You're listening to Song Exploder, where musicians take apart their songs and piece by piece, tell the story of how they were made. I'm Rishikesh Herway.

The Decemberists are Grammy-nominated five-piece band from Portland, Oregon. They released their first album in 2001, and since then they've put out seven more, including the 2018 album, I'll be your girl.

In this episode, Singer and Guitarist Colin Maloy breaks down the Decemberist song once in my life. From his first demo to the final tracks they recorded in the studio.

My name is Colin Maloy, and I play in the band The Decemberists.

I was, you know, in one of those moments between songs, not really feeling great about stuff I was working on. I felt blocked, frustrated, not really feeling like anything was coming.

You know, you get to those moments like, I'll never write another song again, like I've tapped out, that's all I have in me. And often I'll find if I'm stuck.

You remind yourself that you just need an in-breath, and an in-breath can be watching a movie, reading a book, going for a walk, you know, just somehow taking in rather than putting out.

So I decided I'd try to learn a Richard Thompson song to try to receive something and see what it creates.

It was Vincent Black Lightning.

I love the song, and I wanted to learn it. It's basically the story of like a motorcycleist who falls in love with this girl, Redhaired Molly, but he's like an outlaw.

It's a great song, but I just could not play the thing. It's kind of a fingerstyle thing, and we are tuning. So I spent most of the time just trying to figure out what the tuning was.

And so instead of learning the song, I just started strumming and moving my fingers around in this tuning, and the chord progression came out.

This is just an iPhone recording. It felt really cool to me, really ringing open chords, open strings, and then the chord changed really simple. And then I just started singing along to it.

But it's kind of nonsense, sort of embarrassing to you, wasn't it?

That what if I think was the initial idea, and then free association off of that once in my life came out the next time around.

Oh, it's once in my life.

So I was really attached to the chord progression, and then that melody line over the top, it felt like there was something there to work out with.

I think one of the best descriptions of songwriting is in Winnie the Pooh, and I discovered it reading it to my kid. He's making up a song Winnie the Pooh does, and he's going along, and it's got a full verse, and he gets stuck, and he tells himself,

Well, what if I just go back and started again, and maybe I'll trick myself into whatever word will come next, and then I'll have a song.

And actually, I could have rang about because I feel like that's how I tend to work. I'll just repeat something over and over until I find myself accidentally going into the next line.

So I think that's the only obstacle really, and often if you remove that obstacle, you'll land somewhere kind of interesting.

I guess if you told me to sing once in my life, you know, as a prompt, I would say, oh God, if something would just go right.

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