You ever get a piece of news from a friend where you're supposed to feel bad for them, and you do, but secretly and selfishly you're also feeling bad for yourself? That's how Decemberists fans are likely processing the news that the Portland lit-rock band has cancelled its entire U.S. tour, including two nights at Milwaukee's Riverside Theatre on Nov. 18 and 19.

The reason given is that one of the band members is very ill -- the band cancelled several of its European tour dates earlier, and played a couple of shows on the U.S. tour before realizing that said unnamed band member needed a lot more time to get better.

So we feel for this ailing soul and hope they get better, but at the same time can't help but feel a little bummed for ourselves, because it was going to be a very cool tour. Billed as "The Long and the Short of It," the tour would divide the Decs' impressive list of songs into one "Long" evening -- made up of epic songs like "The Tain" and "The Island" -- and one "Short" evening of the shorter, more dance-ready songs like "O Valencia" and "16 Military Wives."

It was a great idea that exactly addressed the slight quibble I had with the band's wonderful Orpheum show last spring, that the big epic songs tended to crowd out the shorter ones. It seems like they won't be able to reschedule the tour for a while, as they're already booked to go into the studio next year to work on the new album. So we send a "Get Well Soon" card to the band, and a "Thinking Of You" card to ourselves.