Wild Butter(band)
Wild Butter Line-up
*Jerry Buckner - Keyboards, Autoharp, Vocals
*Rick Garen - Lead Vocals, Drums
*Steve Price - Bass, Vocals
*Jon Senne - Guitar, Vocals
Guests Musicians
*Mark Price - Guitar
*Jim Quinn - Guitar
*Bob Kalamasz - Guitar
Wild Butter was started in 1970 by drummer/lead singer Rick Garen and keyboard player Jerry Buckner. Garen had previously been in the Collection and recorded a demo called “Little Man”. Former Rogues member Jerry was impressed and got Eric Stevens, WIXY program director and manager of Damnation of Adam Blessing, interested as well.
Stevens took it to New York and after a week or two Buckner got a call saying the band had a LP recording deal with United Artists, only there was no band, yet, although UA didn’t know that. “Put a band together” was the request and Rick and Jerry talked to their Akron peers and found Jon Senne’ (guitar) and Steve Price (bass) willing to get on board,Wild Butter played a month or so before recording the LP at Cleveland Recording. “Little Man” was not done, but a whole LP was, including excellent songwriting contributions from everyone.
Considering the short time the band had to work up the songs, the high level of writing, musicianship, and vocals are amazing, and the LP is certainly a lost treasure of 1970 contemporary unpretentious melodic rock. The recordings included some guitar parts from Mark Price (Steve’s high school aged brother and future Tin Huey member), Jim Quinn and Bob Kalamasz (both from Damnation). The Senne’ penned “Roxanna (Thank You for Getting Me High) was chosen as a 45 track backed with “Terribly Blind”. The cover photos were taken in an Akron industrial area at Stevens’ suggestion. A few shots were taken before some hardhats objected to the ‘longhairs’ and chased them out! (Prairie Prince Minsky)
1 Album Self titled (Wild Butter) released 1970
Tracks
1. Roxanna (Thank You For Getting Me High) (Jon Senne) - 2:36
2. Terribly Blind (Jon Senne, Steve Price) - 3:28
3. From One Who Sang The Song (Jon Senne) - 2:36
4. Come Fly With Me (John Buckner) - 3:21
5. Oh Martha (Jon Senne, Steve Price) - 4:40
6. Never Comes The Day (Justin Hayward) - 4:39
7. And We Loved It (Jon Senne) - 3:32
8. I've Been Waiting For You (Neil Young) - 3:06
9. Tommy The Cat (R. Peters, Steve Price) - 1:51
10.New York Mining Disaster (1941) (Barry Gibb, Maurice Gibb, Robin Gibb) - 5:15