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Robyn and Tim Butler at home on the back porch of their home in Liberty. (Todd Kleffman photo) |
LIBERTY — When The Psychedelic Furs play Buster’s Billiards & Backroom in Lexington next Sunday, it will be a homecoming for Tim Butler.
Which is a pretty remarkable thing to say, considering Butler grew up in England and spent the 1980s touring the world as co-founder and bass player for the Furs, a band that parlayed its punk beginnings in London into a string of international radio hits and gold records. “Pretty in Pink,” “Love My Way,” and “The Ghost in You” to name a few.
But Butler has called Liberty home for four years now. He shares a modest house with his wife, Robyn, and her two children a block off the courthouse square. He keeps a small garden out back and a cluttered studio in a tiny room upstairs. He’s especially proud of the deck he built off of the back door.
“I did it all myself,” he brags.
During his time in Casey County, he has never once been approached by a local for an autograph or asked to share any rock ‘n’ roll glory stories. Butler is not sure if that’s because nobody knows his history or is unimpressed if they do, or they’re simply decent enough folks to not intrude on his personal life. Either way, it suits him fine.
“It would be hell if people were lining up outside the door all the time. You get that on the road,” he says. “When you get home, you want it to be peaceful and normal.”
So, how did a guy with such rock bonafides wind up living in anonymity in such an out-of-the-way place as Casey County? The simple answer is: love, abetted by the Internet.
“I didn’t come here for Liberty,” Butler says. “I came here for Robyn.”
Robyn Wesley became a Furs fan in high school and remained in the fold into adulthood, through a marriage, the birth of her kids and her career as a bookkeeper at Casey County Bank, where she has worked 14 years.
She saw the band for the first time in Cincinnati in 2001, when it regrouped after a 10-year hiatus, and then again in Atlanta in 2006, each time waiting around to meet the band and get autographs. After the Atlanta show, Tim put Robyn on the guest list for the next show in Nashville. She was a certified groupie at that point, without the hanky panky.
“It was strictly a casual fan-star relationship. He was married. I was married,” Robyn explains. “I thought it'd be cool to have a personal back-and-forth relationship with someone I was a fan of.”
When their respective marriages crumbled, things began in earnest as 2007 dawned when Robyn posted a New Year’s greeting to the band’s myspace page. She kind of remembers the moment.
"Then on Jan. 4 at 4:45 in the afternoon, there was a message from Tim, and we haven’t shut up since,” she says.
Butler recalls their first chat on the phone. “The conversation lasted two minutes. We were both so nervous, we commented on each other’s accents and that was it.”
When Butler invited Robyn to visit him in New Jersey, her family insisted he buy a Web cam to verify that he was, in fact, Tim Butler of the Psychedelic Furs and not some Internet poseur with bad intentions. He was. Robyn went. It was on.
They were married in June 2008 at tiny Willow Springs Methodist Church in outback Casey County. It was not a glitzy affair.
“I just wanted to say ‘I do’ and get out of there,” Robyn recalls. “If it wasn't for the kids, we would have run off to Tennessee.”
Honeymooning in Spain, where the Furs were touring, made for a nice wedding present.
It wasn’t difficult to persuade Butler to make the move to Liberty. For one, “Jersey is a terrible place,” he says, and Casey County is not unlike the English countryside where he grew up, where the closest town of any size, Gilford, is on par with Danville.
“It's not like I want to go out and party anymore,” Butler declares. “I'm 53. I want to settle down to a nice little existence.”
