Colin Meloy
Colin Meloy
Colin Patrick Henry Meloyis an American musician, singer-songwriter and author best known as the frontman of the Portland, Oregon, indie folk rock band The Decemberists. In addition to vocals, he performs with an acoustic guitar, 12-string acoustic guitar, electric guitar, bouzouki, harmonica and percussion instruments...
ProfessionFolk Singer
Date of Birth5 October 1974
CityHelena, MT
song hurt writing
When I first started writing these kind of songs that would eventually become Decemberists songs, I was writing them because I knew that nobody was listening at the time and that it wouldn't hurt to challenge myself and get weirder and see if I could alienate more people
book school average
I was in school for literature, and read so many 19th century and early 20th century novels that it was hard to break out of that and read an average Jeanette Winterson book or something.
stuff novel contemporary
I like all sorts of things, not necessarily just Victorian. Even though I tend to read a lot of Victorian novels, I like a lot of contemporary stuff.
rocks stuff records
You can't really come into a concept record objectively, because you immediately associate it with Yes, stuff from the 1970s that punk rock kicked against, the pretentiousness.
style upbeat pops
Pop music has always adopted the style of marrying upbeat melodies to dour lyrics.
song guitar hunters
The jam stuff doesn't appeal to me in general. My newfound love for the Dead came from Robert Hunter and Jerry Garcia's songwriting, not the elaborate guitar solos. I'm a song person. Once it starts to break out of that structure and become loopy, it's uninteresting to me.
thinking order mainstream-culture
I have a conflicted relationship with musicals, because I think the music itself can be so horrendous. It's an industry that relies on appealing to a mainstream culture in order to survive.
song nice relief
It was a nice relief to be able to work on individual songs.