We can all agree that music is a lifelong passion. We may all take different roads through life. Careers, relationships, families, etc but music always remains. Our recent discovery Butter & The Genre lived life and had the experiences but now music is taking the lead again and starting to flow out of group, both recorded and live.
We had the chance to sit down with Butter (aka Greg Haubrich) to get a little deeper into where the music comes from and how the group is able to feed off each other to create a fresh style of Jazz. Enjoy the interview:
First off we have to ask, how did the name Butter & The Genre come to be?
I picked “Butter” for a stage name on the spur of the moment when “Doc Blues” here in OKC told me I needed a stage name because he couldn’t say “Geg Hobitch”. (Greg Haubrich). If it’s butter, it’s real — not fake, like margerine. So, the name stuck and everybody started calling me Butter. As a lawyer, I started getting called “Attorney Butter”. When I formed the band I wanted Butter in it because it’s a specific identity, and that is me. I thought about Cool Blue Butter, Blue Butter, Ice Cold Butter, and variants of Montaquilla, which is spanish for butter. But Genre hit me just right. Genre is a style of music, and jazz is our primary genre … BUT, genre is both singular and plural, and jazz is one genre, and many genre. not genres or genri or genruses.
How would you describe the band’s sound?
Our sound is fresh, new, jazz is most of its forms, and always honors honesty and integrity. Our jazz is easy to listen to, accessible, and understandable to anybody who loves music, not just deep-dive jazz afficioanadoes. We record in studio to sound as much as possible as we sound live, and we are a REALLY great sounding live band. We play jazz at a very high level, but always with the idea that you can listen to it subliminally or intently and enjoy it with pleasure. We do a lot of unison sounds with vocal and instrumentals blended together in some really unique and beautiful ways.
Quite a dynamic group of musicians. How did you all come together?
Thank you! I’ve been writing and recording music for about 30 years, and I’m 73 now. I went back to college to study music and jazz at the University of Central Oklahoma. I met so many great musicians, but all of them more or less 50 years younger than me. One day the jazz theory prof, Michael Geib, said “while you’re here I’d encourage you to form a band,” I was surprised peeps wanted to join my band, but they did and learned my music and we learned other music together and had a quintet. Then Calliope came to Speakeasy Jazz Night here in OKC (check it, it’s a JAZZ BLAST every Wednesday night) and sang “Bye Bye Blackbird” — … and my self talk went “HOLY SHIT!!!” because I’d never heard a voice like that ever … so I told her I had a quintet and would she like to join? Her answer: “I’ve always wanted a band to sing these songs with.” … We also heard and played with Draven at the Speak later on and he joined because our band is so much fun — “Everybody listens to each other.”
Which artists have had the biggest influence on you?
Miles Davis. Frankie Beverly. John Prine. Debussey.
How does a song come together for Butter & The Genre? What is your songwriting process?
It’s evolving. Most often I write a song because I hear a melody, a beat, a motif that I like emerging from subconscious to conscious. If I leave it alone after turning it around and messing with it mentally, and it comes back later, I figure it’s worth doing something with. I write and re-write lyrics in my head while I’m walking my dogs and stuff like that. I don’t like to write cliches, and I love a good turn of phrase that evokes thought or feeling or both.
I came into the band with a large songbook of original music. I wrote relatively simple charts, lead sheets mostly, and already had recordings of most of those songs that I’d done at home before to show them the fundamentals of the song. Then we’d put it together as a group, We are a creative group, and I make sure to stay open to all ideas and criticisms. For our EP we commissioned a professional and super tense arrangement of We Three Kings, and Caden wrote a dynamite samba of God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen that honestly tested the chops of pretty much everybody in the band. When we record, we do it as a band, an ensemble, and as much as possible straight takes by the whole group. We will then drop in the vocal tracks and guitar tracks, maybe any additional rhythm tracks. Again, we try to make it as much as possible like a live recording, and we accept some imperfections because it’s JAZZ!
Celebrate Christmas With Butter & The Genre
What can you tell us about the brand new Christmas in Amazonland?
The title track came about like this. I was in my car one day in the holiday season and an ad came on that said if you were really good this year Santa could fix you up with a brand new Cadillac. I did a little self-talk that went like this: “Bull effin’ shoot. It’s not how good you are; it’s how much money your parents have.” So I wrote a song about that. “Santa comes to all the girls and boys, but the rich kids seem to get all the best toys.” I love the track. It has elements of music from the 30s (honky tonk piano) 40s (Andrews Sisters harmonies) 50s (Rockabilly guitar) and 60s (James Brown horn licks and B3 Hammond organ. So it’s super-fresh and cheery, but then sarcasm lasts forever and one of the neat things about the song is the lyrics cut so hard in such a happy sounding bubbly vibe.
Seems like the band keeps quite a busy gig schedule. Tell us what to expect at a Butter & The Genre performance.
It’s gonna vary because the band is so versatile. I formed it originally to play jazz for functions, weddings, affairs, background for dinner, stuff like that. We can bring a trio, quartet, quintet, sextet, but what we really like is to play as a 7-piece stage and show band. When we do that we’ll play funk, ballads, swing, bebop, latin, a mix of our originals and cover tunes that we try to arrange in some special new way. We sound so good together, we have so much fun playing together precisely because we sound so wonderful as a group, syneragistically. All of us are creative soloists and I make sure we give everybody time to express because we speak through our instruments.
However, we actrually don’t gig enough. Book us. We love to play. We do great on-stage at a festival, in a dance hall, at a casino (“remember you are not the entertainment”), a wedding, an art gallery, a nursing home. A favorite is doing jazz for cocktails and dinner at a place like VAST on the 52d floor of Devon Tower downtown OKC … . At that kind of gig we provide a vibe that promotes conversation rather than overwhelming it.
What does the future hold for Butter & The Genre?
I’ve learned from my wife to practice the power of intention. To do that you must hold very specific intention and focus on it, visualize it, know that it will happen. I believe these two things will happen: 1) Calliope Staudt will become an international star singing songs that I wrote; and 2) “So Cool, So Blue” will win a first prize for music videos (don’t know what category, don’t care right now) in the Deadcenter Film Festival to be held here in OKC June 10-14, 2026. You should come. The band is now an organic entity, and WAY better than any AI that thinks it can think. Our business intention is for all of us, as gifted, dedicated musicians — to earn a living and support our families, fun, and endeavors through our art — or at least, to have the choice to do that. We recorded Music Is Life July, 2024 for release in February, 2025. We recorded our Christmas EP in September, 2025 for release TODAY!!! 11-24-25. We’re planning a second album which I think will be called “Calling Dick Tracy”, to record summer 2026 for release in early 2027.
