Guest Blog: The Decemberists’ Nate Query on Composing with Black Prairie

I’m really a bass player, but I’m a composer, too, if not in the most typical fashion. Since I started playing bass at age 13, it’s has been my niche in music and in my community. I don’t really sing, and I never much thought of myself as a songwriter. A few years ago, however, I started an experimental acoustic band that has given me a chance to flex my songwriting muscles and be more than just a bass player.

When Black Prairie formed in 2007, part of the concept was that everyone (five of us at the time) bring songs to the group, sort of like the Strength in Numbers supergroup of the late 80’s. We played all acoustic instruments (and still do, albeit plugged in), and we spent years meeting in living rooms over coffee and pastries to write and play music.

At first, I tried to write “whole songs,” but it soon became clear that within this talented and open-minded group, it could be more exciting to bring in an idea and see what happened. Our first record, released in 2010, was a mix of songs completed before being brought to the band and songs that came to life from kernels of ideas. The album was mostly instrumental, and the collaborative nature formed a basis for all that was to come in this band.

Over the years, we have brought upon ourselves many creative challenges that have allowed our group dynamic to really blossom. Score a children’s theater piece set in the dust bowl? OK. Compose a soundtrack to a nonfiction book about wild animals on the verge of extinction? No problem. How about team up with a series of local songwriters to write and record songs for an EP? Sure. Oh,and don’t forget to put out a “normal” record every couple years to boot.

Taking on these kinds of projects forced us to put out a lot of material and gave us a chance to hone our group writing skills. For the Storm in the Barn, an Oregon Children’s Theater piece based on Matt Phelan’s graphic novel, we wrote a lot of it from the ground up as a group of six. It sounds crazy – too many cooks in the kitchen. We learned to give and take criticism without giving or taking offense. At times, ideas would fly around the room at a dizzying speed. Often, we go so far down an experimental road, we’d all of a sudden have some insane avant-garde piece we’d have to whittle back to planet earth. But it worked, and it was fun.

It used to be easy to attribute each of our songs to a main songwriter, but on our new record, Fortune, the lines are pretty blurry. By the time we hit record, one person might have written the bridge, another a lyric change, someone else a new melody or a new arrangement.

In my other band, The Decemberists, I try to be the bass player that no one notices until he’s not there, doing my part to bring Colin Meloy’s songs to life. And I do that with other bands, too, all the time. I enjoy being a bass player, and I feel very lucky to play the music I get to play. But being part of this engine of creativity that is Black Prairie has been an exciting journey. I love being part of this team. I am still a bass player, but I’m a writer, too.