Decemberists' own Colin Meloy has announced that he will continue his series of children's books with the next iteration to arrive in summer 2017. The next installation is entitled The Golden Thread and will be a picture biography about the late folk archetype, Pete Seeger.
Illustrated by Carson Ellis, his wife and visual collaborator on his previous children's book series Wildwood, the scheduled release remains ambiguous but will come out next year via Balzer + Bray.
According to Digital Trends:
"The Golden Thread will be a kid-friendly biography of the life of Pete Seeger. In it, Meloy will celebrate Seeger's music and social activism, serving up one of the most important socio-political songwriters of the past century for consumption by young and impressionable minds."
Alongside this next endeavor, Meloy is also writing a novel about a different kind of life. As he described to Publishers Weekly, the book is a "middle grade novel about an impressionable young American who falls in with a ragtag group of pickpockets in 1961 France."
While this might consume most of Mr. Meloy's time, his inspirations for music do derive from texts, too. It's been noted that the tune "Calamity Song," written for the Decemberists 2011 album, The King is Dead, was inspired by David Foster Wallace.
Meloy is also a champion of folk music, citing his performance at the Another Day, Another Time: Celebrating the Music of "Inside Llewyn Davis" premiere at Town Hall in which he performed "Blues Run the Game." In the performance documentary (on YouTube), Meloy cites the importance of American folk music and how it shaped his, and most of his peers', sonic quality in their music.
While you await the release of Meloy's next children's book, check out that "Blues Run the Game" performance below with an added narrative by the musician himself.
