Decemberists May Write Musical with 'American Idiot' Director

With their sixth album, 'The King is Dead', released on Jan. 18, you'd think the Decemberists would have enough on their plate, but it appears the Portland five-piece will soon take on a musical.

According to frontman Colin Meloy, the idea of a Decemberists-penned musical has been around for a while. Speaking to Billboard, he explained, "People are constantly asking me to write musicals -- it's the cross that I bear. I grew up doing theatre, so in theory, I would love to write a musical."

He added, "I don't know if I have the stuff -- I always end up just writing little pop songs that stand a better chance on a record than on stage."

The inspiration for a return to his theatrical roots Is Michael Mayer, the director of Green Day's 'American Idiot' musical. Meloy said, "It happens that the director Michael Mayer is the guy that got me going about doing a musical. We're still talking and there's potential for a musical down the line, for sure."

As for the new album, Meloy attempted to "reconnect" with his early influences when it came to writing the songs for 'The King is Dead'.

"On a lot of songs I wrote for this record, I was trying to free my mind from more academic music interests I had over the last four or five years, and trying or reconnect with some of the music that initially got me playing guitar and writing songs in the first place", he explained.

For Meloy that meant revisiting R.E.M. "I started writing these bold-faced R.E.M. songs, and I thought, 'If we're going to go there, it would be fun to get Peter [Buck] to get on board, and he was totally into it.'"