This Friday, the literary-rock group The Decemberists will be playing at UB’s Center for the Arts, which should be a rollicking night of creative and enlightening rock and roll.

Chris Funk, the band’s “multi-instrumentalist,” as proclaimed by their website, talked with Generation about The Colbert Report green-screen conundrum, his “carnie” lifestyle, and how the festival scene sometimes means chilling by a port-o-potty.

G: How was The Colbert Report appearance?

CF: It was amazing; it was surreal, from Henry Kissinger to Rick Nealson to Peter Frampton to Elliot Spitzer. It was just insane. It was just a pleasure. He’s an amazing guy, totally hilarious. It was the first traditional TV show we’ve done.

G: So did you think he was a fan beforehand?

CF: I don’t think so. I think honestly he just caught wind of our green screen competition which was the genesis of the whole debate or challenge because we copped his idea. He called us out. That was the beginning of it. Some people asked “Oh was it constructed by your record label?” But it wasn’t. That’s what made it really fun.

G: You guys just got back from a tour in Europe. Where are some of your favorite places there to play?

CF: We like playing in Amsterdam, but not for the reasons everyone thinks when I say that. The city’s really beautiful and the people are really kind. The venue we always play there is one of my favorite in the world, The Paradiso. England and Germany are always amazing too. The people are great, really enthusiastic.

G: Any standout stories from the tour?

CF: In London we played with Robyn Hitchcock and Mike Scott from The Waterboys. Those two people are heroes of ours from when we were growing up, so that was pretty amazing. We also got to meet Natalie Portman at our show, so that was pretty cool.

G: What are your most favorite and least favorite things about being on the road?

CF: My least favorite is probably the time you’re just waiting around to play. You only get to play for about an hour and a half and then the rest of the day it’s just waiting around until the next point of playing. And being away from family and friends, the obvious stuff. The better part is always the shows…you know, the music. If you’re really tired and feel like, “Oh I can’t do this,” you just walk out on stage and everyone’s really enthusiastic and it carries you through.

G: What are your personal favorite songs to sing at concerts?

CF: Right now it’s “The Island.” I guess that’s cheating because it’s four songs. Some parts are really visceral and some parts are melancholy, sort of frightening sounding at times. It’s really great.

G: I heard you used to really get into “The Mariner’s Revenge Song” on previous tours.

CF: Yeah. You got eight minutes. You got to do something to hold their attention. I used to have a white whale suit that my girlfriend and I made. I’d come out and sort of hop along looking like a puppet. I think I still have it somewhere.

G: The Crane Wife made it into a lot of top ten lists this year. Did you have really high hopes for the album or did all the acclaim take you by surprise?

CF: I don’t think it’s ever anything you talk about or think about. You’re just making a record you like to make, to initially please yourself. I don’t really want this to come off bad, but we don’t really make records for our fans. We make them for ourselves and then hopefully people will want to listen to them. Indirectly we make then for our fans. We don’t make records to garnish popularity contests, which top-ten lists really are. We like to play music, and we like to try to make the best record possible. What sounds pleasing and satisfying is all you’re thinking about at the time. I read the top-ten lists, but it’s easy to get caught up in that like “Oh we’re so great” or something, but none of us feel that way or think that way. For every good review there’s a bad review too.

G: Growing up, how did you get into music and who were your major influences?

CF: All of us in the band have different sides of music that we play and listen to. When we come together and assume the role of The Decemberists and play that music, then the influences are The Pogues, and The Smiths, things like that. Growing up we all listened to all kinds of things like classical music on Jenny’s side, but she also listened to stoner-rock music. I would listen to anything and everything. Growing up, I played in a high school jazz band and I was really influenced by jazz music and then later on in life I worked at a folk music store and got into folk music. We were just sort of generic suburban kids, for lack of a better term, and what that means is we were exposed to many things and listened to many things. None of us can tell a tale of growing up on our parents’ lap with a fiddle like we were from Tennessee. It’s sort of all over the board. I think just whatever we were exposed to, from rock to hip-hop music. I don’t think all those sounds necessarily influenced the band directly, but maybe in spirit or some subconscious way.

G: What current bands are you a fan of today or supporting?

CF: I support any band that goes out and tours. There are some bands you see or meet at festivals or truck stops and, whether or not you like their music, you hang out with them and talk to them, because you share an identity, which is sort of a carnie lifestyle, being on the road and performing for people, It’s really great to share that with other musicians.

I feel like I’m listening to older music and people in the band are listening to older music. I just heard a CD from this band Midlake who I think are really great. They kind of sound like Fleetwood Mac. I like Lavender Diamond, who we just toured with. They have a record coming out on Matador. There’s a band called White Magic. They’re really great. I like the new Mastodon record. I like the new Knox record, the Clipse record.

G: It was reported that you were the first band that released a music video strictly via the Bit Torrent. Is this a reflection of your current take on the RIAA or just because you wanted to reach more fans?

CF: That music video was released about three years ago so the RIAA wasn’t really doing what they’re doing now. With music videos, you want people to watch them as much as possible and our label at the time, Kill Rock Stars, said “Yeah, let’s get it out there.” The music video we have now, even on Capitol, they want people to see it.

We don’t really have a group stance on the RIAA or what they’re doing. We don’t have a group stance on music downloading. We talk about it sometimes, and sometimes I wish more people would buy our records. Other times, the flip side to it is that people are hearing our music faster and coming to concerts. We like our record label and out of respect to them, it would be nice if people bought our records. But as a musician, it’s probably a good thing that those people are “stealing our records” or whatever. Obviously the way the world is set up, you’re supposed to buy music right now and until they change that, you should be buying music. You don’t storm the gates of a concert hall to see concerts for free, and people don’t walk into art galleries and pull paintings off walls. I’m not going to turn into Lars Ulrich from Metallica and freak out on people. There are bigger issues in the world to think about, honestly.

G: Where did you get the idea for your new video for “Valencia?” It seems almost like it was inspired by movies like “Snatch.”

CF: Our director Aaron Stuart gave us his idea so yeah, I think it was fueled from that. I’m not quite sure. It happened so fast. It was over like a day’s time period when we were in between tours. I just showed up. Usually we’re more interactive with videos and this was kind of last minute. We just decided to do a video. Yeah I think it’s something like that, some film noir thrown in there and also some black comedy mafia movies such as “Snatch.”

G: Your current tour has some bigger venues. How do feel about playing festivals like Coachella and Bonnaroo this year?

CF: Honestly, I don’t really like to play festivals. I thought I did, but I decided I don’t. We’re still playing them obviously because I think they’re two really great festivals. I’ve never been to them so I want to check them out. I think as a fan, if you go and get into going to a festival, like get into festival mode and you get your tent and get all your friends and—that’s the way to go to a festival. I remember us playing our first big festival and being like, “Wow there’s so many great bands and we’re going to see all this great music.” Then you get there and you don’t see any music and you’re just backstage in the hot sun, standing around by a port-o-potty. Then you get to see the bands that play before you and after you and maybe you wander around and that’s it. You only get to play a fraction of what your set is and it’s really hectic to set up all your equipment. But once you start playing, it’s really fun and it’s outside so that’s really nice. The folks there are really focused on the music and that’s really great. We’ll see what happens when we play.

To answer your question about playing bigger places, it’s an honor just to have people care to listen to us. So playing bigger places, it’s really nice that more people are coming. I will say I have hesitation about playing too big of places, like seated theaters and that kind of stuff. I think you lose some of the intimacy, some of the experience of being in a rock band with people. We’re still sort of experimenting with that and we’ll see how it goes on this next tour and see how we like some of the venues. It’s an experiment.

G: Your music is constantly classified as literary rock. Who’s the biggest literature buff in the band? Are there specific writers that inspire the lyrics the most?

CF: Probably Jenny and Colin are the biggest readers in the band. It’s different from song to song. I think literary has become a term because we use words that aren’t really traditional or found often in contemporary rock music. Very few people are doing it. We use words that you wouldn’t use in your daily vocabulary, just going to the grocery store or something. Some people see that as pretentious, but we see it as just as an opportunity to use a new word and something that flows. Even though you don’t the meaning of it, you being the listener, there is a certain musical quality to it. What’s wrong with challenging the listener a little bit to dig deeper into inference or even bust out a dictionary to check it out? I think it’s more musical influences. When you get down to writing lyrics, it comes into prose poetry and other artists who write like you or other artists you want to fashion your writing style after. Some of the backdrops are James Joyce or Hemingway or Patrick O’Brien in terms of the setting. They didn’t write the three-minute long songs though, they wrote epic novels.