The Decemberists Announce Benefit For Tucker Martine’s Studio Flora

The Decemberists will perform at a benefit concert for engineer/producer/mixer Tucker Martine’s recently burglarized Flora Recording and Playback studio in Portland. The June 3 concert will be held at Portland’s Crystal Ballroom and feature Blind Pilot and special guests. Tickets can be purchased here.

The Decemberists’ Colin Meloy shared a note detailing the band’s relationship with Martine and noted the concert might be band’s only performance of 2019. Meloy wrote in part:

We’ve got some good news and some bad news.

The bad news is that our friend Tucker Martine’s studio, Flora, was robbed last month. The burglars made off with about $70,000 worth of guitars, microphones, and various pieces of gear, much of it irreplaceable. The studio was still a work in progress when the robbery occurred; Tucker had just bought the location, had moved all his stuff over from the old Flora, and was in the process of finishing the build-out of what was to be Flora’s fifth and hopefully final residence. You can imagine what kind of hit that would be, both financially and emotionally. Tucker and his family are heartbroken, trying to move on and finish the studio, all the while dealing with an insurance company that has been difficult in the aftermath of the robbery.

As you likely know, The Decemberists’ relationship with Tucker and Flora goes way back; he co-produced The Crane Wife with Chris Walla in 2006. We went on to make three more records with Tucker, using whichever iteration of Flora was assembled at the time: Flora was Tucker’s home basement; it was a barn in Happy Valley, OR, where he’d moved most of his outboard gear for one recording session; it was, later, a well-appointed studio in North Portland. We did one-off recordings, demos, and EPs at Flora with Tucker. I recorded two audiobooks, the second and third Wildwood books, at Flora. Most of my vocal takes that are currently out there in the world on songs and records were recorded on the microphones that were stolen from Flora a month ago.

In addition to the benefit concert, a GoFundMe page was established to help Martine. Stream a Spotify Playlist of tracks Martine contributed to below: