Ole Miss rockers get their education on the road
If you’re going to skip school, or at least leave early, it’s always beneficial to have a good excuse. When the five young men in Colour Revolt told their teachers at the University of Mississippi that they’d have to miss the last few weeks of classes, they had a dandy: the Jackson-based band was tapped to tour with the Breeders.
“We were fortunate that it worked out,” says Colour Revolt singer-guitarist Jesse Coppenbarger, 23, on the phone from
a tour stop in Houston. “We’re basically all done. Our teachers were cool about it, so we took our exams and finished early.” Coppenbarger, who graduated with a degree in social work before hitting the road to open for Kim Deal’s band, laughs. “It’s been a good little deal.”
Indeed it has. The quintet has just released its jagged scorcher of a full-length debut, “Plunder, Beg, and Curse” on Fat Possum Records, the blues-centric label that first brought the raw, hill-country blues of Junior Kimbrough and R.L. Burnside to worldwide attention, as well as young Turk upstarts like the Black Keys.
Colour Revolt, which co-headlines its own shows with the Atlanta mope-rock outfit Snowden at Pearl Street in Northampton tomorrow night and Great Scott on Sunday, is not a blues band, although its bleary indie-rock sprawl recalls the grit, gristle, and gravel of Southern indie brawlers like the Grifters. Credit the band’s three-guitar attack for the delectably tangled snarl and woozy swagger of songs like “A Siren” and “Swamp.” Also seeping in as an influence is the fact that several members play in a Pavement cover band (check out the album’s first track, “Naked and Red,” for proof), although there’s not nearly as much time for that indulgence these days as there once was.
As a whole, in fact, “Plunder, Beg, and Curse” sounds almost nothing like the band’s first EP, a self-titled and atmospheric affair that was much closer to Radiohead’s sense-memory daydreams. “We all have our influences,” Coppenbarger says of his band, whose members grew up in Jackson and have played together, in one form or another, since high school. “But one thing that changed our sound was that a few years ago we had our keyboard stolen. We were kind of forced into this three-guitar rock thing, and that shaped a lot of this album, for sure.”
Colour Revolt, which takes its name from Edwin Abbott’s 19th-century work “Flatland,” an exploration of life in two dimensions, tapped into spirits nearly as old when it recorded “Plunder, Beg, and Curse” at the hallowed Sweet Tea studio in Oxford, Miss. Bluesman Buddy Guy liked the place so much, in fact, that he once named an entire album after it. “Amazing,” is how Coppenbarger describes the feeling and ambience of the place. “It was pretty intimidating, but once we got in there we thought, ‘Man, this place sounds incredible.’ We were all charmed and were shocked at how great it sounded.”
Producer-engineer Clay Jones, a friend of the band who works at Sweet Tea, offered Colour Revolt a deal on studio time after a van containing the group’s gear was stolen last year (most of the stuff was recovered, but the band had to buy back the instruments that had been hocked to various pawn shops). Fortunately, the band’s bouts of bad fortune have tended to be followed by luck.
Colour Revolt’s circumstances began improving after it cut some demos at the Delta Recording Service, the studio owned and operated by Squirrel Nut Zippers founder Jim “Jimbo” Mathus. “I was just blown away by them,” recalls Mathus. “It’s not the normal kind of thing that I listen to, obviously, but they’re super-talented and they’ve been killin’. I really think they’re gonna do something.”
At Clay Jones’s urging, the band brought the demos to Fat Possum’s offices. “Later on that day they called us back and said, ‘Y’all wanna have dinner?’ ” recalls Coppenbarger. “It went from there, and they’ve been great to us.”
While still attending Ole Miss, Colour Revolt played 150 shows last year. Now, finally free of exams, term papers, and classes, the band is ready to double that total.
“We love playing our songs live because the more you play them, you start to understand who you are as a musician,” Coppenbarger says. The fact that the guys have such a long and shared history helps. “Basically, it’s the equivalent of being in a band with your brothers. We know how to roll with each other, and we’re ready to make some good music.”
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