An Interview with the Founder of The Buttery

By Eli Tidd

Speaking to Jaymee is like having a warm cup of tea with your best friend. She is owner of the Buttery Music School based in Hamilton, Brisbane/Meanjin, on the lands of the Turrbal and Jagera people. I sat with Jaymee one very cold and windy afternoon to chat about the origins of the Buttery, her own musical journey and what makes Brisbane’s music scene so unique.

If you’ve got an idea, a dream, Jaymee wants to hear about it. In 2016, after getting home from touring overseas, Jaymee was in need of some cash. So, she started teaching drums under her house. After neighbours complained about the noise, she found a shipping container music studio on Gumtree and scrounged what money she could to buy it and move it to an industrial estate in Yeronga. The studio was surrounded by hundreds of wrecked cars and trollies – the perfect place to make a lot of noise.

“It was super duper fun and I started to be like, wait, I think I get even more satisfaction and joy out of this than anything. And then my dad and I built a second music studio in a shipping container and I started getting other people teaching and then we built a third and a fourth until there were seven… And so yeah, it kind of organically became a little music school.”

The grassroots school was forced to move due to development in the area. Jaymee was faced with the realisation that she had become the owner of a beautiful small business and if she didn’t take care of some things, it would all disappear – undoing years of hard work. She worked tirelessly for over 12 months to secure a new home for The Buttery that was affordable, with enough space to allow a couple of hundred budding musicians to make as much noise as they wanted… Turns out this is near impossible. “I’d be like, okay, maybe I should give it up. And then I’d sit and I’d try and imagine what I’d do if I just left this and started something else. And it would be like, I want to do something with community and music and then I’d be like, God damn it, it’s the Buttery again.”

Jaymee was forced to sell the containers, which she thought would be the end of the Buttery, since up until then the Buttery had been those containers. However, after having her community rally around her when she was in the depths of tricky times, she came to a realisation that the school was more about the community of people that had blossomed around it. She relocated the Buttery to Hamilton, once again to shipping containers (much fancier ones this time) in an industrial area of Brisbane right next to Eat Street.

With the change of location, the Buttery dropped form 100 students down to 12. Over the next couple of years, the dedicated group of teachers designed curriculums for each instrument. The school continued to grow over the next couple of years, to today where it has 200 students, 15 teachers as well as an admin team. As Jaymee says, “it’s killing it.”

Jaymee grew up in far-north Queensland in a very musical household. Her dad was a locally famous country singer-songwriter, and her mum was also into music, singing and playing guitar. Every weekend her mum and dad would be playing gigs at pubs, and Jaymee and her older brother Dean would be sleeping on a blanket behind them. Jaymee’s mum was committed to helping them find an instrument that they loved. Jaymee tried keys and guitar but found that she preferred sports. Then, at around 14, Jaymee went into a music shop with her mum to buy guitar strings and looked up to see a deep purple, sparkling drum kit on the second level. She said to her mum, “that’s my drumkit!” Jaymee’s mum bought the drumkit then and there and put it in the back of their car. She also drove Jaymee over an hour away to drums lessons in a place called Tinaroo each week. Talk about support.

When she finished school at 17, Jaymee still wasn’t sure what she wanted to do. Dean, her older brother, called her from Brisbane and told her “Move down here, you’ve got four gigs a week playing covers with me. Get on down straight away.” She made the move to Brisbane and learned a setlist of 40 covers, complete with the obligatory Red Hot Chilli Peppers songs. In Brisbane Jaymee found herself surrounded by like-minded cool musicians and started playing in more bands. Fast forward to today and Jaymee plays in a funky disco-soul band with her younger brother Tim called Buttercats. The group have just come off a successful tour of Australia’s east coast supported by close friends and musicians, finishing up at Brisbane’s echo & bounce.

One thing that Jaymee loves about Brisbane’s music scene is its freedom from the pretentiousness of other, artier cities, giving Brisbane musicians more space to explore and be themselves. The laidback feel of the city lends itself to a supportive and thriving music scene. “…at first someone might come here and think it’s a bit more of a country town…but then when you get into the community, you see there are just so many gems and so many cool live music venues pushing through the hard times right now with the difficulty to just stay open...”

Any Brisbane musician will know the gritty attitude that Jaymee is talking about. It is woven into the history of independent music in Brisbane. From the original DIY punk scene of the late 1970s with bands like the Saints and the Go-Betweens, Brisbane has a long history of creative spaces enduring through hardship and lack of support. Jaymee sees a new community rekindling now, continuing the legacy of independent music in Brisbane. As she explained, “I think there’s a lot of space for us to keep growing and that’s an exciting thing.”

For the first time, the annual Buttery student music festival, Butterfest, is changing from a one day to a two-day festival at the beloved Triffid on the 19th and 20th of September. The first day will be for the teen and adult students, some of whom will perform original material for the first time and the second day, Butterfest Jr., will be for young ones who are just starting on their musical journeys.

Another of Jaymee’s plans is to develop a program called Butterhouse, where teenagers and young adults in their 20s can connect at a time when it seems harder than ever to find social connection. The program will give young people the space to learn skills in the music industry like music production, event management, all things which can be transferred to a future career in the music industry.

The Buttery has also reached the perfect size for Jaymee: “We’re kind of sitting at about booked out at around 200 students, and I feel like I’m excited to just put a lot of love and nurturing into the community now as opposed to constantly growing and growing.”

Jaymee never gave up her dream of a community-based music school in Brisbane, and as the Buttery goes from strength to strength, it serves as a lesson to anyone with big dreams and the drive to realise them. Community, family and friendship are at the heart of everything the Buttery does.

Her favourite album: D’Angelo by D’Angelo

Why: He passed away sadly just last year. But he’s just a king of experimenting and laying your heart out and it just being so sexy and groovy.

Favourite song: When We Get By

Why: To me it’s an anthem for not sweating the small stuff and soaking life up. What I love about music is that it brings a literal vibration to a space. And I feel like this song and I must vibrate on the same frequency. It just wraps the space in good vibes and coolness.

Honourable mention: Good Friend by Emily King

Why: It’s literally about community. It’s a shout out to your best buds, and best buds rule.