Before Butter was Butter, it was simply two friends churning musical ideas as their clothes spun in the dryer. That was 2007, when Hermina Harold and Lisena Brown, two local musicians who had recently met, began getting together in the private din of a laundry room and softly spinning vocal harmonies and dreamy musical yarns.
“The two of us had both been singing backup before,” said Harold, whose past musical projects included roles in local bands Danny’s Dilemma and Travis Sehorn & the Pebble Light. “We started getting together because we were craving an outlet that was our own.”
“It was magical,” added Brown, herself a familiar face as a keyboardist and singer with bands including Wartime Blues and Pillar Saints. “Sparks flew.”
Those sparks ultimately fanned into the five-piece outfit that is Butter. Featuring Jesse Netzloff on lead guitar, Bethany Joyce on cello, Martin McCain on drums, and recent addition Burke Jam on bass (a replacement for founding bassist Maria Kendra), the band has solidified into one of Missoula’s vital voices in a burgeoning indie-folk scene that currently includes such bands as Wartime Blues, Stellarondo, Pterodactyl Plains, and several others.
“I think it’s a reflection of the strange kind of family that we all share here,” said Harold in reference to the local shift toward a mellower, more introspective idiom of music-making. “The need for simplicity in music comes in waves, and I feel like folk music gets down to the true emotions; it’s more real. I’m sure it will ebb and flow again.”
“It’s always the kind of music that’s moved me most,” noted Brown. “So it’s just nice to have found other people who share that.”
Though the band has yet to release an album, Butter has performed fairly regularly around the area over the past couple of years, and even toured the Midwest last summer with Wartime Blues. (“That was the best time ever,” Harold glows. “I could tour forever.”)
Now, the band is putting down stakes at the Top Hat for the month of January, where it will perform early shows every Thursday evening as this month’s Artist in Residence.
Musically, Butter spreads over a pleasingly broad smorgasbord of musical forms, with a generous dollop of what Harold aptly terms “dark folk.” Most of the songs play out at a brooding mid-tempo, frilled around by the sweet vocal harmonies of Brown and Harold and Netzloff’s aching guitar solos.
The band generally writes its original songs collaboratively, building around germs sprouted by Harold and Brown.
“When I write songs, I try to think about the magic that’s either in the world or that I want to be in the world,” said Brown.
“We write from dreams a lot,” added Harold, “which goes with the magical theme because I love the things that happen in dreams that are totally impossible. We get a lot of inspiration from…”
“We like to mix our journals,” Brown continued, as if demonstrating her point by finishing Harold’s. “So it’s a combination of all that.”
“And,” added Harold, “we’re not afraid to rap.”
Taken together, it all goes over easy; yet Harold said that as the band prepares to release its debut album early this year, it’s considering a change of name.
“We started out wanting a name that was wholesome and simple and creamy,” she said. “I don’t think we’re so creamy anymore. But I’m not sure exactly what we are instead.”
Butter appears every Thursday in January at the Top Hat. Shows begin at 6 p.m., admission is free, and children are welcome — with the exception of the performance on Jan. 13, which is part of an evening-long fundraiser for Watson Children’s Shelter. That show begins at 8 p.m. and is $5.
