The biggest game of the Trail Blazers’ season is less than an hour from tip-off, and Colin Meloy and Carson Ellis sit outside the arena munching chicken wings and jalapeño poppers.
Sports pundits have given the upstart Blazers little chance of winning on this night. They’re playing the NBA champion Golden State Warriors, winners of 10 of their last 11 games against Portland—but Meloy and Ellis aren’t too concerned.
“We’re good luck for the Blazers when they play the Warriors,” says Ellis. The last time they saw these teams match up, Damian Lillard went off for a career-high 51 points, shocking the league and handing Golden State a rare loss.
Meloy and Ellis moved to Portland back in 1999, during the infamous “Jailblazer” era. They were casual fans then, living “humble, impoverished lives in a warehouse.” Meloy was an aspiring musician, and Ellis was “doing oil paintings and selling them at fire-sale prices.” Then Meloy formed the Decemberists, which went on to become one of the most popular bands in the nation, and whose album art, posters, and stage sets are designed by Ellis. The couple always felt that their “creative sensibilities lined up perfectly,” so in 2010 Meloy took a break from music and they set to work on The Wildwood Chronicles, a magically awesome trilogy of young adult books written by Meloy and illustrated by Ellis. It was during this time of literary collaboration that the two took their Blazer fandom to the next level.