On Thursday, I went to see Colin Meloy, of the Decemberists, perform at the Town Hall in Manhattan. It was great watching him play, especially since it was my first concert. I still can’t believe I was in the same room as Colin Meloy. He’s just so cool! I also got to see performances by Amy Annelle and Laura Veirs, both of whom opened for Colin.
Amy Annelle, of The Places, played some pretty nice music. She said to “lower your force fields” before playing. It’s because her music’s kind of unusual and you have to listen carefully at first to enjoy it. I liked it a lot. I even went to get her autograph on during the intermission since she was standing near the place where they were selling stuff. Of course, I got the autograph on a CD by The Places.
I had heard of Laura Veirs before going to the show since I read about her on the Decemberists’ site when I heard of Colin’s tour. I’ve been a fan ever since. Her performance was nice. One thing that struck me as funny was how she “layered” stuff in some of her songs. She’d sing/play something and then it would run as a recording while she added something onto it. It was nice, though. In the middle of her performance, she told us about a friend of hers who had made a deck of cards with her face on them. 
She tried to throw the cards across the hall to people, but the cards either refused to go further than the first few rows or just turned around and went back to her. I got Laura’s new album, Year of Meteors, which is pretty nice, and I got a tshirt, which I might have to try and shrink since it’s a tiny bit bigger than what I normally wear.
It had been two hours before Colin finally came out. Everyone started clapping. He started off with a Tarkio song. He would keep cracking jokes and saying funny things the whole time. He was playing next to a table that had a skull, a sheep, and a ship on it. He said that the skull, which was named Cheryl, represented death. The sheep, whose name was Erick, with a ‘k’ but a silent ‘c’ before it, represented life. The ship, Maya Angelou, represented ships. He told us about how he had promised himself he would never write a song about having a baby but decided to write one anyway. Him and Carson Ellis, his girlfriend, are gonna be parents in about a month. 
The song was really nice and you can get it at Stereogum. A lot of the songs Colin performed were ones I didn’t know since the only Decemberists albums I have are Her Majesty The Decemberists and Picaresque. During one of them, he was playing guitar and he said, “This is where the guitar solo will be,” and started kinda humming it out. I wish I could’ve gotten his autograph, but he left through the backstage exit, so I couldn’t. I did, however, get a copy of his limited edition EP, which either him or Carson packed for me by hand.
Overall, the whole experience was great. I went with my mom because of last minute schedule changes and I actually liked it. I was able to have my mom understand what kind of music I like without explaining to her since it’s hard for me to do that.
Photo credit for the photo of Colin goes to jen c. I thought we couldn’t take in cameras, so I gave mine to my dad when he was dropping us off. I later saw that people snuck in cameras. Silly me.
