The Builders and the Butchers

The Hunt is On: Record Store Day 2015

Record Store Day is on Saturday—the best day of the year to stand in line and fight over rare vinyl releases while supporting local businesses. This year, Portland record stores will stock hundreds of RSD exclusive releases, including some local treats.

In October, Blitzen Trapper recorded Neil Young’s Harvest in full at the Doug Fir. Score the live album Live Harvest on Saturday. Listen to their take on “Heart of Gold” before you buy the record.

Eyelids, Portland’s psych-pop super group, are releasing a split 7” with The Phoenix Foundation, produced by Peter Buck.

Pickathon partnered with Easy Sound Recording Company to release a split 7” of Those Darlins and Diarrhea Planet (both from Nashville) recorded live at the festival last summer. Preview the tracks here.

Jackpot Records is releasing a limited edition record of short-lived Portland band No. 2’s No Memory. Mixed by Elliott Smith, the album is “the missing link between the end of Heatmiser and the beginning of Elliott Smith’s major label debut,” according to Jackpot.

In store performances abound throughout the day. Everyday Music on the Westside will feature DJ sets by members of Typhoon, Modern Kin, Laura Veirs, Summer Cannibals, and more, plus performances by Edna Vasquez, Ryan Sollee (Builders and the Butchers), Sam Coomes (Quasi), The Shivas, The Ghost Ease, The Ganders, and the Dandy Warhols. See the full schedule here.

Tender Loving Empire will host an officially unofficial RSD party at their SE Hawthorne store featuring Genders, Ali Muhareb, and Run On Sentence.

Jackpot will pour you free coffee if you peruse their shop or stop in for their DJ sets.

Across town, Music Millennium will host Portland punk legends, Dead Moon.

Make sure you check out early opening times for your favorite record store, and study the release list ahead of time.

Happy Record Store Day!

-Zibby Pillote

April 13, 2015    

Old Age, Tiburones and the Builders and the Butchers at Doug Fir 1.10

Doug Fir will be different this Friday night. You'll be stepping deep down below for sound heaven. Tiburones and Old Age are opening for the Builders and the Butchers, delivering sensory excursions one after another. Tiburones will give you all that is charmingly unbalanced, thriving folk music with a dust of a dangerous underground. This is perfect music to play while faking your own death and hosting a wild summer picnic simultaneously. Initially being Luz Elena Mendoza of Y La Bamba and Nick Delffs of the Shaky Hands and Death Songs, the collection and creation has grown to an amazing 5-piece destined to expand your sound experience. Old Age, another intimate Portland secret, imply mental torture with the mention of endless local weather and heartfelt vocals. Meet the soundtrack to your new year. - Colette Pomerleau

January 08, 2014    

Guitars and Grimm's Fairy Tales

Brandy was lucky enough to take a trip to The Enchanted Forest amusment park last weekend to experience a local music festival known as The Great Idea. Roller coasters, characters from fairy tales and rockin' bands made this an all ages day of fun that lived up to it's name. Read the article here. 

*Photo by Joe Preston

August 15, 2013    

Guitars and Grimm's Fairy Tales

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Guitars and Grimm's Fairy Tales

- by Brandy Crowe

 

You may have noticed it If you have driven through Salem on the Interstate 5 corridor. It is a colorful and strange attraction, with Humpty Dumpty waving to the highway, plaster cottages and a roller coaster jutting above a tuft of forest-The Enchanted Forest.

 

So here is a thought. Here’s a really good idea. What if, for one day in the height of summer, among all of the destination music festivals, one took place in an amusement park. What if you invite the best of  local bands, and have them play throughout the park with dwarves, blue fairies, and roller coasters!

 

And so you have it, creative minds made it happen, and simply dubbed the festival “The Great Idea”.

 

This year was the fourth incarnation of the festival, and included 22 acts among the 8 acre spread. The festival is unique, as it boasts itself as a music event for all ages. Many people rocking out have fond memories of visiting the park when they were kids, and this event provided a great opportunity for families to share music and dancing with their youngsters.  

 

I arrived with three girls in tow, and we went inside the gingerbread house, where eerie dolls portrayed the story of Hansel and Gretel. Hansel was in a cage. Most of the fairy tale attractions are are a bit dated, mannequins hang dead-eyed out of windows and softly speak stories. As Lone Madrone played a brushy western sound in the trees, we proceeded to black-lit caverns where animatronic dwarves were harvesting jewels. Two guys behind us were giggling hysterically and completely happy, I’m pretty sure they were on mushrooms.

 

The entire park is indeed, nestled in a beautiful forest, completely shaded, and full of mazes and slides. Throughout the day, different bands played simultaneously in different areas. The music had started with L’Orchestra D'Incroyable and the sunny sounds of Axolotl Daydream. Rllrbll rocked out in Western Town, and in The Village, children twirled to the acoustic twinkling and impressive harmonies of The Weather Machine, right in front of where those “four and twenty”  blackbirds in a pie pitched their demo during snack time. We explored up and down the hill,  catching one of my favorite rock sets from an energetic band called Phantom! (The ! is part of the name, and I can’t find them. If anyone can send me links to the music, help a girl out and comment below).

 

The Jolly Roger portion of the park, ended up not as a pirate themed area, as I had imagined, but rather a bizarro Holocene with experimental solo sets. First there was A.C. Jenson of Rollie Fingers, who somehow pushes huge guitar riffs as electronic recordings while manning a drum kit. Then there was Joe Preston, AKA Thrones. Thrones calls his work visceral, and you can see him plotting and accessing his moves on stage. The bass and feedback are dark and decimating, they radiate outwards, but there are also silent and internal spaces.  Everyone in the room was transfixed, and shadows were cast from the lights of the dancing water fountains.

 

Hearing And And And as we climbed the hill to The Big Timber Log Ride was surreal. We splashed down and went to the Haunted House, which looks truly spooky. For whatever reason Abe Lincoln was hanging out near one of my favorite brewers, Gilgamesh, who was on hand to pour their delicious beers. Sons of Huns thrashed on a stage decorated as “Geppetto’s Toy Shop”, and everyone was sitting down, which was...different. My daughter was briefly entranced by the pixie-like quality of Lost Lockets' Kaetlin Kennedy, and there was a lot of dancing, and quite a few kids were bouncing on shoulders during the headlining set of The Builders and the Butchers.

 

The drive home to Portland was accompanied with rainbows for miles, punctuating the enchanting experience.


 

 

  

Lone Madrone    

The Weather Machine    

And And And    

  
 
 

 

August 15, 2013    

The Builders and the Butchers Record Release at Mississippi Studios 6.22

The Builders and the Butchers, often celebrated for their good ol' ramshackle, gravediggin' folk may just prove themselves even more moon-shiny and raucous this time around, as "Dirt in the Ground" sonically proves itself so. This band of merry wild men – fronted by the ever-artful squealer and boisterous shouter, Ryan Sollee – have a habit of fructifying thwacking knee slaps and pounding feet during their rollicking hootenannys. If that's not reason enough to come out to Mississippi Studios this Saturday to celebrate TB&TB's newest, Western Medicine, and shout-a-long, junkyard style like you know you're itchin' to, you should probably just stay home. - Morgan Talkington

June 21, 2013