Decemberists fan gets invitation to a dream

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This article was published 20/01/2015 (3885 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

When Jeremy Sawatzky tweeted at the frontman of one of his favourite bands, he didn’t expect a reply – let alone an invitation to sing on a new song.

But that’s exactly what happened when the 32-year-old Winnipegger reached out to Colin Meloy of the Grammy-nominated Portland indie-rock outfit the Decemberists back in August.

Sawatzky can be heard as part of the background choir on the song The Singer Addresses His Audience, the first track on the Decemberists’ seventh studio album, What a Terrible World, What a Beautiful World, out today via Captiol Records.

The opportunity came about like this: Sawatzky was in Portland on a trip with his fiancé Kate, and casually tweeted “my primary goal/wish for the next three days in Portland is to somehow cross paths with @colinmeloy. #bigfan #notastalker.”

A few hours later, when he was back in a Wi-Fi zone, he noticed he had a notification from Meloy. “I felt like my tweet was tongue in cheek, so I was expecting some kind of joke,” he says. “He’s a clever guy.”

Instead, Sawatzky was confronted with the following: “how’s your singing voice?”

That gave him pause.

“I thought, ‘OK, well, what on Earth does this mean?’ Maybe they have, like, a secret karaoke night or something,” Sawatzky recalls with a laugh. “Just the fact he sent a reply, I was like a little kid. I don’t want to think of myself as a fanboy who geeks out about this kind of thing, but I was freaking out.”

He spent a half-hour crafting a clever response. “I was trying to figure out what to say back to sound like I’m playing it cool,” he says. He came up with this: “Don’t want to brag, but I sang tenor in my Mennonite high school choir. Need an extra voice at practice this week?”

As it turns out, Sawatzky wasn’t too far off. Meloy direct-messaged Sawatzky, mentioning that he was putting together a choir for one of the songs on the Decemberists’ new album and, if Sawatzky was interested, he was welcome to join. He supplied an address and a promise of free pizza. “As if he had to provide an incentive for me,” Sawatzky says, laughing.

There was a small moment of panic, however; Sawatzky says he felt the need to disclose that the high school choir he sang for was an elective choir that anyone could sign up for. “I just said, ‘I just want you to know that I’m not actually a singer, I’m not musically inclined, I like to do karaoke.’ I wanted to make very clear to him that I didn’t want to mess it up.” Meloy assured him that it would be fine.

Until he was face to face with the man himself, Sawatzky still believed he was maybe the victim of a very elaborate prank somehow engineered by his friends in Winnipeg. “There was part of me that didn’t completely believe it was going to happen,” he says. “I tried to be as calm and cool as possible, but I think I came off a little fanboyish, talking to Colin about when he came to Winnipeg for folk fest (Meloy played a solo set on the mainstage in 2013) and asking what the new album was going to sound like. He was very generous and accommodating. I didn’t get the sense he regretted his decision to invite me.

“I was nervous going in. What is this going to be like? I don’t want to mess this up. I don’t want to hurt the process. What if he’s really demanding? But he was so kind and warm and light and encouraging. It was so much fun.”

Sawatzky discovered the Decemberists a decade ago, when a friend put a copy of the band’s 2005 album, Picaresque, in his hands. Meloy’s bookish brand of indie rock – with songs largely rooted in folklore and history – resonated with him. “Right away, I thought it was fantastic. I like the way they would weave narratives in a song and tell stories. It was very whimsical and lyrically rich. It wasn’t a guy singing about his life problems or heartaches; he was telling stories.”

The Decemberists made their major-label debut with Capitol on 2006’s critically acclaimed The Crane Wife. Since then, their profile has continued to rise; in 2011, the band scored an unlikely No. 1 record with The King is Dead, which was nominated for a Grammy. Suddenly, the band was everywhere, from late-night talk shows to cameos on Parks and Recreation and The Simpsons. (On the latter, Meloy famously asked the students of Krabappel’s class, “Now who wants to learn a song about press gangs and infanticide!?”)

“That was when I could really say to people, ‘Have you heard of the Decemberists?’ and they had,” Sawatzky says.

What a Terrible World, What a Beautiful World has been streaming online in advance of its release, and Sawatzky has already listened to it dozens of times. He plans to buy two copies on Tuesday — one to listen to, and one to display.

The fact that his voice is on a Decemberists record still blows his mind.

“It’s just really cool to be a fan of a band and have something so peculiar lead to not just meeting the members of the band, but actually being involved in a song in a very small way,” he says. “It’s hard to put into words.”

jen.zoratti@freepress.mb.ca