Butcher Boy has existed in its current form since early 2005, but lead singer John Blain Hunt has played in various incarnations of the band since the late 1990s.

Initially, Butcher Boy didn’t have any songs; John was a resolute left-hander and could barely play guitar. But he enjoyed sending anonymous poetry to local papers under the guise of Butcher Boy in the hope of engaging the writers through their columns.

Butcher Boy was about books by George Orwell and Charles Schulz… it was about films by Bill Douglas and Robert Bresson… it was about records by Vince Guaraldi and The Smiths. Butcher Boy was about an imaginary world of woods and darkness and absolute, precise beauty. About power-cuts and candles. But Butcher Boy wasn’t really about songs. It was a little bit of sparkle between sickness and the dole.

John wrote his first proper song, called ‘Trouble And Desire’, in 1998. With John singing and playing guitar, and with Susan Vennard on piano and Andy Forrester on bass, Butcher Boy played their first show in Kilmarnock, Scotland, in December of that year. Between 1998 and 2001, John wrote over a hundred songs and played a handful of shows around Irvine in Scotland.

Towards the end of 2001, it began to feel as if Butcher Boy had served its purpose. This wasn’t through lack of ambition; there simply was never any need for ambition. Susan and Andy had moved away, and John always knew that the band had come about, and the songs had been written, out of genuine necessity. The songs had made sense of a lot of slow sadness - it was never careerism. For a while, it felt like Butcher Boy wasn’t needed any more. But with time, John realised that the songs had become friends… and it hurt to leave them. With time, it became absolutely heartbreaking to leave them.

So slowly, John put together a band to pick the songs up, and to play them as carefully and as fully and as passionately as he had always imagined them. An advert in the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama attracted Jacqui Grant and Aoife Magee. Garry Hoggan and Alison Eales came, fortuitously, through Glasgow’s National Pop League. And Basil Pieroni and Findlay Mackinnon were friends from Ayrshire days.

Butcher Boy, as it is now, rehearsed for the first time in January 2005 and played their first show together at Glasgow’s peerless Royal Air Forces Association Club on 18 February 2005. There wasn’t an immediate desire to put together a record - the main impetus was to play together, to rehearse, to create something that was worthwhile.

The band played further Glasgow shows at the Ramshorn Theatre in July 2005 where they were supported by improvisational storyteller Mike Stork, and in Glasgow’s legendary Britannia Panopticon Music Hall in September 2005, where they were supported by a magician and a Punch and Judy act. In April 2006 the band recorded four songs at CaVa Sound in Glasgow with Geoff Allan.

Briefly, they considered releasing the songs themselves as an EP. The lead song was ‘Profit In Your Poetry’, a song John had written the year before. ‘Profit In Your Poetry’ was about taking pride and sustenance from the beauty you can create, and was an attempt to encapsulate what the purpose of the band had come to be.

The band sent out copies of the songs to friends and were flattered to be asked by London club How Does It Feel To Be Loved? if one of the songs (‘Days Like These Will Be The Death Of Me’) could be included on an upcoming compilation they were curating. HDIF subsequently offered to release a full-length Butcher Boy album.

The band recorded the rest of the album with Geoff in the summer of 2006.

Butcher Boy can only write from the heart. Butcher Boy has resolute faith in pop music and pop records. And Butcher Boy finds solace knowing that cynicism and irony have no part in what they try to do.

Releases

• The Eighteenth Emergency (EP) - single, out 03/09/2007 on How Does It Feel To Be Loved?. 1 review (read/post)
• Profit in Your Poetry - album, out 12/03/2007 on How Does It Feel To Be Loved?. 1 review (read/post)
• Girls Make Me Sick - single, out 12/02/2007 on How Does It Feel To Be Loved?. 1 review (read/post)

Past events

• Sat 13 Oct at London The Social. (post review)
• Fri 13 Apr at London The Luminaire. (post review)
• RoTa, curated by Fortuna POP!, Sat 17 Mar at London Notting Hill Arts Club. (post review)
• Fri 09 Feb at London Brixton The Windmill. 1 review (read/post)

Features

• 03/04/2007: A Month In Records: March 2007

Links

• Butcher Boy : myspace

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