppressed kind, but big, theatrical, full-jaw yawns, punctuated by the kind of funny faces that made both musicians break into laughter mid-song. That was the moment a spontaneous roadside plan involving John Butler, an Australian guitar legend, a stable somewhere in the French countryside, and a field full of cows confirmed it had been worth every bit of the scramble to pull it off.
For the creator behind Plumes, the day had been years in the making without quite knowing it. John Butler was one of the first live shows she ever attended, around age 10, and she credits him as one of the reasons she picked up a guitar at all. Finding herself on vacation in the same region where Butler happened to be playing a festival felt less like coincidence and more like the kind of thing you act on immediately. She did. A fifteen-minute drive from the festival to a stable, a quick check-in with a local who said yes to the cows on the side of the road, and suddenly the afternoon had a shape.
When a yawning horse becomes the best review you could hope for
The pair started at the stable, singing for the horses with the kind of loose, unhurried energy that only comes when two musicians stop thinking about an audience. Butler played, she sang alongside him, and the horses leaned in. One in particular could not hold still, drifting close to the performers again and again, which prompted a deadpan admission from Butler that he was not usually afraid for his head because, as he put it, ‘I have none.’ The hair joke landed. The horse did not care either way and kept coming back.
After the stable, the pair drove past a cow field where, earlier in the day, one cow had visibly been in the middle of giving birth. They stopped, asked the landowner for permission, and got it. Butler shifted into ‘Knocking on Heaven’s Door,’ trading lines back and forth with her, adjusting keys on the fly and trying out a new arrangement in real time. The cows gathered. Nobody was performing for a camera. The whole thing felt like an afternoon that happened to be recorded.
A show that capped a day nobody planned for
By evening, Butler had invited her to his festival set. She described it simply as ‘a great way to end the day,’ and the crowd at the show clearly agreed, the applause coming through long and warm at the end.
The horse that kept coming back
One horse at the stable stayed close through most of the performance, drifting toward the musicians and then away, then back again, ears moving.
She had visited the stable the day before just to check how the space looked, quietly confident the horses would respond. They did, though nobody predicted the yawning.
