{"id":806283,"date":"2020-04-10T13:55:24","date_gmt":"2020-04-10T19:55:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rollingstone.com\/?p=982019"},"modified":"2020-04-10T13:55:24","modified_gmt":"2020-04-10T19:55:24","slug":"social-distancing-with-colin-meloy-of-the-decemberists-astral-weeks-sourdough-starters-and-dread","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/music-news\/social-distancing-with-colin-meloy-of-the-decemberists-astral-weeks-sourdough-starters-and-dread\/","title":{"rendered":"Social Distancing With Colin Meloy of the Decemberists: \u2018Astral Weeks,\u2019 Sourdough Starters and Dread"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/div>\n

As the world fights a pandemic, we reached out to some of our favorite artists with a few quarantine questions<\/a> about these unprecedented times. Here\u2019s what Colin Meloy<\/a> of the Decemberists<\/a> has to say.<\/p>\n

What are you doing with your unexpected time at home?<\/strong>
Some aspects of my life have not changed at all. In fact, it\u2019s sort of eerie how unchanged some parts of my life are in the midst of a global pandemic. Particularly now, when I don\u2019t have a record coming out and I\u2019m not on tour.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m working on a new novel, so I was already pretty much in isolation. There was an initial wave of book event cancellations (I have a picture book out now, called Everyone\u2019s Awake<\/em>) and a festival show canceled, but other than that, my work life has mostly remained the same.<\/p>\n

The real disruption came when schools closed and all of a sudden my wife and I were tasked with keeping up our kids\u2019 schooling. Then there\u2019s this blanket of dread that I felt surrounded by in the earliest days of the shutdown \u2014 and I was suddenly compelled to stop working on my book and I just start playing music. I think it\u2019s a kind of survival mechanism, a self-balm. Playing covers and such. Then started playing those songs on Instagram \u2014 that\u2019s weird, too.<\/p>\n

I have a complicated relationship with social media. I\u2019m not the sort of oversharer that thrives in that environment. But for whatever reason, I\u2019m excited to do these weekly Instagram shows, to post guitar tutorials and the like. I\u2019ve also started baking a lot \u2014 like a lot of people. I\u2019ve got a sourdough starter going (mostly because yeast became almost impossible to find) and I\u2019ve learned to make bagels.<\/p>\n

\n

Popular on Rolling Stone <\/h3>\n<\/p><\/div>\n
<\/blockquote>\n

What music do you turn to in times of crisis for solace and comfort, and why?<\/strong>
I think the first record I turned on, the morning after the kids\u2019 school closed and it looked like we were going to be locked down for a while, was Van Morrison\u2019s Astral Weeks<\/em>. It\u2019s my ultimate comfort record. It feels grounding to hear it. It\u2019s not that it\u2019s super chipper or anything \u2014 it has its dour moments \u2014 but it\u2019s such a sublime piece of art that it triggers something in me \u2014 some kind of hope maybe. It\u2019s the record I played for both of my kids when they were first born, the first piece of music to hit their ears. Also listening to a lot of John Prine, Bill Withers. Trying to celebrate these lives.<\/p>\n

What about books or films?<\/strong>
We\u2019ve been watching movies as a family pretty regularly, with each of us taking turns to choose. The movie has to be appropriate for everyone (two adults, a 14-year-old and a 7-year-old), so it\u2019s a lot of kid movies. I managed to get The Adventures of Baron Munchausen<\/em> in there, the Terry Gilliam film, and it was fun to watch that again after many years. I\u2019d forgotten how much that movie has informed what I do. The Decemberists, particularly the early stuff, owes a lot to that movie.<\/p>\n

Books have been huge during this time. We are all lucky that Hilary Mantel\u2019s The Mirror and the Light<\/em> made it into the world just as everything shut down. It\u2019s the third in her trilogy about Thomas Cromwell, Henry VIII\u2019s beloved counselor, and it\u2019s so good. It\u2019s so immersive. I\u2019m taking my sweet time reading it \u2014 I find myself lingering over sentences and paragraphs either because the writing is so lovely or my mind drifts to school closures and employment figures and infection rates \u2014 whichever reason, I\u2019m glad I\u2019m moving slow. It\u2019s like 1,000 pages but I wish it was five times as long. I want to read it forever. I also finished Ishiguro\u2019s Pale View of Hills<\/em>, which is so good and creepy.<\/p>\n

Anything else you want to say to your fans right now?<\/strong>
Stay strong! Stay home! Courage!<\/p>\n

via:: Rolling Stone<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As the world fights a pandemic, we reached out to some of our favorite artists with a few quarantine questions about these unprecedented times. Here\u2019s what Colin Meloy of the Decemberists has to say. What are you doing with your unexpected time at home?Some aspects of my life have not changed at all. In fact, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[98],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-806283","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-music-news"},"acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-07-14 08:58:35","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"distributor_meta":false,"distributor_terms":false,"distributor_media":false,"distributor_original_site_name":"KSMT The Mountain","distributor_original_site_url":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt","push-errors":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/806283","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=806283"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/806283\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=806283"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=806283"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=806283"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}