After rising from the ashes of ’90s buzz band Evergreen and the scene surrounding legendary San Antonio venue Taco Land, Buttercup has surprised and delighted audiences for roughly 20 years.
The Alamo City-based quartet’s appeal isn’t just rooted in tuneful songcraft and impeccable musicianship but also in inspired art-rock antics and playful experimentation.
Buttercup brings all those elements to bear on Grand Marais, its latest album, which the band is celebrating with a Saturday, Nov. 18, show at Hermann Sons Ballroom, one of downtown’s coolest old buildings. In typical form, the group has promised to “utilize the entirety of the building to construct a moving, special night.”
Perhaps explaining the group’s longevity is an unpredictable and highly charged group chemistry. Vocalist and guitarist Erik Sanden is the extrovert storyteller, guitarist and Grammy-winner Joe Reyes shapes the chaos, while capital-letter averse bassist and longtime scene veteran odie is the group’s essential sparkplug, its heart and source of mischief.
“It’s such a good fit,” Reyes said. “It’s built on spontaneity, happy accidents, mishaps sometimes. A mic falls over during recording and I say … ‘That sounds better!'”
That kind of deconstructed performance pervades pretty much every aspect of Buttercup.
The group has long eschewed the standard bar-gig-once-a-month routine in favor of shows in unconventional venues, not to mention costumes, props and experiments, including conceptual pieces based on Socrates to fourth-wall busting onstage commentary.
The band’s 2016 performance-art extravaganza “Buttercup: A Musical Journey” moved between Charline McCombs Empire Theatre and the Majestic Theatre. Their opening act included local musicians — Garrett T. Capps in a wig and Chris Maddin on keys, among them — dressed up as Buttercup and covering one of their songs, only with no practice allowed beforehand. The evening ended with the entire crowd joining the band on the Majestic stage.
Playful experiments like those, along with the music, continue to endear Buttercup them to fans.
“The sense of a panoramic embrace of the city of San Antonio is key to the reciprocal champion-hug they have felt from their many fans,” visual artist and longtime fan Hills Snyder said of the band. “It’s an ever widening circle of love really: Sanden sparks something passionate in a stylishly casual way, Reyes and odie contribute a generosity of spirit — not even talking about their musical skills — that honestly makes the band a force for good in the world.”
Frontman Erik Sanden has a much simpler explanation of the band’s ethos.
“Whatever Foreigner is, we’re the opposite of that: not gross,” Sanden said, laughing. “Our whole career has been in opposition to that, that big, dumb rock. Not that I don’t enjoy it sometimes. We just want to do things that are memorable. That’s the hope.”
Evergreen start
Buttercup’s story began with the ’90s alt-rock outfit Evergreen, formed at Trinity University. Sanden, an English major, played rhythm guitar in the group, which parlayed ’70s-style rock – Les Pauls cranked through Marshall stacks — into a management deal and shows with music legends.
“Yes, I cut my teeth,” says Sanden of that time period. “Ground them down to nubs.”
Among Evergreen’s early breaks was a tour with Canadian treasures The Tragically Hip.
“I learned a lot,” Sanden said. “The singer, Gordon Downey, was really supportive. He watched us play the same seven songs every night, in the same order. I said, that’s what you do — you show up for your friends.”
Evergreen also opened for Fugazi and Blonde Redhead at The Showcase Special Event Center, a now-shuttered and cavernous West Avenue venue that Sanden describes as a “vomitorium.”
“We got spat on. The crowd hated us,” he added.
Infiltrated by Nazi skinheads, the show nearly devolved into riot.
“[Fugazi frontman] Ian MacKaye was pissed and was paying them to leave, weeding them out, giving them $5 apiece,” Sanden said. “At one point, he ran out of money so he borrowed $5 from me.”
Another memorable moment happened when Evergreen opened for what turned out to be one of Elliott Smith’s final shows.
“It was beautiful, so fragile,” Sanden said. “A thousand people just listening — pin-drop silent.”
Evergreen’s management also hooked them up with Austin blues-rock star and Bob Dylan sideman Ian Moore. Evergreen, and later Buttercup, ended up as Moore’s backing band at various times. Though the blues guitarist seems an unlikely matchup with the artsy rockers, Moore’s willingness to follow his muse made a deep impression.
“He took his career into the ditch because he did these psychedelic records — his fanbase just wanted the blues,” Sanden said. “I really like that he did that. Ian said, ‘The crowd may not always follow you into everything you do … but you have to do it.'”
Reyes jumps aboard
Bearing witness to Evergreen’s journey was famed San Antonio guitarist Joe Reyes, a musical whiz who’d already found musical success — and walked away from it.
Reyes had started playing guitar at age 7, and by his 20s, had moved through the musical ranks, playing every genre from metal to jazz. His jazz-rock trio Fine Line featured bassist Eric Revis, a future Branford Marsalis collaborator, and JJ Johnson, later to play with John Mayer and other luminaries. It was his instrumental guitar duo Lara and Reyes, however, that truly took off, landing a record deal, a Latin Grammy nomination and a flow of income. However, Reyes wasn’t impressed and walked away.
“It wasn’t satisfying,” he said. “I thought, ‘If this is what success is supposed to be, then I want something else.'”
As Reyes looked for that something else, he found inspiration in Sanden’s inspired recklessness.
“I heard Erik’s songs on a four-track and they were super creative. ‘That’s a trash can in there?’ ‘Yes,'” he recalled, laughing. “He brought all of that. He doesn’t care about being in tune. He had some other thing in mind.”
What Sanden had in mind was The Unables, his first post-Evergreen band. The group eschewed regimented rehearsals for spontaneous chaos.
“My art project,” Sanden said. “The Unables was everyone on instruments they weren’t proficient on, and a rotating cast of members. Also, I was singing for the first time.”
The Unables’ anything-goes approach allowed Sanden to access a new, performance art-driven approach. At some shows, he’d blow a referee’s whistle, signaling a change of musical lineup or the time to substitute in the “least drunk person.” For a time, The Unables featured Iggy Pop sideman Hunt Sayles, who’d relocated to the Alamo City.
“It was madness. We were playing Tycoon Flats to one little old lady,” Sanden said. “Hunt was treating it like an arena show. ‘Can I hear you in the back fucking row?’ he would yell. And doing David Lee Roth high kicks. Amazing.”
Around then, Sanden also created Dial-a-Song. He recorded a new song every week to his landline answering machine and gave out the number on stickers and flyers.
Such unconventional approaches left by-the-book Joe Reyes wanting to collaborate.
“It was so unlike me, who’s been trained to put everything in the right place and clean stuff up,” Reyes said. “So, I basically stalked him.”
Sanden initially rebuffed Reyes’ advances, thinking such a skilled musician would ruin the spontaneous approach. Eventually, though, Sanden challenged the guitarist “aesthetic pool,” wherein the winner was determined not by clicking the billiard balls into the pockets but who could come up with the most creative or interesting shot.
“He blew me away,” Sanden said. “He crawled under the table, blew on the balls until they went in the hole, grabbed the cue ball and threw it across Taco Land into a trashcan and broke all these beer bottles. He was in.”
Making records
Not only was the now-shuttered underground rock bar Taco Land the site of Sanden and Reyes, joining forces, it was a musical center of gravity at the time — the CBGB of South Texas.
“It was the scene,” Sanden said. “It was the freak show. You never knew what you’d see there. The rule at Taco Land was you called and just booked it. ‘Do I need to send a demo?’ you’d ask. ‘Fuck no, you pussy,’ [late owner] Ram [Ayala] would say. And you’ll be playing with the Nipple 5 or some other insane band.”
Buttercup spent its first few years rehearsing at Taco Land, where they rented a side room from Ayala. The venue also provided the band with its name.
“The name Buttercup was a direct challenge to the most aggressive faction of the Tacoland crowd,” Sanden said. “It was throwing down the gauntlet, saying we’re not gonna be a masculine biker band. We’re gonna be soft if we wanna be soft.”
With the right elements Buttercup began to click, especially once it gained the odie factor.
“odie is crucial to Buttercup,” Sanden said. “He provides our sartorial sense. He’s our best dressed member, wickedly creative and full of innovative, even weird, ideas. He brings a child-like quality to the band that’s really special. I mean that in the best way. I love him. His big heart. There’s no one like him.”
Working with producers Mark Rubinstein and Salim Nurallah, the band began cranking out album after album on a remarkable run — 2005’s Sick Yellow Flower, 2006’s Hot Love, 2007’s Captains of Industry and 2008’s The Weather Here.
However, a family illness, coupled with the loss of original drummer Jamie Roadman altered their trajectory. Sanden watched as his father slowly succumbed in a fight against cancer. His grief resulted in a newfound Morrissey obsession.
“There’s instructions in the San Antonio Manual that you’re going to have to like Morrissey and heavy metal and country and the Spurs,” Sanden said. “If you stay here long enough, you will do that.”
That dark period also resulted in a new, mellower project — Demitasse. The word itself is French for “half cup” — a sly play on the Buttercup name. Playing as an acoustic duo, Sanden and Reyes entered a new phase.
Eventually, the pair brought odie back into the fold, and, for a time, Buttercup transformed into Grand Marais. The new iteration wore all black, had no stage banter and used a white board to write provocative messages to the crowd. Sometimes the messages mocked the group, and sometimes they deepened the experience, but they always remained playful.
Grand Marais recorded an album’s worth of songs featuring only acoustic guitar, electric bass and voice, but it didn’t feel right. Sanden described it as both “too harsh” and “too intense.”
“I had such a terrible allergy, I was on steroids,” Sanden said. “I was doing pushups between takes. It’s an acoustic record, but I’m belting, like I’m in an arena. I didn’t get roid rage … I got roid happy. It’s like Demitasse … on steroids … literally.”
In the end, Buttercup shelved the album, regrouped under its old name, and recorded the Battle of Flowers album with the Navaira brothers, the sons of Tejano legend Emilio Navaira and the leaders of San Antonio rock outfit Ready Revolution.
The album encapsulated Buttercup’s sound and aesthetic — an art project streaked with personal mythology soundtracked by catchy melodic indie-rock. It also sparked several years of performing with a variety of drummers, including erstwhile San Antonian and avant-garde critical darling Claire Rousay.
After Rousay departed for Los Angeles, Buttercup was once again sans drummer, and the shelved Grand Marais album felt relevant again, bringing the story back around to the Saturday. Nov. 18 release show.
The new Buttercup album is actually the one shelved eight years ago. Despite the passage of time, the music has lost none of its potency or raw strength — and it’s easy to understand why Sanden once felt to be too harrowing. If anything, the recent struggles of the pandemic make its intensity all the more relevant.
The album marked a new phase for the band, unrevealed until now — a moment where the specific and personal catalogued in Sanden’s lyrics become a portal to the universal.
“And that’s what I’m trying to do,” he said. “But it scares me. I write about my webbed toes and shit. Yes, I have webbed toes.”
Makes sense. All along, an embrace of imperfection has animated Buttercup’s journey.
“Imperfection is where the beauty is,” Sanden said. “We’re pugilists fighting through this perfectly airbrushed, perfectly tuned landscape.”
$13, 8 p.m. Saturday, Nov. 18, Hermann Sons Ballroom, 525 S. St. Mary’s St, (210) 226-5432, sahermannsons.com.
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This article appears in Nov 15-28, 2023.