Concert: Colin Meloy

The Crystal Ballroom turned 100 years old on the 21st. To celebrate, they had 100 nights of music and events leading up to the big birthday party on the 21st featuring Colin Meloy doing a solo set.
When I got to Ringler's pub next to the Crystal to wait for doors to open, there were balloons and parts hats at every table. Many people had no idea why, but it made me even more excited for the evening of music to come. I met some kids and one of their father's who had come from Bend for the show.

Colin Meloy set off on his US solo tour in November of 2013 with a month and a half break until his west coast tour leg. I had been tracking what his setlist would look like though the website setlist.fm where I could see what songs he played at the various venues throughout the tour. He changed it up a fair amount, but played Engine Driver into Bus Mall, Crane Wife 1&2, and Crane Wife 3 nearly every night.

As I got to the third level where the actual ballroom was, there were tables and tables full of cupcakes. I hurriedly grabbed one at random and secured my spot in the front. The one I ended up grabbing was a lemon poppy seed cupcake that was delicious!

Before the opening act, a representative of the Crystal came onstage and rattled off a long list of people who have played at the Crystal, and why the place was so special. Then almost the entire staff came onstage and two of the security guards brought up a giant cake and the entire audience sang happy birthday.

Then John Roderick played his set. He had opened for the Decemberists ten years previous so it was special for him to be playing with Colin again. His music was good. He reminded me of a sort of cross between Counting Crows vocals and a Guster sound to his songs.

Then Colin Meloy came out to the roars and cheers of his hometown fans. He played Hazards Of Love part 1, and then explained afterwards that the muffled shout that can be heard at the end of the song was in fact, Chris Funk shouting out the name of a sandwich played in reverse. Mystery solved! I had always been curious as to what the hell that was.

He played a nice mix of old and new songs. He mentioned the struggles of trying to get his son to eat his breakfast in a quick song called "Hank Eat Your Oatmeal" which turned into Calamity Song. He played an old song called Tristan & Isolde from his former band called Tarkio. At the encore he played a song that wasn't on his setlist called Record Year (which incidentally is my all time favorite Decemberists song), because someone in the back of the crowd shouted it out. I'm very appreciative of that man, whoever he was. However, Colin hadn't played it in so long that he kept forgetting the words, but the girl next to me and I supplied him with corrections when needed which he seemed to appreciate.

There were two new songs called Philomena and Better, which Colin said were new Decmeberists songs that were in the works as the band were in the studio again. Hurray! Before he played Philomena he prefaced it with saying he named the song before the movie with the same title came out, and that the song is rather lude and now all he can think of is Dame Judi Dench when he sings this particular song.

It was an excellent show, and I snagged another cupcake on my way out. There were quite a few left over which I can only assume is due to gluten intolerance because they were damn good cupcakes.

Leftover cupcakes

The one and only setlist that was onstage that I managed to snag

I've never seen the stage so empty