The Builders & The Butchers

Evidencing The Raw New Hell Castle

May 23, 2009

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Words by Sean Moeller // Illustration by Johnnie Cluney // Sound engineering by Mike Gentry

There are enough devil towns and evil doers lurching in the veins of the songs of The Builders and the Butchers to build another hell, to have a ground-breaking tomorrow and feel confident as a prospector that there will be no empty units. Someone's going to turn a considerable profit and others are going to unhappily see the competition move in and the neighborhood to shit. The devils that are sprinkled throughout, no dolloped upon the bitter lines that the Portland band of freak country and bluegrass boys give their hearty venom are not of the pallor or shape that one would normally think. These are the people that you have beside you, the people that you share or shared kisses with, the people whom you trust your deepest and rarest secrets to when no one else is looking, or alive as far as you're concerned. These are the confidantes and lovers that sometimes split off and become thorny and unpredictably rotten. Nothing's sacred in the God-forsaken town that is sung about in "Way Down In This Hole" - a potential commercial spot for enticing prospective buyers to this new division of hell's lairs. The kids are smoking before they're able to crawl across the ground and for those unclear on child development or the normal order of things, that's a bit early for a pack-a-day habit or more. Those kids are damned and those are just the babies! Imagine what the adults, their supervisors, are like in these rough and tumble (a phrase too soft for the circumstances) situations. It's the true loves - not the misguided ones - that bring the poor saps down to their knees, lash them front ways and back ways and leave them to bleed in the rain. There seems to be a solemn sensation that people with continuously be wronged all over the yard, in and out of the homes and wherever else people can scatter and lights can find them. It's maybe more realistic than we'd give it credit for. There are the staggeringly high statistics for the number of marriages that end in divorce and many of those people probably did something heinous to ruin those vows. They probably don't speak to each other anymore, most of them. They probably still get depressed and cry a bit in the shower - even years later - when they think about some of the long gone good times. With the Builders and the Butchers, it sounds as if the good times are so tainted by the bad ones that they catch fire and they get nasty. The true loves are to be watched and the heart is to be exposed guardedly, grudgingly. There are to be no sudden movements or chances taken. There will be no going out on limbs because it could end in a situation where "the blood just rolled down your cheeks like tears." The new hell isn't all bad. It provides us with a fine bit of entertainment and The Builders and the Butchers are the house band - the reporters and the orchestra, evidencing the ire.  

The Builders and the Butchers Official Site
Gigantic Music
Bladen County Records

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1. first song

   Welcome to Daytrotter

   
2. second song

   When It Rains

   

   - original version appears on 12" split w/loch lomondThe first track off our LP split with Loch Lomond.  Paul wrote the trumpet part which combined with the drums gives the song a galloping feel when it kicks in.  When we play this live we like to hand out as many drums and small percussion toys as we can find for the audiance to play along.

3. third song

   The Coal Mine Fall

   

   - original version appears on The Builders and the ButchersA song off our first record and the first to feature Harvey playing banjo, I really like the tempo change half way through and then the way it kicks back into the originial speed.  Recently at live shows we've combined this song with a song of the new album called "In the Branches".

4. fourth song

   Devil Town

   

   - unreleasedA song I brought to the rest of the Builders thinking it was mediocre at best, the song was transformed when Ray and Paul added the drums and suddenly I realized it's potential.  The interplay of the clicks on the bass drum rim, and the mandolin give the song a cool off kilter momentum.  It's probably one of the hardest hitting Builders songs and a common first track of a set list.

5. fifth song

   Down In This Hole

   

   - unreleasedThis song is about being locked up in a small town that feels like a prison.  I wrote it after a heavy doses of Tom Wait's, wanted to write a song where the last line of the first half of the verse was the first line in the last half.  The piano driving the song is played by Paul, who originally wrote this on melodica, in the studio started working out the part on piano, we all looked at each other and said, "no do that, that is amazing."