#23: River Butcher: Skaletons in his closet

The comedian goes deep on band names

River Butcher has a singular comedic voice, and on his excellent new album, Pull Yourself Up By Your Bootleg (Aspecialthing Records, out now), it has never sounded more honed. His delivery vacillates between deadpan and agitated, wringing absurdity from personal stories that comedically undersell big issues (like gender identity) and blow little things out of proportion (like lackluster gummy bears). While comics have followed a similar template since stand-up began, Butcher’s perspective twists it in new and interesting ways. But beyond all of that, Butcher is a music fan, and his many references to some of my personal favorites as well made them seem like a person who’d appreciate Band Name Bureau. As expected, he was totally game.

Band Name Bureau: You came up through punk, so I feel like your tolerance for what qualifies as a weird band name is higher than the average person’s. Do you think that’s accurate?

River Butcher: Yeah, I think that's absolutely accurate, and I feel like it's so accurate that I was going to tell you, “Oh, I didn't come up in that.” Because that is, to me, the ethos of it—or the perceived ethos of it—is that you can never be a part of it, even if you feel like you are. As soon as you said that, I was like, “No, I just listen to it,” [but] that’s it. You listen to it, or you don’t, which is to me so funny.

I really had to talk to my partner and talk it out to come up with some names, because I was just like, “Yeah, Happy Go Licky, totally good name. Totally good name for a band. Why wouldn't you call a band that?”

BNB: You had an album on Kill Rock Stars, and despite the label name, Kill Rock Stars doesn't have a bunch of freaky band names. I do feel, if you listened to punk and post-hardcore and all these things, you've encountered a lot of things that would throw other people off.

RB: I think so too. Kill Rock Stars is great, and I don't think any of the bands that are on Kill Rock Stars are super out there. But people definitely would be like, “What...?” because it's not, like, jukebox names. It's not like Elvis Costello. But to me to name a band like Elvis Costello's Belt Buckle would be like, "Yeah, that sounds like a normal band name.”

BNB: Before you got into punk, what kind of stuff were you listening to?

RB: The first live concert... I would call it a “concert,” because I feel like as soon as you start listening to punk, they are “shows,” and before that they’re “concerts.” And then once you started going to shows, you'd never go to a concert for the rest of your life.

BNB: That’s 100 percent true.

RB: The first concert that I ever went to was Amy Grant at Blossom Music Center. I think that's what it’s called. It's in Richfield, kind of around where the old Coliseum was for the Cleveland Cavaliers. It's early ’70s architecture, just this beautiful performance pavilion. I loved it. I had no idea she was a Christian singer, no idea. I just love the pop hooks of those singles off the Heart in Motion album.

The thing that got me really into punk was Green Day. It was Dookie coming out, and then going backward and listening to all their old stuff and just really absorbing it, just fully, deeply. That's what got me on that path, and then I got into Operation Ivy and then I was more on the pop-punk thing.

Being in Ohio, you found out about something right as it was about to get huge. Los Angeles, you kind of find out about something six months before it's going to be the thing everywhere else. But in Ohio, you would just hear it, and then the next month it would be on MTV, and you'd be like, "But I found it." That brings me to Reel Big Fish. That’s a hilarious band name.

BNB: That was my next question, because I know you were into ska. You have ska skeletons in your closet.

RB: I have a lot of skaletons in my closet. [Laughs.]

BNB: Oh my God, I can't believe I didn't think of that! Ska bands are notorious for having punny portmanteaus for their names. My favorite is the Ska-Skank Redemption.

RB: [Guffaws.] That's brilliant. I don't understand when people don't like puns. I make puns sometimes in my standup and people groan, and I'm like, “Don't you pretend that you hate it. You love it. You love it, and you will let yourself love it.” Ska-Skank Redemption, it hits ska on two parts, it gets two ska puns in one. That is honestly brilliant. Mephiskapheles can't touch that at all.

BNB: Reel Big Fish, that's just kind of a name. It feels very much of its era.

RB: For sure. That's also the thing about ska that I do still have a big place in my heart, is that it doesn't take itself too seriously. It takes itself seriously enough that it cares about things like racism and kindness and unity.

But I feel like there's basically three types of ska band names. There's the "This thing is funny," and you know it's going to be a ska band, like The Mighty Mighty Bosstones or Reel Big Fish. The three-word band names are like, "Oh, that's a ska band for sure." Then you have the pun, the Mephiskapheles, the Ska-Skank Redemption. Then you have just the band that's like, Skankin’ Pickle, where you are just like, "Oh yeah, that's a ska band.” There's no pun. It's just two words, and they’re saying, “We're a ska band. We play ska and you can skank to it.”

BNB: Do you remember the first time you noticed a band name, either good or bad?

RB: Maybe Stone Temple Pilots? Because that was a band that I was really into. Keep in mind I was a child when that was out, and now children are listening to that again, and it's very strange. Maybe this is the era when I was coming into my own of music. But I listened to a lot of music. My mom was really into music. She just listened to the radio a lot, but I listened to a lot of Genesis and Peter Gabriel and U2. She was into it. She saw David Bowie when she was a kid and saw all those bands when she was younger, and she worked at a record shop and stuff. I just had this experience of music and bands as a thing that we talked about. It was just so in the ether all the time; it's hard for me to pin it down.

The name Candlebox is also coming up for me a lot too, where I was just starting to understand, "Oh, that's a name that you pick." People come up with it or, like, the Cranberries or something like that, where you're like, "Oh, the people that are in this came up with it. People didn't call them that." Starting to understand that it's an internal mechanism as opposed to an external one is pretty funny to me.

BNB: Do you think it's better to have a name that sticks out or one that fades into the background?

RB: It fades into the background. I think I have to go with that because I think if your band name sticks out as being bad, that's a big hurdle to get over. I feel as an audience, nobody likes to be tricked.

I just watched Nomadland last night, and I've seen The Rider by Chloé Zhao. Something about her filmmaking, she immerses you in the subject, in the time, in the place, in this way that I feel like many people have been trying to do for a long time, but I just don't know that I've seen anybody else do it to the extent that she's been able to do it.

I say all that even though that movie has Frances McDormand in it. Anybody watching a movie at least knows that lady from somewhere, but they can go at least 30 minutes into that movie and forget for a second that that's Frances McDormand. I used to think that filmmaking was magical because it was a trick. Magic is an illusion and it's a trick, but it can also be an invitation. It can be an invitation into an experience, between the person that's practicing it and the person that's witnessing it. It doesn't have to be a trick, and it doesn't have to be about, "Oh, you're dumb and you fell for it." Which is what I used to think art in general was about, which speaks more about me than it does about anything else.

But I say all that to say that, at this point in my life, I don't like to be tricked. I want to experience what you're bringing. I don't want you to feel like you have to trick me. I love a good twist. I love a good illusion, but I'm just not going to go if your name is this big hurdle I got to get over. Seeing it on a page, I'm just going like, "I don't want to go to that." Anybody that's willing to call themselves something terrible. It's just, maybe not my cup of tea, and it might be for somebody else. But that's just kind of where I’m at with band names.

I think it's very important. A name is an important thing. It's the first thing that people experience of you. Whether you're just a person or an artist or a band or whatever. If you just wander into a show, which we will eventually do again, if you're into the band, you lean over to say to the person next to you and go, “Who are they?” Because you want to know and you want to remember. If your band is all about jokes and tricks and stuff, then yeah, go for it. But I probably won't be there.

BNB: Can you think of a name that just made you be like, "Nope"?

RB: I don't know that I've ever listened to this band because of the name: Skinny Puppy. That is the band name that I've heard a thousand times. I have no idea what they sound like. They could be my favorite band, but whatever it is about, just the visual of a skinny puppy, I was like, “No thank you.”

BNB: That's a really interesting name to elicit that reaction. Because while I totally get your point, it's not “Emaciated Puppy.” It’s Skinny Puppy,

RB: But I think my brain twisted it. It's like, “Feed that dog.”

BNB: Have you ever sought any bands out because of a name?

RB: I don't know that I have sought out bands just based on the name. I think I have a flat “no” to that, and maybe I'll make that part of my practice now. 

BNB: That's actually something else I wanted to ask you. What are your listening habits like these days?

RB: I was reading a zine that my friend sent me. He runs a record shop. I think it's literally the only record shop in Akron, Ohio, anymore. It's called Square Records. My friend Dave sent me the zine called Razorcake because there's a Guy Picciotto interview in it. I had this sort of Fugazi reunion in my own life. I made a playlist for my friend. We used to hate on Fugazi together, and then I got into Fugazi, and they were like, "No, I can't. This is where we leave each other in terms of music." They couldn't do it. Then recently they were like, "Oh yeah, I'd totally love it if you sent me that."

So I was trying to craft a playlist that, to me, was evocative of their thing and their evolution over time, and then also something that I thought they would enjoy. Ultimately, I don't think they listened to it at all. [Laughs.] But I got to go back through the whole thing. It was for me; it was not for that person because I was like, "They're probably never going to listen to it." But my experience of going back through it was pretty cool, going back to Instrument and being 38 years old, as opposed to 18 year old years old and seeing it completely differently. It was really cool, but I was flipping through that zine and just going, "Man, how in the hell did I find music?"

I just can't even remember. It's like trying to remember what it was like before even printing out maps. It's just like, “Oh, I called people, then they told me things and then I either listened to it or I didn't.” It was so simple. Now it's almost overwhelming in its ever-presence that I'm just like, "How do I find anything new now?” It almost feels the same as 1995. My partner is a musician, and so she is in musician circles. So I mostly discover new music through her friends and projects she's being maybe involved in and stuff like that. Then sort of growing out from there.

I do honestly, really appreciate the Spotify algorithm because it hasn't let me down. I'm just like, "Oh, thanks for presenting this to me," because I am still the kind of person that will hear something I like that I don't know and then listen to the album. That's mostly how I do it. I try to buy records as much as I possibly can, but I'm usually buying Linda Ronstadt and shit like that.

BNB: You said you wrote some names down. I'm curious what you have.

RB: This is my first experience of a band name being scandalous or people talking about the name of a band being problematic. It was incredibly local. It's just people talking about the bands they've seen and whatever in like Akron, but the band was from Cleveland, and the band was called This Moment in Black History.

BNB: Oh yeah, I remember them.

RB: Pretty decent band. I saw them open for some bands. I remember them ripping. But I just remember not even considering it, then people being like, "Yeah, it's a problem, because it's all white dudes and one Black guy." It was just the first moment where I was like, "Oh, sometimes you can call yourself something that might not be appropriate."

My partner suggested one, and I've never heard of this band. I looked them up, and literally every article that Google gave me was about how problematic it was. This band called Black Pussy that was all a bunch of white guys.

BNB: Did you find out what the story behind that name in those articles?

RB: No. I didn't.

BNB: I featured them in one of my Year In Band Names stories for The A.V. Club. Supposedly that was the original title of the Rolling Stones’ “Brown Sugar.”

RB: Oh God.

BNB: Just in case the subtext of “Brown Sugar” wasn't quite obvious enough.

RB: This goes back to what I was saying about tricks and stuff. This is one of my great hopes for the pandemic: Perhaps detached irony is dead, because I would love for that to go away. I used to think it was cool, and now I'm an older person. I'm just like, "It's just not cool, man. You're just literally saying things that the Rolling Stones realized they shouldn't say." “Brown Sugar” is already bad enough.

I don't want to be in on this joke that a bunch of white guys are having. In type, this is going to make me sound like I'm just a big stick in the mud, but it's like, "Just call your band something cool, man, like Electric Rockets or something” I know that sounds like a toddler coming up with a band name, but I'm all about it. I would much rather listen to Fraggle Rock than Black Pussy.

BNB: Do you think that names, even a name like Black Pussy, recede to where you don't notice them after a while? Because my go-to example for this has always been Ned's Atomic Dustbin, whom I loved way back in the day. But more germane to your interests, Screeching Weasel, which is a preposterous name. When I was growing up, Screeching Weasel was on the Mount Rushmore of pop punk. It never even occurred to me that it was a terrible name. It was just kind of like, "Oh yeah, Screeching Weasel. They're the greatest." Do you think that names can lose their power?

RB: I think they can. Screeching Weasel, to me, I wouldn't even consider that to be a bad band name until now that you said it. I'm just like, "Oh yeah, I guess that's bad." It's just the combo of the things, plus the combo of the people, plus the combo of the music. It's a lot of math that has to line up.

That's the ultimate thing, right? The name becomes irrelevant, but it's incredibly important at the beginning because it's the doorway. So if the doorway says, “Don't come in. Do not enter,” then it's going to be hard for people to get on board, and each person's experience of that “do not enter” sign may be different. Because some people are like, "That's exactly where I want to go."

POST-SCRIPTS

• I wish I could post a screenshot of the look on River’s face when I explained the origin of Black Pussy. Priceless.

• Here’s that Fugazi playlist River made for his friend.

• Two of This Moment in Black History’s four members are Black, not one. No, I didn’t remember that, either.

• Nota Bene: I love Skinny Puppy. “Tormentor” is one of my favorite songs of theirs, though you pretty much can’t go wrong with Too Dark Park. I don’t think River would be into them, though.

• Fans of the late, great A.V. Undercover series should check this out.