Latest gRacKle News
Hot Love: State of the Recording
We've named our upcoming record, Hot Love. It will be a 12 song CD released in May, 2006. The hard part is over and half of the songs are mixed. The cover art is being designed by Oliver Gomez, and all eyes agree that it is beautiful and somewhat shocking. For now you can hear the tunes via the phone…[see Dial-a-Song below]
We're NOT from Austin
The San Antonio Express News ran an article on Friday, Jan 27 2006 about music in restaurants that featured a nice big photo of Joe Reyes but mistakenly cited Buttercup's hometown as Austin. Just to set the record straight: Buttercup is from San Antonio.
Dial-a-Song: Hot Love Preview
On Monday January 23 Buttercup will place the first of 12 songs from their upcoming album on Dial-a-Song. Each Monday will feature a new song, and the song will stay on the machine for one week. Simply put, you will call a phone number, get an answering machine and hear a song, all for free. Except for any tolls that may apply. And those tolls are always free if you call from work! The phone number to call is simple: PET-ABLE or 210.738.2253. We will go through all 12 songs from the album + 2 tracks that can only be heard on Dial-a-Song. So call us each week for the next fourteen weeks!
Video: Unlevel
We shot our video for the song "Unlevel" on January, 20th 2006 at Beethoven's Mannechor. The video was centered around a chess theme, and many of our friends were in the crowd either as opponents or as onlookers. We also had three experts from the San Antonio Chess Society on board, to keep it real. Buttercup wants to thank all of you who cleared out time to help us with this video. We began shooting at 8 AM and ended at 9 PM sharp…a full day of filming to get three minutes of material! The video was directed by Charlie Wan and Jacqueline Tieu. Chris Sauter was the art director. Cory Ryan will be doing post-production. Thank you Gordon for giving us free reign of the Mannechor and thank you Martin, Ernie, Selby, and Al for helping us with the chess. One day soon the video will be posted on our website for your viewing pleasure.
Recording
Well, our recording has taken much longer than we planned. Not unlike last year's work that we put in for Sick Yellow Flower, this project has become spread out over multiple sessions and many months. Now after much pruning and three solid days of turning Joe and Michelle's house into a recording studio we have what we feel is an interesting batch of songs. As we pounded drums full volume Michelle gracefully hid in her "hole," a reconditioned garage. We owe a great debt to her for making the space for us to work on this recording, which now amounts to 15 songs. These will probably get cut down a wee bit further to 12 or so. Originally this was to be our summer record but now we've added some winter to the mix: the songs Johnny Appleseed and Anti-Antartica. So the album progresses like that: growing into something stranger and hopefully more beautiful. We plan to release early 2006 because we still have quite a bit of mixing to do.
Ram Ayala and Doug Morgan
Ram Ayala, the proprietor of Tacoland, died on July 23, 2005. He was a great supporter of music in San Antonio, and his club was the best for live music in the city. He was a friend to the unfortunate, the kind, and the outcast. He built a practice space for Buttercup and our friends Los Mescaleros and Robot Boy. We spent many of our most creative hours there in that little well airconditioned practice room and had some of our finer moments on the stage on the other side of the garage. I relished those lazy evenings when we took breaks to share a beer and talk with Ram. His death tears a hole in the heart of San Antonio. He will be missed. Then to add to our loss, our dear friend Doug Morgan who also was shot that night with Ram, died after a protracted struggle in the hospital. He too, was a supporter of music and guru to many musicians in San Antonio.
Goodbye to The Church of The Friendly Ghost
It looks like things are changing for the Church of the Friendly Ghost. The church has greatly reduced its number of music shows, and so far it looks like Buttercup won't be playing there again. We have had a wonderful time playing at COFG and we thank Aaron and Nathan for their hospitality. There is no way we could have had such intimate performances and made so many new friends at your run of the mill rock club or bar. The Church has an unique warmth that, well you just had to be there.
The Wiggle Room Lives On
Wiggle is home, Wiggle is Love!
Sick Yellow Flower: Available Now
Sick
Yellow Flower is Buttercup's first full length recording. It is a moody record
of twelve original songs. Some of the songs are quite thick, including string
arrangements, horns, and lots of piano. The other half of the songs are virtually
live takes, the only overdubs being percussion and backup singing. Some feel
that the mix of the two is quite good. Jim Wilson did a fine job in mastering
the recording and has made it "shine" just a bit more. Anjali Gupta
created some beautiful artwork using Ramin Samandari's photos of flowers and
pictures of glaciers. Sick Yellow Flower is available at Hogwild
Records in San Antonio and Waterloo Records in Austin. Or you can buy it online
at the Buttercup store. Follow
this link for the lyrics and MP3s
from the record.
Buttercup @ SXSW
Buttercup performed an official showcase Wednesday, March 16th 2005 for the SXSW music conference. We were probably the only group serenading people on the street and playing our most rocking song with an ukulele. Check out this review in the Express-News to read more about our performance.
Thanks for checking in,
Buttercup