Today we’d like to introduce you to Mud Butter.
Mud Butter resides in the pantheon of ground-breaking power duo bands! Imagine if the 1970s and the 1990s had a clandestine weekend in a music brothel, and from that passionate collaboration a band was born! That band’s name would be Mud Butter!
The music of Darryl Scheckel and Vince Votroubek realistically defies the music industry’s curse of microscopic categorization by covering a range of styles that manage to sound simultaneously retro and contemporary. The guys deliver their songs with passion and in such a way that the listener can consume and equally appreciate all of the elemental parts working together to share, and expose, experiences commonly found during a life worth living.
Mud Butter’s music and storytelling through video have been met with enormous popularity, with fans describing their experiences as thought provoking, mesmerizing and genius! Now it’s time for you to have your own musical experience!
Now, let’s rock!
Hello Mud Butter, we’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
Vince: I always liked to play drums as a child but never had a drum set. I would play air drums and occasionally was able to play on a real set here and there.
In the early ’90s, I finally bought my first drum set off a friend (Nate) and started jamming with my then-best friend’s little brother (Benj) who played guitar. We weren’t very good, but we thought we were at the time! We weren’t serious and didn’t get together much. This lasted a couple years.
One day, Nate told me he joined a band called Spit Baby. I asked if I could sit in on one of their practices, and he said yes.
When I sat in, I met other members of the band, who were Darryl (guitar), and his brother, Kirk S. (bass).
Around the same time, the band’s singer, Kirk R., left the band. I was welcomed to stand in as the singer. Not long after, I became the official singer.
In time, Nate left the band, and I became the drummer as well.
We enjoyed some success, which was nice, but we weren’t trying to make it big. We were just doing it for fun.
After two years or so, Darryl’s job transferred him to Columbus, Ohio. The distance between us made it hard to get together with any frequency.
Then Darryl moved to Florida, and we lost touch.
Over the next few years, playing music came and went.
In 2021, I reconnected with Darryl via the Internet. I told him I was in a band and how current technology makes recording music much better, and easier, than how we did it in the old days. This intrigued Darryl enough to give it go himself. After he got the hang of it, he thought it would be cool to create some new material. Even though I was playing in a band, I thought it would be fun and agreed.
We decided that we needed a new band name. We started out calling ourselves Litchfield, which was a nod to my place of residence. We soon learned that the name was already taken. So, we put our thinking caps back on.
We eventually came up with a couple strong possibilities: Mud Soul and Jam Butter. Then we decided to combine the two and call ourselves Mud Butter. Darryl’s wife liked that one best so we went with it!
After some trial and error, we established a process where we could leverage existing collaboration technology to record our individual parts at a distance and mix them for a final product. It may not be the best system in the world, but it’s working for us. Of course, there are tradeoffs, but until we figure out a more professional way to do things, we will continue using this process.
Again, the goal of this band is to just have fun and put out some songs (and videos) that others enjoy. To us, having somebody say, “Hey, man! I heard your song and watched the video on YouTube! I really thought they were cool” means more than some crazy dream of going on tour and becoming some famous mainstream band!
Darryl: Rock music has always been a part of life. My parents were hippies, so they had all the great records considered classics today. I still remember my dad building his own speakers in the living room and blasting Black Sabbath through them when he had finished!
The first time I became enamored with the guitar, I was about 12 years old and my cousin, Tom, who was four years older than me, had a garage band and his band played at a family picnic. I was blown away when they started playing Godzilla by Blue Oyster Cult.
A few years later, I heard the guitar riff and solo for Whole Lotta Love by Led Zeppelin, and I was floored! I desperately wanted a guitar!
I started trying to play guitar on a cheap electric Sears model that I borrowed from a friend. I was just mercilessly banging on it! I didn’t even know how to tune it!
I went into the Air Force after graduating from high school, and that’s when I bought my first real guitar, a Fender Squire. It wasn’t the top of the line but, in hindsight, it was a perfect choice for a beginner.
I never took a guitar lesson. I would just sit in my room for hours, my fingers sore and cramping, trying to play Babe I’m Gonna Leave You by Led Zeppelin. That is the first song I ever learned to play.
After I got out of the service, I moved back to Cleveland. I bought a TASCAM 4-Track Recorder, and Kirk R. and I started writing and recording original songs. Every now and then we’d take a stab at a cover song.
It was fun. We would pound beers and record songs. We called ourselves Vex! At some point, we made a cassette tape for friends and family.
When my brother, Kirk S., got out of the service and moved back to the area, I asked him if he wanted to start a band. He didn’t play any instruments but was eager to learn bass guitar.
Once we started practicing as a band, we changed the band name to Spit Baby, which was suggested by my brother.
We also had a change in the lineup. Kirk R. left Spit Baby after about a year to pursue his master’s degree at Ohio University. Like Vince said, this gave him an opportunity to sing with the band. Then Nate left, and Vince took over drums.
We played parties and bars just for fun! We didn’t have stars in our eyes. We were just guys doing what they enjoyed doing.
As Vince said, I moved to Columbus, Ohio, because of a job transfer, and then to Florida. The band just kind of faded away with time.
Being in a band never really crossed my mind after that.
I got married. My wife and I had a beautiful baby girl. And I focused on being a husband and a dad.
I guess about 20 years had passed, and I was feeling nostalgic, which fueled my efforts to find Vince. When I came up empty-handed, I asked my daughter to see if she could find him on Facebook. Unfortunately, she wasn’t able to find him, but we did find a longtime friend of his, Joe V., who also had a short stint in Spit Baby on rhythm guitar. Joe gave Vince my digits, and we reconnected.
We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
Vince: I would say it’s been relatively smooth, at least for me.
There’s really no pressure. There are no real deadlines to meet; no competition to be famous. Darryl does most of the recording and production on his end.
I suppose figuring out how to remotely record our parts now.
Also, because we can never practice playing (or writing) together, there can be times when some things need to be changed after the songs are recorded. These changes can’t always be made, so we work with what we have. If we were able to play together live, we would have been able to sort out many of these issues beforehand.
Darryl: I’ve been out of the recording side of music for 20 years, so there was a huge learning curve for me. I took a crash course in Ableton Live and VST Plug-ins. I’m still learning, but it is awesome! Beats a 4-Track Recorder any day!
Beyond the technical aspects, I think the biggest obstacle is finding our audience. There are so many more options today to get your music heard than just playing live shows, but finding and reaching that audience is much harder than playing live for an audience. When you play live, you get immediate feedback from the listeners. There is no magic bullet or secret formula for maneuvering social media. It’s a grind, and this business is unforgiving, I told Vince when we decided to release videos on YouTube, I may not make you famous, but I will make you immortal!
One more comment about using social media to reach our audience.
When we were strategizing about how to establish a presence that would draw people in and motivate them to keep coming back, we thought it would be a worthwhile endeavor to see how others like us are making social media work for them.
I think it’s safe to say there are more of us than we anticipated, and there’s a real sense of community among them. So, we began reaching out to bands like ours and posting their news on our Facebook page, and some of the select bands/artists do the same for us.
So, if anyone out there reading this article would like to reach out to us, please do! We’re going to share some contact info towards the end.
Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your work?
Vince: At heart, we’re a couple of guys who love rock & roll music, we love to listen to it; create it; play it; talk about it!
Darryl: Many of our earliest childhood memories revolve around music, and to talk today about making our own music and sharing it with whoever wants to listen is further support about its place in our lives.
Vince: I’m not sure we have a specialization or anything we’re known for, but I do feel proud about how we overcome perceived roadblocks to the creation and recording process.
Darryl: If anyone can learn from our experiences and find a way to do what makes them happy, that’d be an added bonus for me.
Risk-taking is a topic that people have widely differing views on – we’d love to hear your thoughts.
Vince: I am not much of a risk taker in the broader sense, but I suppose putting music on the web for all to hear (and possibly harshly criticized) is a risk of sorts. I have a very good job, and I would never jeopardize that security by chasing some crazy rock and roll dream! Heck, do kids nowadays even listen to rock anymore?
Darryl: I totally agree with Vince’s point of view on this topic. There’s a point in life where you have to stop chasing crazy dreams and fully invest in the things that contribute to your long-term goals for life. That is to say, you don’t have to totally abandon your dreams. What you have to do is strike an equilibrium between what you want to do and what you like to do.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://mudbutter.net
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mud_butter_band/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/mudbutterband
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCZ9lNbbyswZjhoUxP_6pIqg
- SoundCloud: https://soundcloud.com/mud-butter-836587079
