The Decemberists: Mark 20 Years This Summer

The Decemberists will mark their 20th anniversary with a summer tour.

The Twenty Years Before the Mast Tour starts July 28th in Bonner, Montana and wraps up August 22nd in Nashville. Tickets go on sale Friday. The band says, “We’ll be indulging liberally in the discography from every era of the band, from the indie to the outie, from the DIY (Do It Yourself) days to the SEDIFY (Someone Else Does It For You) days — the hits, the not-so-hits and the ones in between. Every era of Colin [Meloy’s] facial hair will be well-represented, have no fear!”

Though the band’s first EP, 5 Songs, was released in 2001, The Decemberists say their first show was in 2000 and that “a clerical error in the initial logo design listing the band’s establishment as 2001 has caused confusion for — and here we go again — nearly twenty years.”

Meanwhile Colin Meloy has a kids book being published on March 3rd.

Everybody’s Awake features words by Meloy and illustrations byShawn Harris. The publisher says it’s a read-aloud book for kids ages five to eight, and Meloy adds that it’s “ostensibly for kids but also for their adults.”

This is Meloy’s first book aimed strictly at that age group, following his young adult series The Wildwood Chronicles and the novel The Whiz Mob and the Grenadine Kid (which was written for ages 8 to 12).