After playing music for nearly 30 years, folk singer Eric Coleman is finally sitting down for his first face-to-face interview.

Although he’s twice the age of most ISU students, Coleman is as zealous as ever about his music, and he has his wife to thank for encouraging him — or rather, forcing him — to stay in the music business.

“One day my wife said, ‘I’m tired of you being miserable. You need to get out and start performing again,'” Coleman says. “I went to open mic night at the Boheme three years ago and I realized the last time I had played was 18 years earlier in that same room … with a synthesizer band.”

Coleman and his music are the epitome of the brutal truth, hiding no skeletons in the closet. He is the first to laugh at the very things most of society is too embarrassed to talk about.

Two of America’s favorite pastimes — suing for everything and surfing the Internet for porn — are brutal truths found in Coleman’s lyrics.

“It amazes me that there’s this wonderful thing for communication, research and information, and people are using it to look at tits,” Coleman says.

Coleman is referring to his song, “WYSIWYG,” which he says he may rename “The Paris Hilton Blues.”

Nothing is too taboo to be touched by Coleman, if he thinks it can make a point.

“Anything can be funny if you approach it in the right way,” he says.

Possibly the one person Coleman laughs at the most is himself.

“‘Who’s the fat, old guy?'” he quotes. “That’s one of my favorite reactions when I get blank stares from younger crowds.”

Coleman usually responds to criticism with a laugh, and sometimes even gives them pointers on how to better gang up against him.

“When people heckle me, I go out into the audience and help them,” Coleman says. “I heckle myself, then go back onstage and respond to it, go back to the audience, and so on.”

This odd attitude is very characteristic of Coleman’s animated, lighthearted personality in general. Growing up in Des Moines in a family centered around theater proved to be vital in making Coleman the person he is today.

Coleman was once asked by an accountant why he was wasting his time playing solos. He replied, “Because no one remembers the name of Beethoven’s accountant.”

This of course begs the question — will Coleman be remembered?

Although he admits he could have made wiser choices when he was young that would have allowed his music career to go further, Coleman is anything but bitter.

“I’m almost 45, I weigh almost 300 pounds — I’m never going to be a pop star.”

A self-labeled punk, Coleman’s “modern punk rock” set comes through strongest when he declares, “Music should be about the need to play.”

“The purpose of every generation’s music is to piss off the generation before,” he says.

Coleman says he tries to be very serious and very sarcastic at the same time within his music.

“Even the serious stuff tends to be wiseass because that’s just the way I am,” he says.

Rather than being hindered by his faults, Coleman uses them to his advantage. They strengthen his music and let him see himself as no one else does.

“There is definitely something wrong with me,” he says, “but it’s a glorious kind of wrong.”