Paper Rival (L to R): Brent Coleman, Patrick Damphier, Cody McCall, Jake Rolleston. Image via Paper Rival's offical MySpace page.

In case you haven't noticed, Phillyist has kind of developed a musical crush on Paper Rival (MySpace). And after their set at the North Star Bar on Sunday night, Phillyist had a chance to catch up with the band's guitarist, Brent Coleman, for an interview.

One of the things we noticed on your CDs is that they credit all songs as being "written by Paper Rival." So could you talk a little bit about how you all collaborate in the songwriting process?
Sure. Generally, most of the main ideas will come from either Patrick [drummer/guitarist Patrick Damphier] or Jake [frontman Jacob Rolleston]. They'll come in with either a full song, or a full, really complete idea. They'll come to the whole band with it and say, you know, "Here's this main part," or main melody, and then we'll all sit around and tinker around with our parts. So generally, the main parts come from Patrick or Jake, and then we all work on the structure and putting our own take on everything.

So when you're working on the musical arrangements, are the lyrics already there, or do they come later?
Sometimes, the lyrics come... posthumously. Not meaning [the songs] died. But, like, "A Fox in the Garden"—that song, Jake had the lyrics and the chords. But then with other songs, we work out all of the music, and then the lyrics are put in later. Most of the time, Jake will do all of the lyrics, and then they'll be tweaked by Patrick, and occasionally, occasionally someone else [Brent or bassist Cody McCall] will throw in this or that. But generally, there's not really a set process to it, you know?

Let's talk a little bit about going into recording the EP versus recording Dialog, the full album. Was there any kind of difference between the two? Did you feel any more pressure with the full album?
To be honest, not really. We signed the deal [with Photo Finish Records]. And they said, "Make an album." So we sort of took what was given to us and made the EP and the album. The five songs on the EP, originally they were supposed to be the songs that we didn't feel like would fit as well with Dialog. But the process wasn't really that different. We were still trying to write good songs that would be out there for everyone to hear.

But the EP, there were really only three songs on there that were new to us, because we had the cover on there ["Pacing the Cage," a Bruce Cockburn song], "You're Right" was on there, which was older. "Home is Right Out Your Window" was on there, which is older, from other bands [that the members of Paper Rival were involved with]. And there was "Alabama," which was really old. That was from Jake's old, old, old band, and we just kind of made that into the kind of thing we wanted to do.

Since the last time we saw you, nine months ago, you've been on the road a lot, including touring with Edison Glass and doing the Bamboozle Festival. How do you think you've been developing as performers? Or because you've been doing this for awhile, do you pretty much know where you're at as performers?
No, you always grow and develop. It's a process. Every show, every new city that you go to, there's something new that happens every time that contributes to you getting better as a performer, or just learning something about performance that makes you more comfortable, or makes you... You know, we love performing. There's just a lot that goes into it, and we're very lucky to be in a position to play our music to people every night.

Speaking of playing live, one thing we couldn't help but notice was that the first single from Dialog, "Cassandra," wasn't on tonight's setlist. Is there any particular reason for that?
"Cassandra" is the kind of song we'll play when we are either headlining or playing a longer set, or a different kind of show. Like, we did a morning show on this tour, in Phoenix, and we did it there. And we do the occasional acoustic performance, and when we do those, we always play "Cassandra" first. It's just... when you're up there and you've got amps and drums, and you're supposed to be loud and this and that, just taking the time out to have to switch out... Like, I play my violin through my guitar amp, and when it comes time to do that, it just takes so much time, and you go from DUH-NEH-NEH-NEH-NEH-NEH [simulated electric guitar] to WHEEEEEW-WHEEW [simulated violin]...

Do you think about those kinds of logistical things when you're going into the studio, like, "If we can't pull this off live, we shouldn't record it this way?" Or when you're writing songs, do you think about how it'll come off live?
No, never. When you're in the studio, you just want to write a good song. You wanna have a good song that people will like. And if the song means something to us, hopefully it'll mean something to somebody else, and that's all it's about. All that other stuff is an afterthought. If you're playing live, you play what makes sense and what works with your live show. And I would love to play that song every night, because it's one of our strongest songs, and I love to play it. But it's really hard to work in right this second, playing second out of four [bands], with no soundcheck, just kinda goin' up and playing, it's hard to expect that song to sound good.

Well, now you have videos for "Cassandra" and "Bluebird." What's your process going into making videos for your songs?
Umm [laughs], that's a good question. The "Bluebird" video, the whole idea was made up by Isaac, a good friend of ours, who made the whole video for us. He pitched it to us. He actually sent us actual footage of the whole Bigfoot guy running around and swinging on the tree and everything. And we were like, "This looks awesome," and we loved it immediately. So we spend a whole day with him in New York, in Prospect Park in Brooklyn, and we went somewhere else that day, I can't remember where it was right this second. But for that video, we just kinda let him do his thing. And we went along with all of it, and we were totally happy with it—it was awesome.

For the "Cassandra" video, it was completely up to Casey [director Casey Crescenzo], and he made his animated video. And he actually made another video for that, with just us. And we made a video for that with our friends in Nashville, who are really great video-makers, or whatever you might call them... What's that word? There's a word for it. Anyway, they made a really great video for us for "Cassandra" as well, which just hasn't been released yet. And that involves the four of us in a room playing the song, and different scene changes. And we're really, really excited about that video for when it comes out as well. So you'll have the animated version, and our version, so I hope that the other version will come out as well soon.

Let's move to your upcoming tour dates. You've got a show in Boston coming up as part of this tour [with The Honorary Title], and then you've got some headlining gigs. Could you run through those?
Yeah, we've got an East Lansing show [on August 22], on the campus [of Michigan State University] I believe. Oh, and we have Detroit first, a free show at the Magic Stick [on August 21], which is one of the bigger venues in Detroit, but we're in the downstairs area. It's a free show in the bowling alley area, so we can go bowling, which is one of our favorite things in the world, I'm not even kidding. So we'll do that, and then go do the college show in East Lansing, and then head down to Chicago on my birthday, which is really exciting.

When is that?
August 23. We'll be at the Beat Kitchen, which is gonna be awesome. It's one of my favorite venues to play, really. We've played several venues in Chicago, and that's one of my favorite ones. They have great nachos. For a guy like me—I'm gluten-intolerant, so I can't eat bread or pasta, so if someplace has great nachos, that's what I remember. Any city that has great nachos, I want to know it, and I want to go to that city, because I want those nachos.

Awesome. We know you guys have to get out of here, but what's going on after those three shows?
We're pretty wide open after these next few shows.

Where can people check out what's going on with you guys?
Our MySpace page and PaperRival.com. As soon as the info about where we're going to be is available, it will be right up there.

Alright, Brent, thank you very much.
And thank you so much, man.