Colour Revolt’s 2010 album, The Cradle. Photo courtesy of Colour Revolt

Honesty is a universal favorite policy, and at the root of that favoritism is truth. If you’ve heard anything by Colour Revolt, you’re aware that they share that root, but if you ask them about it, it’s pretty hard for them to explain.

In a six-month stretch of 2010, the Mississippi-based band lost three of its five members – two in the same day – and still put out an album by the end of the year. The first track of The Cradle, “8 Years,” is a candid and raw outpouring of how frontman Jesse Coppenbarger felt when two members of the band quit, giving no mercy and sparing no detail. That’s track one.

That dedication to truth is reflected in the origin of the band’s name: “colour revolt” is a phrase used by author E. A. Abbott in his 1884 mathematical novel, Flatland, to describe a brief period of time when the populace experiences total peace in the face of art. Though the novel takes place in a two-dimensional world, Colour Revolt aims to make it happen in our three-dimensional realm. They’ll do us in at the Spanish Moon on Saturday, Feb. 4, in the middle of the Southern leg of their tour.

Dig spoke with Coppenbarger about the nature of songwriting, what it’s like to play “that one song” over and over again until he hates it, and how he makes sure Colour Revolt writes as few “Freebirds” as possible. We found out that he hates interviews – he cares so much about putting together his songs, that he has a hard time explaining how he does it.

Dig: You guys toured quite a bit in the last year. How do you feel about that one?

Jesse Coppenbarger: I wish we would have played Baton Rouge, but it was good! All the places we’ve played, we’ve built on those markets, and we felt like we had fun playing the album. It kind of sucks when you get tired of playing the songs, and we felt like the road kind of tested those songs.

Dig: Was there a song you got sick of playing?

JC: Well, more in the early days, like when we were starting out. I don’t know if you’ve heard our first EP, but there’s a song called “Circus,” and it’s not really like any of the rest of the songs on the EP. So we would kind of be expected to play that song. It’s real loud and screamy, and the more you play that kind of stuff live, you can’t really play your other stuff. It kind of blows you out, or you have to save it for the end of the night, and it kind of becomes that…thing.

Dig: The home stretch.

JC: Exactly. That grand, “this is what your band is about,” starts to feel routine, like it’s just a staged kind of thing. And it’s not as fun, you know.

Dig: That’d be lame, to write something you really like and have it become something like that.

JC: It’s one of those things you learn from seeing what happens with it. Basically, it was a stylistic choice – we totally could have not made the song like that, where it was just all-out, wear ourselves out…but as we went on, we realized that we should pace ourselves! Music is more about restraint, and then you have to let go. It was one of those early decisions that, as you write and you grow up or whatever, you realize this is a style, and we should just let what we’ve learned be our guidelines. It’s a favorite of a lot of our fans, and for years, we’ve had people shout it at shows, and still they shout it, I guess as a joke…

Dig: It’s your “Freebird!”

JC: Yeah, it’s our “Freebird.”

Dig: Your latest album, The Cradle, has this brutal honesty about it. I was wondering if there’s any reason why “8 Years” was chosen as the first track.

JC: There’s a lot of reasons. It was a step into a new direction – stylistically, lyrically – but it’s also to reference what we came from and what we do, so we thought, “This is a good entry point into, not only this record, but to our past,” and it’s a good catch-up thing. If you’re just now joining us, this is what we do.

Dig: Have you gotten any feedback from ex-band members about that song?

JC: They all heard it initially when the song was written. I wasn’t trying to hide it or anything. It was positive – they remembered a lot of things I referenced in the song, and laughed about it and talked about it…some of them came to one of our shows right after they quit, when we were playing shows before The Cradle, and they were saying it was one of their favorite songs. Stuff like, “You guys are one of my favorite bands now,” so there haven’t been any hard feelings. I guess at the beginning, there was that feeling of, “These are my brothers; how can I do it without them?” I actually wrote “8 Years” the day that two of the guys quit, on the same day. Three dudes within six months. We kind of just kept going. I guess there were a few days where we really didn’t know what was going to happen, but me and Sean [Kirkpatrick] were like, “We’ve written all of these songs, why are we just going to give up on it now?”

Dig: If I had to guess, I’d say you write the lyrics before you write the music. Am I right?

JC: For the most part, yeah, I write the lyrics right when I start the song. The song is kind of a shapeable thing, and when I’m writing the song, and it’s just me, I can only imagine what it’s going to sound like. It’s rare that it all happens at once, and I try to shake myself to where I can perform the song in that setting, but when it’s just that – just the beginning of an idea – the best way to solidify it is to start getting some lyrics going. Get an idea of what the song is. And that can be translated, musically, you know you can have different things play with the lyrics and stuff. For me, the words are the most important part – they take the most time.

[Writing lyrics is] the same thing with writing a song: stylistically, if it’s not your thing, later on, you’ll be regretting it…well, not regretting it, but you know, you’re not gonna wanna play this song every night. I want to be able to stand behind the things I write – in some way, I want to know what I’m talking about, and not just mumbling words. And in the starting process, that’s the hardest, but most important part of getting started.

You want the song to be able to stand; to be a life of its own, and be played by other people. It’s my opinion that it’s not a great song unless it’s easily taught to somebody else, or easily remembered. It’s gotta have something where that comes from – whether it’s a great line, or a great chorus, or an awesome guitar solo, whatever. It’s gotta have something memorable in it, musically or lyrically. When it comes down to it, the song is the song. If they’re not easy, then at the very core of them, there’s something memorable about it, and it guides you through.

Dig: Having said all that, your lyrics, and the fact that Colour Revolt is lifted from a novel, lead me to believe you’re an avid reader. Who’s your favorite author?

JC: Hmm. I guess Larry Brown, kind of the Mississippi authors I came to first fall in love with. Cormac McCarthy, Raymond Carver… Raymond Carver is one of the greats.

Dig: Do you think colour revolts could happen?

JC: In the book, it’s a short lived scene, because it’s a different world – a two-dimensional world where it’s class and structure. When it was written, that was more of a norm in the culture, but I guess in the terms of art, I think it happens all the time. Essentially what it is, is I want the song to be the song. I want it to be so good, that when it’s there, it’s not really about me; it’s about how good the song is. In my mind, that’s what colour revolt is.

Dig: It’s that knock-you-flat moment.

JC: Yeah, when there’s no judgment or competition or class, and there’s not a bad seat in the house. You’re there, and that’s what it is. At least, to me, it’s just you and the song. In creating anything, you want to get to this point where you’ve become so comfortable in what you do, that you just are the song; you are the thing.

At the same time, you never want to pin a song down to something. I don’t want to say, “The Colour Revolt is this,” you know, because it’s not. Just because I sing the words in the band doesn’t mean it’s my band. I invest a lot of myself in it, but I want it to be everybody’s band. Does that sound dumb? I always think it sounds dumb. If you understand what I’m saying, then make it sound…like that. I don’t know; I hate interviews.

Catch Colour Revolt at the Spanish Moon (1109 Highland Rd.) on Saturday, Feb. 4. Visit them at www.ColourRevolt.net.