The Portland-based band The Builders and The Butchers released their seventh album, “No Tomorrow,” this month. The band started in 2005 busking and playing house shows and are now known for playing raucous, audience-involved stage shows. Many of the songs on the new album are a response to the current political moment in the U.S. Vocalist and songwriter Ryan Sollee and members of the band joins us for an acoustic performance and interview.
The Builders and The Butchers will have an album-release party at The Aladdin Theater in Portland April 16.
Note: The following transcript was transcribed digitally and validated for accuracy, readability and formatting by an OPB volunteer.
Dave Miller: This is Think Out Loud on OPB. I’m Dave Miller. The Portland-based band The Builders and The Butchers started in 2005. They busked and played house shows at the beginning. Pretty quickly they had burst onto the scene with larger, raucous audience-involved shows and music that combined all kinds of seemingly disparate influences: punk and bluegrass, gospel and metal. They just released their seventh album. It’s an apocalyptic collection of songs called “No Tomorrow.” It’s full of floods, fire and ash.
I’m joined now by a slimmed down, acoustic version of the band. Ryan Sollee is the songwriter, lead singer; he’s on guitar today. Harvey Tumbleson is on banjo. And Matt Radtke is on viola. Welcome to all three of you.
Ryan Sollee: Thanks for having us.
Harvey Tumbleson: How’s it going?
Miller: Can we start right in with a song? The first song from the new album is called “World’s on Fire.”
[“World’s on Fire” by The Builders and The Butchers playing, live in studio]
Sitting around here waiting for my Lord
Sitting around here waiting for my Lord
And if he don’t show, I’ll have another cigarette and beer
‘Cause only a fool thought that the good Lord would end up here
My home town is broken, bare, and lost
This old town is broken, bare, and lost
Left me and my family make a living out of heart attacks and dust
So I spend my whole life shaking down the Pentecost
Can’t wait just one more minute for my Lord
Can’t wait just one more minute for my Lord
Watch the world’s on fire
Yeah, the world’s on fire
Like a blind man burning, doing nothing but he’s so dеvout
Oh, before I go, I’ll do my best to put him out
There’s no shame in loving someone you don’t understand
Only wasted time in keeping heads down in the sand
I shot my bullets at my feet, I cut your name into my hand
There’s no shame in living life in full light while you can
Can’t wait just one more minute for my Lord
Can’t wait just one more minute for my Lord
Watch the world’s on fire
Yeah, the world’s on fire
Can’t wait just one more minute for my Lord
Can’t wait just one more minute for my Lord
Watch the world’s on fire
Oh, the world’s on fire
Can’t wait just one more minute for my Lord
Can’t wait just one more minute for my Lord
Watch the world’s on fire
Oh, the world’s on fire
Oh, before I go, I’ll do my best to put it out
Oh, before I go, I’ll do my best to put it out
[Song ends]
Miller: Ryan, you’ve said in the past that songwriting, that songs come to you seemingly in bursts. Sometimes there’s a drought and then there’s a flood. What was going on for you when these songs came?
Sollee: Yeah, it was like post-pandemic and pre-election, and it was just a really stirred up time for me. And I don’t think too consciously about “I’m going to write a song about this or that or the other,” but these things kind of leach in, and these ideas about what’s going on in the world, things like that.
Miller: I called it apocalyptic. Does that feel accurate to you? Or is that just like what someone else listening puts onto it?
Sollee: What’s funny about it is we’ve been a band for 20 years and the nature of the songs have always been pretty apocalyptic. But it’s like the world has caught up.
Miller: There’s always been death, fire and floods, but now there’s more of it in real life.
Sollee: It feels a little more real. [Laughs]
Miller: How does it feel that the world caught up to you there?
Sollee: Oh just really great. [Laughter] I know Mike Judge was saying how “Idiocracy,” he’s like “Oh, I didn’t know I was making a documentary.”
Miller: Although it’s interesting that my first listen to that song, I think I focused more on the darkness of it. It’s called “World’s on Fire,” the world on fire, the blind man burning. You have a line about heart attacks and dust. But when I listened to the song a couple more times, some of the humor of it, maybe gallows humor, came out. You have this line, “If the Lord don’t show, I’ll have another cigarette and beer, because only a fool thought that the good Lord would end up here.” It’s a great line.
How do you think about the mix between pain and humor?
Sollee: I think that’s the best way to deal with pain is humor. What else do we have other than to laugh? You have to laugh at the ridiculousness of things that are going on. But that song specifically is, it’s a disconnect between like what has happened to middle America and the cultural void, that people think somebody’s coming back or some great religious thing is happening, but looking around and seeing we’re destitute, it’s a food desert, and we don’t have any medical care and all these things. It’s this disconnect of we’re living this way we want to live and it’s kind of terrible, in a sense.
Miller: Harvey, when Ryan comes to you and the band with a song, what state is it in? How close is one of the songs that you first hear to what we just heard?
Tumbleson: Well, I think that’s one of the things I love the most about playing with these guys for the last so many years. It’s there, the skeleton of the song is there. It’s just a matter of let’s get creative with X, X, X, X and X, and hey maybe don’t play this chord. I love that, I love the collaboration of this particular band.
Miller: It feels free enough and open enough that you can say that and you feel like you’ll be listened to?
Tumbleson: I think everyone in the band is free to be like, “I don’t like this.” And a good chunk of the time, someone’s gonna compromise. Like, “OK fine, I’ll play a C.”
Miller: And it can be that granular? “I don’t like this chord?”
Tumbleson: Oh yeah. I threw a fit last album because you guys played a major when it was supposed to be a minor.
Miller: You knew it should have been a minor. Who won that argument?
Tumbleson: I think I did.
Sollee: You did. We crammed a minor in at the end.
Tumbleson: I’m just like, “Hey, this is bugging me.” They changed it. I didn’t think they would. But it’s just something like that.
Miller: This gets to both a musical sensibility but also ego, right? Ryan, you’re the songwriter, you’re the front man for the band. How do you think about balancing voices and ideas?
Sollee: It’s a really tricky thing, because you’re like, I have this song that I think is good. And you’re presenting it. And then you have to also be like, I want everybody to feel heard and I want the band to have longevity, where everybody feels satisfied and feels like they have a voice. So I can’t be some kind of a dictator about it. You have to be open to change. And honestly, I’m the least good musician in the band. I trust everybody else with their tastes and their talent. So I think that’s a really good place to come from.
Miller: Can we hear another song? What do you have for us?
Sollee: I believe it’s called “Mother Mary.”
Miller: Harvey, you seem surprised by that.
Tumbleson: Yeah, I just kind of go with it, man. [Laughter]
Sollee: One, two, three, four…
[“Mother Mary” by The Builders and The Butchers playing, live in studio]
Hello, Mother Mary
Won’t you let me in?
I need some retribution
‘Cause I’ve got a little sin
You look so good, my darling
I’d hold you if I could
But my feet don’t work for dancing
And my mouth don’t do me no good
And we don’t go to heaven
We’re way too wild
I’m swinging low, I’m blind and cold
And baby, don’t you see me shine?
You won’t see me in heaven
We’ll shuffle to the gates with a smile
With dirty old shoes, got nothing to lose
You’re rotting on the old dead vine
Hello, Mother Mary
A pardon for your time
For you’re a desert flower
And I’m a lifetime past my prime
I lost what I’ve forgottеn
And I can’t tell wrong from right
But I’m shaking at the holy thought
Of living in your arms tonight
And wе don’t go to heaven
We’re too wild
I’m swinging low, I’m blind and cold
And baby, don’t you see me shine?
You won’t see me in heaven
We’ll shuffle to the gates with a smile
With dirty old shoes, got nothing to lose
You’re rotting on the old dead vine
No, we don’t go to heaven
We’re too wild
I’m swinging low, I’m blind and cold
And baby, don’t you see me shine?
You won’t see me in heaven
We’ll shuffle to the gates with a smile
With dirty old shoes, got nothing to lose
You’re rotting on the old dead vine
[Song ends]
Miller: This is, I think, the closest thing on the new album that you have to a love song or a party song. As in, “we’re going to hell anyway, so we might as well have some fun on the way down.”
Sollee: Yeah. I love songs like “Friends in Low Places” and country, kind of classic, loser-y guy songs. Loser but romantic kind of a thing. So that’s the idea there.
Miller: It’s interesting you brought that up, that’s a sort of a classic sing-along too. Do you write songs hoping if the fans know it they can sing along with this part?
Sollee: I think that’s always in the back of my mind. Our first album has a lot of sing-along songs, so that became like a call and response kind of with the audience. So that’s what I try to do as much as possible.
Miller: There’s a lot of religious language and imagery in this album. What’s your relationship to the church?
Sollee: I am an agnostic person, straight up, but I love gospel music. I love the emotion of gospel music. I think it’s one of the greatest American forms of music, just the musicianship, the singing and the passion. So I love the idea of that, but kind of having more of a question about it, or a little bit uncertain. I like songs that are religious but have gray area in them. It’s more interesting.
Miller: Your last album was a pandemic-era production, right? So Harvey, how did it work making an album when you were separate?
Tumbleson: I loved it. I got to record just about the whole album in my basement while we were all separated and distancing. We all recorded in our separate homes and sent everything via email to Ray and Edgar – shout out Edgar. They picked out what they liked, what they didn’t like, and they made an album out of it.
Miller: It works, you said you loved it. I can imagine somebody missing the communal aspect of music making.
Tumbleson: From a musician’s standpoint, I love that I don’t know what’s gonna happen with this song. I love the idea that I sent them so many files, so many little, tiny flourishes…
Sollee: One could say too many. [Laughter]
Tumbleson. I am that one.
Miller: One could say that that’s what you didn’t get, that kind of making fun of each other when you were alone. [Laughter]
Tumbleson: It was quite streamlined. We don’t stay on task very easily.
I love the idea of just giving someone everything and that they choose what they want to do with
Miller: So Ryan, what about this time? What was it like to be back together?
Sollee: It was really, really good this time. And the really cool thing about this time is that we also had broughten Matt into the fold. The addition of strings really opened up the space in the record.
Miller: Why bring a viola into the mix? I say this as a mediocre viola player myself.
Sollee: I would say you’re a great viola player. We heard you in the hallway playing. It was beautiful.
On our very first record, we have quite a bit of violin and strings, and on our second record, we have some too, and then it’s slowly kind of not done that. And then we’re going on a pretty big tour and we were like, we should add that back. Our friend Matt plays viola, so let’s have him do the tour. And that worked really well. We’re like, we’re doing this new album, let’s have you play on these new songs.
So it’s a very natural thing, but it’s been fun to kind of expand the sound, give it space and all that.
Miller: Can we hear another song? This is “Rise My Son.”
[“Rise My Son” by The Builders and The Butchers playing, live in studio]
In the depth of the water were wringing our hands
‘Til our fingers fell out of our palms
We climbed over rocks to the tops of the mountains
We offered the last of our blood
Look at all of those pieces we laid down before
A false idol, a prophet so small
And the fire still raged and the tidal wave came
In the morning
Rise, my son, to the day
Don’t you keep coming round, kicking me down
In the dirt around here where I lay
Rise, my son, to the day
Don’t you keep coming round, kicking mе down
In the dirt around here whеre I lay
I crawled through hell to get to high water
‘Til my knees and my elbows were raw
Saw a man at the fire gate, I broke down before him
I cast off the last of my gods
Look at all of the followers giving their dollars
To an idol, a prophet so small
And the fire still raged, and the tidal wave came
In the morning
Rise, my son, to the day
Don’t you keep coming round, kicking me down
In the dirt around here where I lay
Rise, my son, to the day
Don’t you keep coming round, kicking me down
In the dirt around here where I lay
Home, sweet home, all ashes and fire
And the tears I cried make river salt water
Home, sweet home, all ashes and fire
And the tears I cried make river salt water
Home, sweet home, all ashes and fire
And the tears I cried make river salt water
Home, sweet home, all ashes and fire
And the tears I cried make river salt water
Rise, my son, to the day
Don’t you keep coming round, kicking me down
In the dirt around here where I lay
Rise, my son, to the day
Don’t you keep coming round, kicking me down
In the dirt around here where I lay
[Song ends]
Miller: I mentioned at the beginning the early days of the band busking and house shows, 20-something years ago now. When you think about those days, what images come to mind?
Sollee: I think the vitality of the Portland scene in that moment, how many bands we knew and all the things that were happening. It was almost like a snowball of things happening in that moment. Just a lot of friends, a lot of house shows and a lot of blurry memories. [Laughter]
Miller: For whatever reason.
Sollee: Yeah, I don’t know why.
Miller: Harvey, what do you miss? Not every good question has a good answer. [Laughter]
Sollee: The tagline for the show.
Tumbleson: It wasn’t the partying. It just felt … love. You go into this basement with like 30 to 40 people that are your best friends. And you get older and you get away from each other. I don’t know, I miss that.
Sollee: I would say the word would be like support. All of the bands really supported each other and there was never an air of competition, or “you’re playing this show and I’m not getting this show.” Everybody just wants to see everybody do good. The whole thing about, everybody rises together.
Miller: Ryan, Matt and Harvey, thank you so much, all three of you, for joining us.
Sollee: Thanks for having [us]. This is a huge thing for us. I’m a huge fan of what you do, so thank you so much.
Miller: The Portland band The Builders and The Butchers. We heard Ryan Sollee, the songwriter and lead singer, on guitar. Matt Radtke was on viola. Harvey Tumbleson on banjo. They just released their seventh album. It’s called “No Tomorrow.”
If you guys don’t mind giving us some instrumental music to go out on, that would be fantastic. They have a record-release show at The Aladdin Theatre in Portland tomorrow night with members of the Portland Cello Project.
[Instrumental music by The Builders and The Butchers playing]
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