[Cover photo credit to Tari Gunstone]
Portland-based band The Builders and The Butchers have announced their seventh official full-length album, Hell & High Water, due on May 6th from Badman Recording Co. They’ve unveiled the first single, too, “Stop The Rain”.
Multi-instrumentalist Ray Rude and Engineer Edgar McCrae, “molded and formed this album into life” over the course of 2020, hoping to make something that “reflects the struggle, the pain, as well as some really amazing moments from the past year”.
The Builders and the Butchers were formed in the fall of 2005 in Portland, Oregon, with members all hailing from Alaska. Built on a background of busking and house shows, they grew into a substantial performance band before touring the US and Europe for a number of years.
Now living in far-flung corners of the world, the members faced the logistics of the pandemic, wild fires and massive rioting in their hometown of Portland to make Hell & High Water. They describe the process as “challenging, yet cathartic”. The Builders wrote Hell & High Water together as a band in a boat house in the marina where one member lives.
Frontman Ryan Sollee explains further:
Through the fall and winter of 2019, we would gather weekly, make a fire, drink beer and whisky and try to find some cohesiveness in these tunes. This gathering place was the most inspiring we have had in any creative process for any album up to that date.
After laying down the initial studio drum tracks with Badman label head Dylan Magierek for the album in February 2020, the band was forced to create remotely, which was a “massive challenge”, and pushed the band “way past its usual comfort zone”. The Builders have scheduled their first US and Europe tours (details coming soon!) in several years to support their latest release, Hell & High Water.
