We’ve Got A File On You features interviews in which artists share the stories behind the extracurricular activities that dot their careers: acting gigs, guest appearances, random internet ephemera, etc.

Colin Meloy is a raconteur. The music he’s made for over two decades as bandleader of the Decemberists has long been anchored by narrative-based songwriting, the subject matter of which can range from first-person accounts of a soldier in the French Foreign Legion to embarrassing moments in childhood competitive sports. Even as the group’s sound continued evolving from its origins as a tuneful indie-pop group into something more heavily influenced by progressive rock and eventually back toward more prominent hooks and concise songwriting, Meloy’s character-driven songwriting has been a constant, breathing life into each song through the lungs of its protagonist.

The Decemberists’ new album As It Ever Was, So It Shall Be Again feels, more than any other album, like a career summary of everything the Decemberists are and have been, juxtaposing stripped-down folk and buoyant pop songs against lengthy monoliths on a 68-minute double album that ends with a 20-minute retelling of the legend of Joan of Arc. Yet in the past decade, Meloy has also looked beyond music to flex his muscles as a storyteller, writing three children’s novels, which are being adapted into a feature film next year, as well as working on his debut adult novel, which will likewise see release in 2025.

In a lengthy Zoom call, I spoke to Meloy about the Decemberists’ latest album; his various fiction writing projects, including his upcoming novel Cascadia, as well as his children’s book series Wildwood with illustrations from Carson Ellis (who is also his spouse); appearing on sitcoms and late-night shows; Hüsker Dü and the Replacements; progressive rock; and more.

As It Ever Was, So It Shall Be Again (2024)

It’s been six years since the last album, 2018’s I’ll Be Your Girl. That’s the longest interval between Decemberists albums to date. Obviously you’ve had a lot going on — what was the catalyst for getting back to work on a new album?

MELOY: I’ve been kind of collecting material over the course of those six years, and there’s some stuff that had been around since the last record. There’s always material hanging around. I often think that you don’t quite know — there’s always a last burst before you know you’re ready to make a record, and even a couple songs, like new songs, will suddenly cast light on stuff you’ve already done and give it context, and make it feel like it has a place. That’s sort of what happened here. We have these songs, and they all sort of felt like they’re floating in their own miasma, and then once there’s this blush of songwriting in late ’22, early ’23, I felt it was all making sense.

It’s a big album — a double album — and there’s a lot of material here. Did you imagine something this ambitious from the beginning?

MELOY: I didn’t really know. I had some core songs I thought were strong. And then started piecing together demos and stuff that I was collecting, and finishing things. And I mean, that’s often the case with how it works. Fragments of songs, at least for me, that just never felt right in their day when you kind of put pen to paper kind of feel more viable, or you need to step away from them for a while and then you’re easily able to finish them in a way you couldn’t before. In the early days of the Decemberists, it was just song-song-song, let’s make a record. Now there’s a lot of half-written songs between each of the album-making processes, and some of them turn into something. But it just feels like a very different songwriting process now than it was 20 years ago. We did end up having something like 22 demos that we were initially looking at. Then the first days of [producer] Tucker [Martine] and I working together, we managed to whittle it down to 15 that we should focus on.

It feels like each of the four sides has its own unique, separate character. Is that by design?

MELOY: That’s the design, yeah. It’s funny. I wanted to swing big and make something ambitious. It seemed like the right statement for us at this time, so making a proper double album, like 70 minutes, and it’s not a concept record by any stretch, but it does have a very deliberate structure. Part of that was the sequencing and designing it around the four sides of the LP. And for that reason, I think of my favorite double records of all time. One of them is Zen Arcade by Hüsker Dü, and each of those sides has a distinct flavor. The first side is a kind of introductory palette, the second side is all anger and rage, and the third side is almost sort of folk-pop and then the fourth side gets really psychedelic. So that’s the model in a way.

The album ends with “Joan In The Garden” which is the longest song by the Decemberists yet. How did that come about?

MELOY: it goes back to just wanting to do something, not necessarily retelling the story of Joan of Arc, but finding things inside that story that are interesting and universal. And I had read Lidia Yuknavitch’s Book Of Joan, which is a totally batshit retelling of a kind of Joan of Arc story. But more like what about that story spoke to Lidia and what’s sort of universal about it. With this song, I knew it was going to be long, I don’t know how long, but it needed time to develop and breathe. The first two sections were the first ones that came, and I knew they wanted to be something longer, and then the last section is kind of based on the riff of the second and then while we were making it, I did feel like it needed something sizable. What I think we were trying to go for, is hallucinatory revelation and creating this kind of psychedelic sound bath, as a way to convey that feeling to the listener.

It’s kind of a return to the prog elements that have been a part of Decemberists albums in the past.

MELOY: It’s funny. We never set out to be a prog band, and for a moment I think that was maybe how we were identified, but I think of us as being more of a pop songcraft kind of band. But you know, I think our dabbles in genre led us pretty far afield at times. That’s what we like to do. The band is able to do it, I like writing in that style, why not go for it?

“The Mariner’s Revenge Song” (2005)

This song became a big live favorite with fans over the years. You’ve performed the song with a big whale prop that ends up swallowing the band. How did this more elaborate staging of the performance come about?

MELOY: It was all really spontaneous. Nothing was deliberate. We had the song, this sort of theatrical 12-minute-long song, and had no idea it was going to work on stage or how people would respond. And I think the first couple performances, if you go back, are pretty straight. It’s just the song. But there was this moment where we had everyone in the studio screaming as they’re being swallowed, so we thought we should get the crowd to do that, and so we needed to signal the people, and we needed to set up the signal, and it just grew and became this beast that was a 20-minute thing, on any given night, and that we were expected to do every night. And we did for a time, but now less and less, for everyone’s sake. If you’re a Decembeirsts fan, you’ve probably heard that song more than you care to count.

It kind of took on a life of its own outside the band. There are a lot of fan videos on YouTube where people have made animations to go with the song. There’s even a cover of the song by a band at a Renaissance Faire.

MELOY: Oh, I can only imagine.

Have you seen any of them?

MELOY: I think I’ve seen some of the animation ones. I haven’t delved too deep.

Pre-Decemberists Band Tarkio (1996-1999)

Tarkio was the band you were in before starting up the Decemberists. And you were still in Montana at the time, if I’m not mistaken. This was well before moving to Portland?

MELOY: Yeah, I was just finishing up school at University of Montana and started that band, I want to say in 96, 97, and yeah, we were a local band. And we had designs, I think, to try to be a more national band. We toured regionally, played Seattle and Portland, but that’s as far as we got. As we made our record in Seattle and tried to get label interest, it was sort of no dice. I think there was this thought that maybe we could be a band out of Missoula. Like Built To Spill — they’re a Boise band. I don’t know what it is about Montana, but it’s hard. You’re so far away. Boise is a little closer to the major metropolitan areas. But in Missoula, it’s 10 hours to get to Seattle. It felt very isolated and everyone else was moving onto other things. There was a brief moment where I was trying to convince the whole band to move to San Francisco or Portland, and everyone demurred, so I was on my own.

Moving to Portland seems like it changed everything.

MELOY: Yeah, it was a big move. I needed to get out of Missoula. I didn’t feel like sticking with Tarkio in Missoula. I was either going to be a baker all my life or be in the academic world. Which I kind of felt like I was anyway, but in Portland I felt like maybe I still had a shot at a music career. Not that Portland was necessarily that much better, but it just felt like a bigger and more vibrant scene. More places to play, more musicians to collaborate with. It was a big shift, and I felt like I had made these connections from us playing in Portland and then hosting some of the bands we had met on tour in Missoula, but had a hard time getting people to return my phone calls once I was here. So I played open mics and it was really starting from scratch, and building from there. It was a whole lot of luck to get through that.

Colin Meloy Sings EPs: Morrissey (2005), Shirley Collins (2006), Sam Cooke (2008), and The Kinks (2013)

You’ve released four solo covers EPs since 2005, each focusing on a specific artist. Even though it began with Morrissey, did you have plans to do the others when it began?

MELOY: Those were born out of — I was doing a solo tour in 2005. My first solo tour, playing little teeny clubs and just getting out there is something I’ve always liked doing. And I felt like I needed something, some kind of merch item. A tour-only merch EP seemed like a cool thing to do, and something I was able to do very easily is to record a bunch of Morrissey covers at home. Those sold out and it was a neat package we did with Stumptown printers and Carson did the design for. So it just felt like it set a precedent, that each time I did a solo tour, I had to do a new EP of cover songs. So four solo tours, and each one had its own covers EP.

Wildwood (2011); Under Wildwood (2013); Wildwood Imperium (2015)

The first installment of the Wildwood children’s book series was released in 2011 and has since yielded two more books in the series. From the beginning, did you envision this as being as epic a series as it turned out to be?

MELOY: I knew it was going to be a really involved story, and it really grew out of this project that Carson and I had been working on together in 2001. Even though we didn’t have any prospects and we were working service industry jobs — I was doing open mics and she wasn’t really doing illustrations, she was painting. But we wanted to collaborate on something, so we developed this folkloric story ostensibly for children, but looking back, it’s totally inappropriate for kids. [Laughs] Then we put that away, Decemberists started taking off and she started her own career doing editorial and children’s books illustrations, so we thought, “Ah, now is the time we should do this.” So we went and looked back at that manuscript and even gave it to her agent and said, “What do you think?” And he was like, “I don’t think so, but I love the idea of you doing something together.” But the general concept of Wildwood came about and we ended up using a lot of the ideas and concepts of that initial project and turned them into this story. And it was always going to be pretty big in scope.

Did the success of it surprise you?

MELOY: Yeah, I continue to be surprised by it. Some of that initial buzz probably came out of a time when the Decemberists were enjoying that initial success and people were interested in what I’d do in that world, but I’m surprised that it does have that staying power. I suppose because books last. Records do too, but especially with kids’ books, there’s always a new generation of readers looking for books, and for librarians and parents to give them those books, it’s really neat.

It’s also been adapted into a movie, which is due for release in 2025. How much involvement did you have in the production?

MELOY: It’s actually been in development since before the books came out. It’s, I don’t even know how many years, 15 years, and we have been kept in the loop, certainly, all along and given opportunities to submit feedback and stuff. I’ve seen drafts of screenplays and given notes, and I’m even doing some music for it. I’m as involved in it as I’d like to be. I don’t want to micromanage them. It’s a Laika [Studios] movie, it’s not a Colin Meloy movie, and they need to tell the story that they need to tell. But it’s in good hands, so it’s nice to just stand back and let it be the thing it is. But I’m glad to be involved.