The Decemberists: An interview with Jenny Conlee

Posted on Sept. 17, 2009, at 1:39 a.m.

Jenny Conlee, keyboard and accordion player for indie folk-rock group The Decemberists, was able to talk to The Maine Campus by phone from way out in Portland, Ore., about the upcoming show.

The Maine Campus: What can fans expect to see on Friday?

Jenny Conlee: We are not going to be doing “The Hazards of Love” as we have been doing. We have been doing the entire record front to back, but the two gals Becky [Stark] and Shara [Worden], who are the other two female voices on the record, are not available for these couple dates. Probably a couple songs off the record, maybe a lot of Decemberists favorites.

MC: What makes a great Decemberists show?

JC: I think it’s about the energy — if we’re feeling good and we’re having fun. It’s fun for us to do something new so it feels fresh, and then do some old favorites so the crowd gets into you.

MC: How much can we expect to hear off of “The Hazards of Love?”

JC: I can guarantee that you won’t hear any of the songs that the girls sing on. You might hear “The Rake Song,” which is just Colin [Meloy], bass and drums, and then Chris Funk and I play auxiliary drum parts, so that one’s very doable as a five-piece. We sometimes do “Wager All.” Sometimes we’ll do “Hazards of Love 1.”

MC: What made you guys decide to make “Hazards of Love” a rock opera?

JC: Colin, who writes the songs, was in the process of writing a musical that he’d been commissioned for. [One idea he had] was for a folk opera or folk-rock opera that was based on some typical motifs that are common in British folk music. Margaret is a common name for a heroine, and William is a very common name for the hero. When it came to be what it was, it wasn’t very stageable, so he thought it would live better in a more vague rock opera sense instead of trying to stage the musical like it was supposed to go onto Broadway or something. When we got to doing it, it seemed like those big rock sounds seemed to lend themselves to it. It’s definitely drawn from the 1960s and ’70s when rock was sort of that raw, riffy, kind of blues-oriented music.

MC: What’s your favorite part of a show?

JC: I like playing “Repaid,” which is a fun number that Shara sings, and I get to play a nice, classical harpsichord part at the beginning, and then we go to this rock part which is great. And I get to hold down the rhythm with a Beatles-esque kind of piano part which is really fun to play. “Anon Water” is my favorite tune, but that is difficult for me to play. I have this accordion part that just sits there, pulse through the whole thing on 16th note, which gets to be tiresome during the show. I get in some pain even though I love the sound of it.

MC: I heard you are obsessed with Star Wars. You want to tell me about that?

JC: I’m not totally obsessed, I just enjoy it. I have, since I was a kid, enjoyed the movies and had some fun collecting Star Wars characters. People buy them for me, which is kind of fun. Colin just gave me this little Max Rebo character: He’s the keyboardist from Jabba’s palace. Colin collected Star Wars stuff when he was a kid, too.

MC: Do you bring any Star Wars or John Williams [the composer for Star Wars] influences to The Decemberists?

JC: Oh, I don’t know if that’s true. John Williams just basically stole directly from [composer] Gustav Holst, who wrote a series of pieces called “The Planets.” So if I steal from anyone, I steal from Holst.

MC: I know you guys have been on The Colbert Report a few times. Can you tell me about your relationship with him?

JC: Well, it first happened a couple years ago when Colbert was doing a contest for his audience — it was green screen competition. And we had done the same thing. We made a music video in front of a green screen and challenged our fans to make their own video. So, Colbert heard about that and was like, “You’re riding my coattails,” which is one of his segments. His people wrote to us, and either Colin or Chris wrote back and said, “If you wanna get mad at us, you’re gonna have to challenge us to a guitar duel.” So then Colbert was like, “Yay, I’ll take your challenge.” So he had Chris, our guitar player on, and they had “Guitarmageddon.” Since that we’ve always tried to be on the show, because it’s a great show; a lot of our fans watch it. He doesn’t have a lot of music so it’s a special event when he does and he happened to allow us to play on the show this last spring, which we thought was really flattering. He was very sweet. He said that he actually is a fan of the band, which is not usually the case when you play those late-night shows.

MC: Is Stephen Colbert a cool guy in person?

JC: He seems really mellow. I mean he came up to us backstage and said, “When you’re here on my show, I’m Stephen Colbert and I’m an egotistical maniac. I don’t care about you; I don’t care about your band.” Basically, setting it up like, “Don’t be offended, because I’m gonna be an asshole to you during the show.” But he came back afterward, and we took some pictures with him, talked for a little while. He seemed like a real genuine, smart, cool dude.

MC: Anything else you’d like to add?

JC: No, but I’m excited to come to Bangor, which I’ve never been to before.

Campus Currents: The Decemberists