Colin Meloy at the Rio Theater 4/29

Tuesday night I took a trip with some friends down 17 to Santa Cruz to take in some music from Colin Meloy of the Decemberists, who was on the tail end of a solo tour. I had seen him a couple times at the Warfield with his band in tow, but was very excited about the idea of seeing him on his own in a more intimate setting.

The Rio Theater turned out to be that intimate setting that I was hoping for. It's a basic movie theater with roughly the first 15 rows removed from the front, creating a mini-Warfield with seats in back and some open space to stand in front of the stage. Since I had bought the tickets to get closer to the action, I took a b-line to the stage as I walked in and was able to find a spot that was about 15 feet from the mic. As my friend Jim noticed, I had trouble containing the giddiness I was feeling about being in the spot we were in. "I can't believe we'll be this close to Colin Meloy", I said.

He came out around 9 PM and launched right into "California One" on his 12 string, appropriate since the song's subject was probably a mile or two from where we stood. So we took the long drive with him and right away I was enjoying the proximity, getting a better appreciation of the effort he puts into his vocals and playing. He sounded awesome.

He followed with another familiar song, one which I can't remember right now, then addressed the audience, "Hi, I'm Collin. Did I say that yet? No? Sorry, I'm Collin" He sipped a glass of wine that had an accompanying bottle next to it and lamented that he was really lacking sleep. The talk of sleep deprivation reminded me of how I had felt 9 days earlier, coming into this same Santa Cruz at the end of The Relay, a 199 mile team-oriented race from Calistoga to the Boardwalk.

Despite his exhaustion, he had no trouble cruising through some favorites, including "The Apology Song", which he explained was written for "practical purposes" to use on a call to a friend who was in Oxford. He played "The Sporting Life", which he said was semi-autobiographical, taking him back to a soccer field in Montana, back in 1982. He played "Ocean Side" in honor of the day in Santa Cruz, then played "Cautionary Song" to address the upcoming Mother's day.

After these crowd pleasing ditties, he decided to give us a peak into some of his new stuff, which he claimed was in "an embryonic stage", but would be part of a new album that they wanted to record in the summer (hoorah!). Similar to The Crane wife, the song he belted out was of the multi-part, multi-voice variety, sounding like another masterpiece in the making. At some points he seemed to move into a hard rock mode, passionately making long single strums on his guitar. I could almost see the Decemberists around him, as he may have been imagining, assisting in bringing the number to its peak. There were some funny moments during the song where he had to pause for a moment to remember the next set of lyrics, but this didn't affect the continuity of the song. When he finished he said, "Well, this is a work in progress" . To me, the song seemed about ready to record.

In between sets he talked about how he had met Johnny Marr by chance in an Ikea in Portland. He said that he expected to run into him at some point by an overlap of their circles, but never imagined meeting him in a Swedish furniture store. He said he had two long throw pillows in the cart he was pushing.

That topic was inspired by another he then spoke about, which related to his "Colin Sings" EPs (typically 5 cover songs for one artist) that he does in conjunction with his solo tours. He had done a Morrissey EP for a previous tour, which covered songs of Marr's former band mate of The Smiths.

This led to his next song in which he brought Laura Gibson, his cover act, onto the stage to perform "Cupid" (part of his current Collin Sings Sam Cooke set) with him. We had caught 3-4 songs from her previously and had a neutral reaction to her, agreeing that she appeared to lack some self esteem on stage, being perhaps a little too self deprecating. Her songs also seemed a little too melancholy overall. She redeemed herself in this duet though, which I thought was one of the highlights of the night. They both gave the recognizable song a pleasing flavor. As well as Colin Meloy does on his own, I could have heard a few more duets and would have been very happy.

He then said it was time to move from "make out" songs to ones of cold blooded murder. So he played the Shankhill Butchers and Valencia from The Crane Wife. I could hear someone rattling their keys for the first one, which he didn't seem to notice.

The encore included Billy Liar, Odalisque (which he played on request), and ended with one of my favorites, Mariner's Revenge. For the part played by the song's protagonist's mother, he enlisted the help of the audience, which adequately, though comically, accommodated him. I was impressed by the number of people that knew the words. He tried to get us to simulate the death of this mother by falling to the ground, but I had the feeling that everyone was about as stiff as I was from standing. I knew that once I went down, which was one challenge, I'd have a tough time getting back up. Just like at the Warfield, where he finished with the same song, he had us scream at the point that the whale shows up in the song (His lead guitarist actually wore a whale costume at the Warfield). It was a great song to end the night with.

Overall, the experience was the one I had been hoping for as he put on a great show. I'll be looking forward to more music at the Rio Theater, which turned out to be a nice little venue (and ended up being packed, which surprised me when I turned around at the end). We also found a pretty good taqueria down the street called Taqueria Santa Cruz II

For additional reading, here's a nice article from a Madison site on his tour: http://www.madison.com/tct/entertainment/stories/282650

One funny footnote...One thing Colin Meloy calls attention to is that when he tunes his guitar, he stands on his tippy toes for some reason. He said that it might be mentioned in his wikipedia entry, which it wasn't until the next morning (check out the footnote...and no, it wasn't me). :-)