Denton has seen its fair share of upstart festivals.   But have any of them been inspired by trash?   Denton’s newest music festival — BUTTS Fest — wouldn’t exist without cigarette litter around the downtown Denton or the volunteers who’ve come together to clean them up. This weekend, it will be a 45-act festival making the most of the sunshine (and the musicians who intended to play the now-canceled South by Southwest) at Harvest House, Rubber Gloves Rehearsal Studios and Armadillo Ale Works.   Denton musician Michael Tong Kokkinakis is the guy holding the smoking butt, so to speak.   “BUTTS stands for Better Understanding Through Trash Service,” Kokkinakis said. “It got started last Earth Day. We were already involved in trash pickup, so I thought, ‘Why not create something that spreads the word about it?’”      

BUTTS FEST

Where: Harvest House, 331 E. Hickory St.; Rubber Gloves Rehearsal Studios, 411 E. Sycamore St.; and Armadillo Ale Works, 221 S. Bell Ave.   Details: For most events, a suggested $5 donation is encouraged. On Sunday at Rubber Gloves, admission is $10, or $5 before 5 p.m. For more information, visit www.buttsfest.com or www.facebook.com/buttsdtx.   SATURDAY Harvest House 11 a.m. — Karma Yoga Noon to 5 p.m. — Art & Artisan Market 1 p.m. — Lollard (DJ) 2 p.m. — Phokis.wav (DJ) 4 p.m. — Phlowerie 5 p.m. — Andoren 6 p.m. — Mother Tongues 7 p.m. — Breathing Rainbow 8 p.m. — Maestro Maya 9 p.m. — Aztec Milk Temple 10 p.m. — Jeb Bush Orchestra 10:45 p.m. — Self-Help 11:30 p.m. — Moon Kissed Rubber Gloves indoor stage 6 p.m. — Glow Yoga 8 to 10 p.m. — Burlesque 10 p.m. — Miss Mino 11:15 p.m. — eve.ning 12:30 p.m. — YSA Rubber Gloves outdoor stage 6 p.m. to midnight — Where? House Art Collective 6 to 8 p.m. — Breeze-o-matic 8 p.m. — Sanford Black 10 p.m. — Sum Bloke Rubber Gloves Library Stage 9 p.m. — Karaoke, hosted by Nancy & Silky Jo SUNDAY Armadillo Ale Works Noon — Community unity brunch Noon — Michael Kokkinakis 12:30 p.m. — Scott Levings 1 p.m. — Nancy Alatorre 1:30 p.m. — Open mic, hosted by Rache Ann 3 p.m. — City Limits 4 p.m. — Dirty Dan & the Basketball Boys 5 p.m. — Sea of Oaks 6 p.m. — Maya Rubber Gloves indoor stage 2:30 p.m. — Anthony Cappeto 3:30 p.m. — Patti 4:30 p.m. — Irrevery 5 p.m. — Carlo Pezzamenti & Kokkinakis 5 6:30 p.m. — Gold Dime 7:30 p.m. — Felt & Fur 8:30 p.m. — Blank Hellscape 9:30 p.m. — Psychic Killers 11 p.m. — Mattie 11:30 p.m. — Rat Bastard Midnight — Heavy Baby Sea Slugs 1 p.m. — Monte Espina Rubber Gloves outdoor stage 3 p.m. — Sexual Jeremy 4 p.m. — Starfruit 6 p.m. — Thin Skin 7 p.m. — Hot Mom 8 p.m. — Flesh Narc 9 p.m. — Janet Xmas & Blyre Cpanx 10 p.m. — Leya 10 Rubber Gloves Library Stage 2 p.m. — Froggy 2000 5 p.m. — MILL 10:30 p.m. — Locations 12:30 a.m. — Chelsey Danielle   Kokkinakis said he and other volunteers meet on the Square at 6:30 p.m. each Monday and pick up cigarette litter until about 9 p.m.   “People might not notice it, but there are so many cigarette butts all around the downtown area, even though there are a lot of spots to dispose of them,” he said.   Nonsmokers might pass them by without a glance, but there are cigarette trash receptacles downtown. They’re mounted on poles — small boxes that declare “The butt stops here.”   Autumn Natalie, the program manager of Keep Denton Beautiful, said the nonprofit installed 20 of the receptacles in downtown Denton and in Quakertown Park. The pole-mounted receptacles — a trademarked design called the Sidewalk Buttler — are placed around the Square, side streets just off the Square and near Fry Street on Hickory Street by the University of North Texas campus. In-ground cigarette receptacles are placed throughout Quakertown Park, and all of them are designed to be moved quickly if officials find that smokers aren’t using them at that location. Each can hold up to 700 cigarette butts. The receptacles are metal, and able to contain the paper if a cigarette is still burning.       Natalie said flicking cigarette butts to the ground, or walking off after stepping on them to extinguish them, is littering, which can carry a fine up to $500.   “It’s the No. 1 littered item in the state, the city and the country,” Natalie said. “Aside from the work Michael and his group have done, our staff and volunteers have collected just shy of 40,000 cigarette butts since Oct. 1.”   Keep Denton Beautiful doesn’t discard the collected butts. It packages them and ships them to TerraCycle, which recycles the butts, breaking them down into cellulose acetate pellets that can be used to make park benches and play sets for children, Natalie said.   Kokkinakis is a smoker himself (“I should probably work on quitting,” he says), and said he used to be among the smokers who flick butts to the ground when an ashtray isn’t available. Then, he said, personal research on the matter converted him.   “Smokers think cigarettes are biodegradable. That it’s just paper. I thought so, too,” he said. “But the filters are full of chemicals. ... So when it rains, all that stuff washes out, leaches into the ground.”   And there’s a lot more cigarette litter than people think, he said.   “Thirty-eight percent of the trash worldwide is cigarette litter,” he said. “It’s really surprising.”         As he and other volunteers continued cleaning up butts, Kokkinakis said, they recruited local downtown businesses to allow the volunteers to place buckets smokers can use as ashtrays outside their businesses. The volunteers empty the buckets on their circuit.   “It’s a trash pickup that turned into a pub crawl,” Kokkinakis said. “We’ve created a community that cares about the city.”   Kokkinakis is a classical guitarist — he seemed to have a knack for the instrument, then got more serious about the art after taking a class at Richland College and Brookhaven College. He studied with renowned classical guitarist Carlo Pezzimenti, a Texas Woman’s University faculty member, and he and Pezzimenti have a duo act.   Kokkinakis said as he watched community build over the simple act of picking up cigarette butts, he also started to miss 35 Denton, a popular music festival that last took place in 2016.   “Since all these venues were on for a festival, we decided to book bands for a festival,” he said. “There will be touring groups, but we were also focused on showcasing local bands. Whatever we do here, we want to celebrate Denton. I’ve been here eight years — I want to show my gratitude.”   BUTTS Fest isn’t a genre festival. Kokkinakis said music lovers will catch chillwave, lo-fi, classical guitar music, DJ sets, blues, folk and country music. The festival includes a Sunday brunch for the homeless — including an open mic — at Armadillo Ale Works.   “The main focus here was culture,” he said. “Denton has a nice culture to it.”   Kokkinakis said he means for the festival to be an annual event.   “The level of interaction has people really collaborating,” he said. “I can say I want to change the world. I just want people to stop littering. I’d like for people think more about their waste.”