 "Photo: Photo courtesy of Kent Ueland")
Last July, sophomores Kent Ueland and Sarah Berentson were playing on the streets of Portland, Ore., to make some money.
Now they are part of a six-member band called Terrible Buttons which is preparing to release its first EP.
“People were really generous with what they gave us,” Berentson said, who plays the keyboard and sings. “It was kind of funny; this one old lady gave us an entire bag of cornbread, and these kids walked by us and tossed a bunch of Starbursts into the guitar case.”
After their experience in Portland, they decided to continue pursuing their music. Terrible Buttons officially formed in November 2009.
“We got our buddy [junior] Michael Craviotto to play bass for us and slowly we started adding members until we got up to six,” Ueland said, who plays guitar and sings. “We played our first show at Battle of The Bands when we still only had five members and got second, so we figured we could make something out of it.”
Their music features many different instruments, including a melodica, which Ueland described as a “piano that you play with your mouth,” a ukulele and a harmonica. With all the different instruments, their music is difficult to describe.
“It’s sort of folk meets rock meets indie,” Craviotto said, who plays bass and harmonica. “It’s really just what we all kind of wanted to play, but we don’t really tie into any specific genre.”
The other members are Whitworth alumni Ryan Brown, who plays the violin and the melodica, Kris Hafso on the drums. Their friend Ben Leavitt plays the guitar, banjo and ukulele.
The name Terrible Buttons was inspired by a story that Ueland read. The story was about an immigrant that worked at a factory sewing buttons on clothes. She never saw the sun because she went to work before the sun came up, and didn’t return home until after sunset.
“As she was walking home, she would see Americans in the dark,” Ueland said. “All she saw were these people as terrible buttons that she had to sew onto clothes. She saw Americans as terrible buttons because that is all she saw of America.”
After reading this story, he decided that Terrible Buttons was the perfect name for their band.
Most of their music deals with issues regarding organized religion and the idea of God. Ueland writes most of the lyrics and said they deal with his personal difficulties with the concept of God.
Although most of the lyrics are about Ueland’s personal struggles, Berentson feels that they are still easy to relate to.
“We almost all have gone through, or are going through the same sort of thing. It seems like a pretty universal thing,” she said.
Terrible Buttons is a part of a group of Spokane and Seattle musicians called the Squalrus Art Collective. This group includes several Whitworth alumni, including Ueland’s sibling Dane Ueland, Rebecca Snape and Nathaniel Orweiler, who performs under the name The Pall.
The goal of the group is to promote each other collectively. Terrible Buttons will tour over Spring Break with Dane Ueland and The Pall, which will be the first group move.
Their Spring Break tour will begin in Spokane on March 20 at Sunset Junction. They plan to continue their tour in Colorado, going through Wyoming, possibly Utah, Oregon and ending their tour in Seattle, Wash.
“Our plans for the future are to continue writing and work towards getting a full-length album out in six months or so,” Ueland said. “After our Spring Break tour we hope to start planning another tour for mid-summer, this time going down the West Coast. And playing shows, playing shows, playing shows.”
Contact Becca Cuniff at becca.cuniff@whitworthian.com.
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