Photo: Serge Rajevic (KRUG)

Mario Butković Mario was born in Brčko, Bosnia in 1971. Before you judge him too harshly, remember that if your grandmother killed chickens with a whip, you'd be pretty fucked up too. For example, Mario ran away from music school to become a musician. But you can't really blame him, because the music school in Brčko, in the socialist republic of Bosnia and Herzogovina (formerly part of the Socialist Federatian of Yugoslavia) offered only two artistic choices: accordion and folk dancing. If Mario hadn't run away, he might have capitalized on those pretty legs of his -- pay attention next time when you see him on stage (he's a cutie!) and then imagine him folk dancing.

The first instrument that Mario picked up was a tambura (croatian national string instrument). While Young Mario was playing pinball and skipping music class he remembered his first musical experiences and attraction to stringed instruments. That and a nine-year-old gypsy girl dragged him into the choice of his life, playing guitar at gypsy weddings at the age of 13. For those who don't know, gypsy weddings are long (anywhere from five days to two weeks in length), loud, exhausting, and obnoxious (later in life, we adopted the same doctrine for Kultur Shock shows). Even if he had wanted to run away, we don't think he could have -- at gypsy weddings, everyone is armed and no-one wants the music to stop.

When Mario was drafted in 1990, he arrived with a british flag sewn onto the shoulder of his jacket. The army officials were so impressed with it that after they ripped the flag off his jacket (almost taking his arm with it) they sent him to Kosovo on the very same day.

For the moment, we are going to step away from Mario's funny character and talk about serious and tragic facts. In 1992, Brčko was taken over by the gangs of Serb nationalism at the beginning of the war in Bosnia. Because he had the "wrong" name, nationality, and religion, Mario was forced to leave his loving parents Josep and Magdalena and his home town. His truly blue collar parents had raised him to respect and love all his neighbors regardless of their names; therefore, what was happening made even less sense in his mind. After a dangerous escape, he ended up in a refugee camp in Pula, Croatia. Refugee camps are not fun. Being a refugee is not fun. Regardless of having the "right" religion, name, and nationality, you are a stranger in a place where you don't belong, and in the place where you do belong there are strange people who don't want you there. It's the same in almost every place in the world if you're trying to find shelter. According to Mario, Pula is an exception (all of Istra is an exception to this rule). Even though he was not allowed to go out to look for a job, he was accepted by the local population and was treated with respect; he has only the fondest memories of that town and its people. Mario left Pula in 1995, and was accepted into the refugee program in the United States, destination Portland.

Back to the fun part. One afternoon, Mario was lying on the couch watching TV and ... (...well, it doesn't really matter). The important thing is that the phone rang and from the other side in his own language, a man spoke. He introduced himself with the same name as a cheesy pop singer that Mario used to watch on TV in his previous life. Mario thought, "Who the fuck is fucking with me -- it's gotta be someone from the old crowd." The man persisted in claiming the identity of the aforementioned singer, and he wanted Mario to come to Seattle and try playing music. The man was talking about a new sound that would combine gypsy music and alternative punk rock. "This dude's crazy," Mario thought, once he realized that it really was the pop singer from his youth on the phone. But what did he have to lose? A job in the hospital for $6.50 an hour? "Fuck it, I'll go and see," he thought.

A week after the first rehearsal, Mario moved to Seattle. And there the Serbian singer and Croatian guitarist (both from Bosnia) began a relationship that outlasted both of the singer's marriages and any other relationship either of them have ever been in. At a press conference in Logronio, Spain, a journalist asked them, "Are you really a Serb and a Croat playing together?"

Mario said, "Yeah. We hate each other."

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