The Builders and the Butchers
American folk rock band
The Builders and The Butchers are a folk rock band based in Portland, Oregon, United States. It is fronted by singer/guitar player Ryan Sollee. The other members of the band are Willy Kunkle (bass guitar, vocals, percussion), Justin Baier (drums, backup vocals, percussion), Ray Rude (drums, piano, clarinet, backup vocals, percussion), and Harvey Tumbleson (mandolin, banjo, guitar, vocals, percussion).
The band's debut self-titled album was released in 2007 by Bladen County Records.
To date, the band has six full-length albums, two live albums and two EP splits.
History
The Builders and The Butchers formed on October 31, 2005. They came together because "a lot of bands were all breaking up around the same time, and we were looking to get into something new—so it just worked out."
Each member is originally from Anchorage, Alaska and migrated separately to Portland, Oregon to start a career in music.
Initially they called themselves "The Funeral Band", performing in the streets and outside of music venues. The name eventually changed to The Builders and The Butchers, "for no other reason than it was the only name all five members liked." The first year of acoustic performances were mostly street shows until opening for the experimental band Man Man in 2006. "We very slowly started plugging [our instruments] in." Sollee says, but the group had to figure out how to use its two percussionists on stage.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 2, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q7720534. VIAF identifies the subject as 131754383. The Library of Congress control number is no2009077125. 4 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2007, 2005 and 2006.
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This entry incorporates text from “The Builders and the Butchers” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.