You never know what to expect when you are standing in front of a stage waiting for Colourmusic to come out. The band has been known for putting on some extremely wacky live shows, from wearing dresses and acting out roles of kooky family members to allowing audiences to paint them on stage. The inspiration behind their music is just as out-of-the-box as their live show, with color being the force that drives and inspires them. They are big supporters of Isaac Newton’s Theory of Color and Sound and each of their songs represents a particular color. Hailing from the college town of Stillwater, the band has played D-Fest the past 3 years, is a frequent performer at South by Southwest, and has toured around the Midwest.
According to the band, the current goal is to focus more on the music and to tone down the theatrics of their stage shows, however, yesterday’s set at the official D-Fest Kick off party definitely did not leave audiences visually disappointed. Colourmusic took the stage for their 11:00pm show at Tulsa’s Blank Slate, on a stage covered floor-to-ceiling in multi-colored streamers, with shiny metallic paper lining the back wall. Ryan fiercely belted out a rainbow of lyrics while poking his head through decorations and it was humorous to watch Colin tear down pieces of streamers at various times throughout the set that were obstructing him from reaching his pedals.
China Shop was able to round up Ryan, Nick, and Colin from Colourmusic for a quick Q&A before they went to prepare for their set.
Are you guys excited to play D-Fest?
Ryan: D-Fest is awesome. It’s a really fun festival. It’s like a micro South by Southwest. You get people like going all out, especially the bands locally. Honestly I think the best bands are the local bands because they all just have hard-ons and are just ready to go all the way. And people really have a good time out here. You see a lot of drunk “Okies.”
Nick: It’s always a good time down here. It gets bigger every year too.
Do you play it every year?
Colin: Well, 3 year’s now. Ever since we’ve been a band. This is our 4th year.
So tell me about this whole color inspiration thing?
Ryan: Well we wanted to have a sort of program so every time we worked on a new album we had to change the emotional vibe of it. It was something that we always thought. Every great band has always been able to find ways to change who they are and have a different element and this was our way of doing that. It’s been a really successful way for us because by changing the color and the emotional feel of the record, it kinda gives us a producer without having to pay for a producer. What we’ll do is we’ll sit and talk about what we were thinking, what it sounds like. We might reference artists, we might reference sounds, we might reference lyrics, something like that…kinda create a shape of what we wanted to do and it really works. I mean no one knows it really works, but we do. Our second album though is off the chart.
Nick: Totally different genre from our first record.
So you have 2 EPs, called Red and Yellow…
Ryan: Yeah, well we self released those. Technically we have an album out and it’s called, are you ready for this? F Monday Orange February Venus Lunatic 1 or 13. We were just kind of parodying sort of the old enlightenment clockwork idea of the Universe, which is like a mechanical clock, and so you had all these sort of systems in place and all those systems sort of equated to each other. So you have like color systems and time systems and music systems, because they are all like 7 and 12’s, so it’s the second of all those: orange is the second color…red, orange, Monday, Tuesday, …well I guess it’s Sunday, Monday, Tuesday. We kinda changed it how we felt they were supposed to be. You know 1:00, 13…Lunacy is the second of seven Greek emotions. The color thing, Isaac Newtown said it. Actually he said D was the first note because of the wave-form. I don’t know what he’s talking about though. It’s not like he studied it. It’s kind of a thing we sort of used to be funny. It’s not science. Which is why it didn’t work. The Clockwork view of the Universe did not work. We all accept that now.
So you guys have a pretty notorious stage show. I’ve heard of workout shows, you’ve had audience members paint you…?
Colin: That was actually our first D-Fest show.
Nick: We were getting on stage; the sound guys were really freaking out because we were throwing down clear plastic stuff so we wouldn’t get paint on their gear.
Ryan: Yeah that was really ballsy when I think about it.
Nick: Yeah it’s like we just got up there and did that and were like “Oh it’s no big deal, we just won’t tell them about it.” Luckily we covered the stage well enough.
Ryan: And they liked us.
Nick: They were like “At least they brought the tarps”
Ryan: We’re considerate boys.
Tell me about these family shows where people come out in dresses and you act all this stuff out…
Colin: I was the slutty daughter and he (Ryan) was the mom.
Nick: I was obsessed with the daughter because I was the creepy uncle.
Ryan: And I made cookies the shape of David Duchovny’s head and was giving them to people.
So I hear that you describe yourselves as “hardcore with a little Oklahoma sex rock.” Is that a standard description or something that just came out of an interview once that stuck with you guys?
Nick: I only said it just because we were annoyed when people would ask us what we sounded like. We used to hand out flyers a lot and some people would be like “OK cool, what do you sound like?” and what do you say to someone to get them to come to a show? I figured just say something kinda smart ass back to them and then you don’t have to worry about it anymore.
So you guys opened for the Flaming Lips at a past D-Fest?
Nick: Yes and we opened for Helmet last year actually.
Ryan: Flaming Lips were great. The problem with the Flaming Lips is their live show is just so super-fantastic that nobody remembers that you played.
Nick: They kind of erase you.
Ryan: And we put on a really big show, for us. We had like stage performers and people dancing around in costumes.
Colin: We went crazy.
What did you do on stage at that one?
Ryan: I don’t really know. We had like 15 people with us. It was like we’d play a red song and we’d play a yellow song and we’d have like a red creature and it would come out and do weird things.
Nick: Then we had some cowboys I think.
Colin: It was really absurd. It was like we kinda just threw everything we could think of …
Have you ever tried anything on stage concept wise that didn’t really work that you kind of had to abort halfway thru?
Colin: I can think of one.
Nick: I was ready to not be in a band after that.
Ryan: We were making fun of romantic gurus so we had our drummer making speeches about rules of courtship and everything he said was very misogynistic and so we were acting it out on stage and Oh my God. It was just terrible.
Nick: Part of it was he would never help us with the other shows. He would just show up day of and want to change everything. So we were like, “This is your show, you do everything” and it totally backfired on us.
Ryan: And the other reason that show was not very good was because a couple of days before, we put on the biggest show we had ever done at Eskimo Joe’s. For half a set, our guitarist was in a casket. Our British member was dead.
Nick: He hadn’t gotten back yet and nobody knew he was back in town yet, so we did it as his funeral…synched it up to where he was playing from Heaven and there was this TV above us. So then like midway thru the set, we asked him if he could ask God to come back down and play with us. So then he comes out of the casket and plays with us.
What do you guys have planned for tonight?
Ryan: Nothing excessive. We’re going to rock our balls off.
That sounds excessive!
(Band laughs)
Ryan: We were doing a lot of shows like that. I think South by Southwest was the very first show we did when we just played. It felt really really good just to play and not worry about this other stuff. So we’ve just kind of gone into that direction as a band. We love it.
Colin: I mean the music speaks for itself now rather than saying we have to do something else to make sure that people are enjoying themselves.
Nick: I think that’s still important but…
Ryan: We want to put stuff on. We want to it to be interesting outside of just the music so it’ s the full experience, but you know, I just don’t think it’s important to emphasis that over the music itself. Because to be honest, you go watch these huge bands that have all this stuff going on onstage and even though the show is entertaining and it feels fulfilling, it kinda lacks heart. In the end, you kinda feel like you are watching TV.
So you’re working on a new album. How is it different from your previous work?
Nick: Completely different in every way.
Ryan: I mean, it’s pink.
Colin: The first album kind of had a child’s feel to it. This one is more like child rape.
(Band laughs hysterically)
Nick: It’s just really different. It’s pink. We think of it as being really nasty and more indulgent.
Ryan: Musically it just hits you a lot more than the first record. Pink is the inspiration and it will have a different album cover but will have a different name.
What is the plan for after the new record comes out?
Ryan: Our goal is just to get bigger. Basically if we can write the records we want to write and keep pursing sort of a different music path and to keep growing.
