screaming mimes home

Preston began playing bass violin in 3rd grade with the school orchestra. He was so small, he actually used a cello instead of a bass for a year. He stayed with the orchestra until the 8th grade when he realized all the babes preferred rock stars. He bought a used Hondo 2 precision copy and started playing AC/DCand Black Sabbath songs with other junior high students. Their spotlight performance was the junior high talent show where they played to a packed house.

After several short lived heavy metal cover bands, he joined a classic rock group called Dark Autumn. They played a lot of The Who, The Beatles, CSN&Y, The Doors and some originals. They recorded 6 songs in 2 separate studio sessions, and auditioned for Ed McMahon's Star Search at the Ohio State Fair where they came in second to a gospel choir who appeared on the show. This was Preston's longest stint in a band through all of high school and 2 years of college. "Dark Autumn is where I really grew up musically," says Price. "The summer after my first year in college is the only time in my life when I had no other job but playing music. We played on the Ohio State campus 5-6 nights a week and had a blast doing it."

Dark Autumn dissolved, and Preston moved on to more contemporary music in the mid 80's, playing with cover bands in Athens, Ohio at Ohio University. "The most popular band I was in at OU was Babylon Revisited. We played mostly contemporary music, like the Police, Rush, Pretenders and the Talking Heads, but threw in some Pink Floyd, Aerosmith, Heart-stuff like that. We played out almost every weekend which was great because we got to drink free--in college that's a major benefit."

After college Preston moved to Cincinnati and began his video editing career. Being new to the city, he was out of the music scene for several years. He met Randy in the early 90's when Randy came to work for Multimedia Productions where Preston was hired 2 months before him. Randy was in the music scene in Cincinnati, so Preston, itching to play music again, played for a year or so with some of Randy's ex-band mates. The band never officially had a name, but with Randy's help recorded a couple of original songs. "We recorded a couple of songs, and sent them to 97X for their local band competition. We kind of liked our stuff, but we didn't get a call back. We were trying to get a set together when Bone (lead guitarist) moved to Phoenix." Preston again found himself without a band.

Dave came to Multimedia in the late 90's, and Duckbutter was formed literally at the workplace out of sheer boredom. "Dave was my assistant in the edit suite for a while, so when it was slow, we'd play music. Dave had this sweet fret-less acoustic El Capitan bass that he brought to work along with his Elvis acoustic guitar, so we'd sit down and he'd show me his songs." Dave used to play solo gigs at a couple of bars for parties, so Randy and Preston started sitting in with him for at least a few songs per night. They played sporadically, and managed to work up an entire set of originals. "Randy and I really liked the music Dave was writing, and we really wanted to play it with a drummer. We were doing some acoustic gigs, and it was fun, but we wanted to go electric. Dave finally said basically 'what the hell are we waiting for' so we started looking for drummers."

"I really like our sound now. We've got a nice full tight sound. Randy and Dave are doing some great stuff musically and vocally. It's really great playing all original stuff instead of covers. When you're younger, it's fun to play covers because you're basically star struck by rock stars and you just want to be them. Now that all of us are older and maybe a little more mature--although I'm not sure we are at all--we just want to play good music and have fun. That's exactly what I'm doing right now."