Thursday

So, I feel like an ass for getting this interview online over a month after I did it. It took me a long time to type up mainly due to the fact that while I was sitting down with Geoff and Andrew of Thursday, there was a band sound checking their drum and keyboards on the other side of the curtains. This drowed out a lot of the conversation and I had to mess with the soundwaves to make it audible. Still, there’s probably a few things which I missed, but I did my best.

Anyway, thanks a lot to Geoff and Andrew for taking the time to the interview. They were really nice guys, a lot of fun to talk to, and put on a great show last night. I hope you enjoy the interview. Also, thanks to John for setting it up.

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Bobby: Well, you guys have been on a break for quite a while now, how’s it feel to be back on the road?

Andrew: It’s great.

Geoff: Yeah, we’re excited, I mean, it’s been about a year and a half since we’ve been out and this tour is about two and a half- three weeks right now that we’ve been out. Everyone’s getting used to it and getting excited about it, back into familiarity.

Bobby: Did you guys miss the road during the break?

Geoff: Yeah, there were definitely times when I was like “I need to get back out and do my thing.”

Bobby: Before and after this Canadian leg of the Taste Of Chaos tour you guys are touring with the Shirts For A Cure tour, what’s it like working with those guys?

Geoff: It’s an incredible organization. Mark Beemer’s an incredible guy. And to know that you’re making a little bit of a difference, being able to help out in anyway you can is fucking awesome.

Bobby: I guess we can cut straight to the chase and talk about what everyone wants to know about, May 2nd, your new CD “A City By The Light Divided” comes out, are you excited for that?

Geoff: So excited.

Andrew: Out of our minds, yeah.

Geoff: There’s no way to describe it.

Andrew: Finishing the record and then going on tour and having this like limbo period just feels weird. Like you want nothing but the record coming out, but then again you have to wait for the right things to happen.

Geoff: Yeah, it’s crazy. Like I just want everyone to be like “Oh my God! Holy Shit! I can’t believe it! This is amazing!” But we have to wait for it to come out.

Bobby: “A City By The Light Divided” – where did you guys get that name from?

Geoff: It kind of came to me in my sleep one night. I sort of took two lines from an Octavio Paz poem. The lines were “you are a city by the sea assaulted, you are a rampart by the light divided” and I shortened it to “A City By The Light Divided” and I wanted it to be about the differences in people. About the way each person contains the light and the dark, the good and the bad, and the way it’s externalized in an urban metropolis.

Bobby: I know a few years ago you guys used to be “the next big thing” and then bands like My Chem came up and they were “the net big thing.” I remembered reading an article in Alternative Press where you said that you felt relieved that you were no longer “the next big thing” and that you can now just focus on writing the music. Now with the new album, are you starting to feel that pressure again?

Geoff: No, I mean we’re in a different place then we were back then. Like nobody expects anything from us, so we get to come out and surprise them with a great record.

Andrew: The only pressure that we had was internal pressure that we made. We wanted to write a record for us, and we just had to keep remembering that. It’s just like “you know what, it doesn’t matter, we have to write whatever we want.”

Bobby: Lyrically, what would you say is the main focus of this new CD?

Geoff: It’s hard to say. I think most of the record is about that divide I was talking about between the light and the dark. But I think each song has its counterpart. So each issue is dealt with a few sides. There’s a song like “The Lovesong Writer” and the song “Telegraph Avenue Kiss” where both are two different sides of what’s it’s like to live in a world where love is the main force and where people can find themselves with other people and things like that. In the same way, there are songs that deal with things like… There’s “The Other Side Of The Crash” and “Sugar In The Sacrament” which is about two different sides of losing someone and living after your friends have died. I think the record is a lot about balance, and being out of it.

Bobby: Last week, you guys released your first video podcast which you will continue to release one a week until the CD is dropped, why did you decide to do that?

Geoff: A friend of ours, at South By South West, he started asking us about the record and we started talking to him about it and it turned out so well that we were like “well, there’s a podcast if we ever saw one.” So we just thought we would chop it up like that. He’s like the best dude ever, he did a really good job at it.

Bobby: Last November, your label mates Thrice did the same thing with their new album “Vheissu.” Do you think that now, with so many bands out there, bands have to do these types of things to keep their fans entertained and interested?

Andrew: To some extent yeah. For us, we want to try and keep in touch with our fans as much as possible now that we’ve been away for so long. Yeah, I think there’s some pressure for bands to be in touch with their fans. I just like to be in touch with people. Like everyday I go out of my way to talk to as many kids as I can and hang out. I enjoy people’s company. That’s the great thing about touring, you get to talk to everybody, you know?

Bobby: Yeah. Last September when you guys were just starting to talk about the new CD, you said that you were hoping to get My Chem’s Gerard Way and Head Automatica’s Daryl to sing some backups on the album. Did they sing on the album?

Geoff: We actually had a bunch of friends sing on a song that we ended up cutting off the record. *Here he lists around 4 bands who sang on the record, but the names all get drowned out by the drumming other than The Blood Brothers* We ended up having to cut the song because it was eight and a half minutes which made the record go on forever. Maybe it’ll see a future release. And like Gerard and I, we’ve been in touch on a lot of stuff, like I worked on their first album and they’re good friends of ours, so we’ll work on something. And Daryl and I have a side project we call The United Nations

Bobby: Well, like we said, the CD comes out in less than a month, is there anything you want to say to get your fans really excited for it? Anything you want to add on it?

Geoff: For me, it’s our most personal record. I can’t wait, I just can’t wait. I can’t be more excited about a record.

Andrew: When you get it, listen to it front and back and make it the best instead of just throwing it in and flipping through it.

Bobby: Last November when you guys were still writing the record, you had fifteen demos and six of them were stolen from the studio and put on the internet. Do you think kids are going too far to hear the songs before anyone else?

Geoff: I think it just ruins it for them because you get used to a song the way it is and you might not be able to hear how much the new version owns the old version. Like we re-recorded “At This Velocity” from the demo and the new version is so much better. I listened to them back to back the other night, and the new one is so much better. But you just get it in your head that that’s the way it’s supposed to sound and that’s too bad. Like I always want to listen to a new record for the first time front to back, new record, you know what I mean?

Bobby: Yeah, I do. Okay, you guys probably get asked this a lot, but your dove logo has become synonymous with your name. A lot of people have been getting that symbol tattooed on their body. What do you think of having your logo permanently placed on someone’s body?

Andrew: It’s pretty overwhelming. Like sometimes, you don’t know what to say to people. You think if someone’s going take it this far they can take it farther. Like it’s always going to be there and they’re always going to remember what you do.

Geoff: Yeah, I, myself, am a band tattoo man (pulling up his sleeve to reveal some tattoos), so I understand why kids would take a band they love and put it on their body. It’s a crazy thing to think that they’d use our name.

Bobby: When you guys broke out of New Jersey a few years ago, it opened up tons of doors for that scene. All the labels wanted to find the next big band from Jersey. What are some bands coming up and out of Jersey that you think deserve some extra attention?

Andrew: Out of New Jersey?

Bobby: Yeah.

Andrew: Out of New Jersey there’s this band called Paulson which is amazing. We brought two bands from New Jersey on this last tour, We.re All Broken and The Number 12 Looks Like You, they’re both great bands. I love New Jersey bands, they make great music. Dillinger Escape Plan, God Forbid, Saves the Day, Lifetime, Bouncing Souls, these are all New Jersey bands. It’s awesome.

Bobby: Okay, I love going to concerts, I try to go to as many as I can, but of course, some are always more memorable than others. So thinking back, what are some concerts that you went to that were really memorable for you?

Andrew: I saw Radiohead on the Okay Computer tour and that kind of blew my mind, and I realized, like I was playing music up until that point, but when I saw them, I really made up my mind to not to do anything else but just try and do music. And Elliott Smith was another one; that was pretty awesome.

Geoff: Ink And Dagger in the Church in Philadelphia. That was a big one for me. Also in the Church in Philadelphia, Hot Water Music and Four Hundred Years – amazing show. We used to do basement shows, and probably the best basement show we ever had was the last You And I show and that was so incredible. Yeah, U2 in Yankee Stadium. There’s a bunch of life changing experiences in concerts.

Bobby: If you could tour with one person or band, still going or broken up, who would you choose to tour with and why?

Geoff: Dead, I’d have to go with Joy Division. Yeah, because now you can do Joy Division slash New Order because they’d be both there, that would be pretty amazing. Two of the most influential bands ever basically would be on the same stage together.

Andrew: Again, I would have to say Elliott Smith, he just meant a lot to me. And it would be awesome to become friends with him and tour with him.

Geoff: Although I think he just wanted to be left alone. Fugazi was huge, that would be awesome. Those bands would be awesome to tour with.

Bobby: Okay, this question is more for you Geoff, you are also a part of a label called Astro Magnetics with Alex Saavedra and Marc Debiak, how did you get into that?

Geoff: Just from working with Eyeball for so long. We’ve just been friends for a really long time, done a bunch of stuff together. We all did the My Chemical Romance record, did Murder By Death, we did a bunch of great bands and it was natural for us to start a little company together.

Bobby: How do you like working on that side of the music business?

Geoff: I like helping young bands. Really young bands that are amazing that nobody believes in, I like being the one that says “No, you guys are great. You should really do this. You should quit school and go, be a band.” I like being the voice of recognition of being a band.

Bobby: Okay, now onto a bit more unusual questions that I just like to ask at all my interviews to keep it interesting. First off, if you were the member of the opposite sex for a day, week, month, however long you wanted, what would you do and why?

Andrew: If I was a girl?

Bobby: Yeah.

Andrew: I’d go shopping.

Geoff: I’d put on sexy dresses, see what’s it like to wear makeup. I’d see what it’s like to have sex with a guy. I don’t know.

Andrew: I guess I’d check myself out in the mirror, that’s probably the first thing I’d do.

Bobby: Okay, if you were stranded on a desert island, with no food and nothing to eat, which one of the band members would you eat to survive and why?

Geoff: That’s a tough question, because you’d want to eat Tom because he’s the most useless, but you’d also not want to eat him because he has no meat on his bones. So I guess we’d probably have to eat Steve first.

Andrew: Yeah, I’d say Steve or Tim.

Geoff: Or Tim, yeah, Tim’s probably good.

Andrew: Tim’s probably a really clean cut either that or Tucker.

Geoff: Tucker wouldn’t last very long though.

Andrew: Yeah.

Geoff: That’s an amazing question.

Bobby: *laughs* Okay, could you tell us something about the band or one of its members that not many people know about? Like a little quirk they do on the road or something like that?

Geoff: Tom eats in his sleep. He’s a zombie. He walks around and gets food and keeps it in his bunk and you hear *makes eating and chewing noises*, and you hear that all night long.

Bobby: If you could have on thing at this moment, anything at all, what would you have and why?

Andrew: A house, I’d want a house.

Geoff: A good answer.

Andrew: I would want a small house with a yard.

Geoff: Yeah, a good answer, I back it.

Bobby: Okay, I guess that’s about it, thanks a lot for doing it, do you have any final thoughts you’d like to add?

Andrew: Thanks for taking the time and interviewing us, it was a pleasure.