THURSDAY (2004)

Call it the year of screamo if you want, but that’s a just another way of saying everyone wanted to be where THURSDAY was in 2003. After “Full Collapse”, THRUSDAY was in the spotlight and at the forefront of a booming music genre. The much-anticipated “War All the Time” showed the maturation of a group who, above all, has stayed honest to itself from the first moment they earned success. I caught up with Tim Payne at The Norva in the middle of THURSDAY’s tour with THRICE and COHEED AND CAMBRIA to talk about “War All the Time”, MTV, and, with the help of a half naked Geoff Rickley, Thanksgiving dinner. This interview was conducted in person on November 15th, 2003.

Pastepunk: First off, please state you name and what you do in the band?

Tim: I’m Tim and I play bass.

Pastepunk: How does it feel to be on tour with THRICE and COHEED AND CAMBRIA right now?

Tim: Oh, it’s great. We’ve toured with COHEED before and they are just super nice guys and a really good band. When we first started touring, I’d say two and a half years ago, everyone was like “You gotta have a tour with THRICE! You gotta tour with THRICE!” We didn’t hear them for the longest time, we just heard about them and that we should tour with them. When we were on the Warped Tour we finally met. That was about two years ago, and we got that worked out.

Pastepunk: So assuming that all places aren’t as lavish as this (ed: The Norva has a freaking Jacuzzi backstage!), what’s your normal pre-show warm-up ritual?

Tim: I generally have a horrible schedule. I don’t end up falling asleep until about four or five, just because my clock is all fucked up. Then I sleep until three and wander out of bed to do soundcheck. Basically I just sit around, I’m pretty much a loser. I just sit around and hang out with the guys in the bands. We have a lot of press. This tour has been pretty crazy with that. [Laughs] The other day, I forgot where we were, but everyday we print out a press sheet of what we have to do and it said “High School Press Conference.” So we’re like “What the hell is that?” So we’re talking to Chris, our tour manager, and we were like “Yo what is this? Is this an actual press conference?” and he said “No, no, no, it’s just a video interview with a couple of high school kids.” So we think [shrugs] alright. So we go into this room, this extra room, and it was an actual press conference with 70 high school kids and a big table set up with microphones and water. It was pretty funny, but basically I just hang around and watch the other bands.

Pastepunk: Well congrats on the record, first off. I read that you scrapped a few songs that you had recorded, will those ever see the light of day?

Tim: Hopefully. Basically, it was just a time issue. They were done, but we had done demos of all the songs and when we recorded them something happened on the way with one or two of them where they lost something. We couldn’t quite figure it out. So we thought we’d do that last, and by the time we were done we were like “Oh, they aren’t done, and we don’t want to put them out now because we want to work on them more.” So I’m really hoping we do. Some of them were my favorite songs and it sucks because I didn’t want to put any out half-assed.

Pastepunk: Did those songs create any indecision in the band in terms of wanting to put this song out versus another song?

Tim: There wasn’t any tension but it was coming to terms with ourselves that we didn’t get it, we just didn’t get it. It sucks but. Some of the songs, when we first wrote them, we were like “Yes, finally!” Because when we first started writing we wrote everything so fast that those are the songs that we caught our attraction with, and we were most excited about, but in the end something happened. So we come to terms with ourselves that they aren’t out.

Pastepunk: What’s the usual writing process in THURSDAY?

Tim: Well, its weird. We don’t really have a specific way we write, and with this album it was really strange because we were on tour so long. When we wrote “Full Collapse” we were writing over a course of two years and playing local shows and New Jersey and that area and stuff, just basically writing all the time. Then we started touring and it was so hard to write on the road that we got done this year. We got done touring and we took three days off. At the point we had maybe two songs.maybe.written for the record. We wrote everything on “War All the Time” in basically two months. So it was really stressful. It was bizarre because everything was so “every day.” We were writing from eleven in the morning until eight at night for six days a week for two months. Every once in a while someone will write a whole song and they’ll bring it in and there’s nothing you can say, it’s just generally like you can’t critique or anything. But generally someone like Tom or Steve or me will just write something on the guitar, a little thing, and bring it to someone else. So everyone will learn the part and comes up with different parts that go with it and we just sift through it. We were a lot more collaborative too.

Pastepunk: Like with Gretta from CURSIVE?

Tim: Yeah, like with Gretta and Jonah (FAR, ONELINEDRAWING), but even within the band. Instead of it being us going home and writing at home, it was generally on the spot, like we had to do something now because it’s only two in the afternoon. We have to get through this because we don’t have any other songs to work on, so just keep pounding until we figure something out.

Pastepunk: I know a lot of people expected 12 tracks of “Jet Black New Year.”

Tim: Yeah!

Pastepunk: Did you feel any pressure to change direction?

Tim: Yeah, it’s weird, for some reason just in the past week and a half or so kids will come up to me. We were in Orlando and this kid came up to me and was like “So how does it feel knowing half the people out there hate your new record?” and I was like “It’s awesome! It feels great!” [Laughs]. It’s strange, but I felt that when we wrote “Jet Black” I don’t think anyone really knew what to expect, they just hoped it sounded like another song on “Full Collapse”. A lot of people got to live us live with that record, basically no one knew us before and I don’t think they had anything to compare it to. It was strange, at first. “Jet Black” got a strange reaction. Now it seems like it’s a lot of kids’ favorite song, but when we first put it out everyone said, “What the fuck is this is bullshit?” The same thing happened when we put “For the Workforce.” on the website. We just though “Hey, let’s put a song on the website and put a few posts on the message board and see what people think.” And these kids are like “Aw, fucking THURSDAY went nu-metal!”

Pastepunk: Nu-metal?

Tim: Yeah, really! We were like “I don’t see it, you know, but if that’s the way you want to see it”. I think people have their attachments to “Full Collapse” and “Jet Black” and it’s just going to take time.

Pastepunk: I remember when you released that song I was scrambling for lyrics to “Workforce” and there were about 30 different versions.

Tim: [Laughs]. We got this one review, I don’t remember if it was Kerrang or Rocksound, some European magazine did a review of the split 7″ with THRICE. There’s the one part that Geoff’s saying “Keep making copies of copies of copies” and they said “Yea, it’s great, it’s talking about the workforce” and they quoted it as making coffees and coffees and coffees.

Pastepunk: So being on Island now, do you feel like you have more input into the direction of the band?

Tim: Very much. I feel, we all do, we feel much more at ease knowing what’s going on instead of being on a label where you find out you’re music is on this movie and you have no idea about it. Just being able to tell them.. [Geoff decides to listen in on the conversation despite a lack of pants]

Tim: Basically we just tell them, it’s more of a dialogue instead of “You should do this” and pushing us. Everyone is really supportive and everyone is really involved. There are so many people at the label but everyone is really excited for us. Basically, everyone is really passionate about what’s going on, the way it should be.

Pastepunk: Does being more in the spotlight now, being more well known, does it get old having to play the fan favorites like “Understanding In a Car Crash” or “Paris in Flames” night in night out?

Tim: Yea, there will be some periods where a certain song, regardless of what it is, just having played it for so long, yeah. Like “Understanding” that’s one of our favorite songs anyways, but in general there will be a week long period or ever two weeks where a few songs don’t have the dynamic. The dynamic isn’t there and you’re trying to play it and find it with everyone and it goes away for a little while. But it shifts back and forth, sometimes the whole set is amazing and another night it’s not. It’s more of a day-by-day basis instead of thinking about when the last time we didn’t play “Understanding” was. It reinvents itself every night.

Pastepunk: I took a look at your message board to see what all the fans were talking about and it seems that everyone is looking for tickets to this tour. Did you ever think you’d be the band that sells out the shows really quick and everyone is hanging around outside for tickets?

Tim: [Laughs] Really? No, not at all, it’s crazy. Some kids came to me looking for tickets and I couldn’t do anything, we have a full guest list. I never thought in a million years when we first started playing we’d be where we are now. I didn’t really notice it until. especially with this tour.we did a tour before this with YEAR OF THE RABBIT and DEATH BY STEREO and we were playing at a lot of places that we were used to. In this tour we go to the Palladium in L.A. and selling out like 3500 tickets. The lights went on and it was like “Holy shit!” It all kind of hits you at once, it’s fucking crazy. I can’t even describe it.

Pastepunk: What’s your favorite song off of “War All the Time” and what will be the next single?

Tim: My favorite song on the record is…I go back and forth… “Division St.” is definitely my favorite, but I go back with “M. Sheppard”. I really love “M. Sheppard”, but we don’t play it, we have to figure out the electronic part. We’re scrambling around trying to figure that out. We’re almost there and we really want to play that song live. I really want to play that one. But just playing “Division St.” live and getting a feel for it gives it a third dimension.

Pastepunk: What about the next single?

Tim: I think that it’s going to be “War All the Time”.

Pastepunk: Tomorrow night you have your MTV broadcast of your live performance.

Tim: Yea! I totally forgot about that!

Pastepunk: Are you going to be able to catch any of it?

Tim: No. We have a day off at home and I’m gonna try not to let the band infiltrate [laughs]. I get to go home and I’m going to hang out with my wife and stuff and I don’t want the band to even cross my mind for one day. But I’ve seen it already because they sent it to us, and it’s pretty interesting.

Pastepunk: Dustin (Kensrue, of THRICE) was telling me it sucked that it was so early in the tour and that he didn’t have a feel for the set.

Tim: Yeah, totally. We kind of went back and forth. We had issues with production and stuff like that and at that point we didn’t have a lighting guy with us. It was like “Oh shit, we’re gonna be on MTV and we don’t know what it’s gonna look like.” So they brought us a lighting guy and I think it turned out O.K. It’s not all crazy or anything, but it’s decent. It was a great show but it sucks though. They sent us the original and it was just the one camera shot, basically, of the whole show and that show was so, so good and so big. We played at the Detroit State Theater and they had the balcony that was just huge. You could go all the way to the top and everything looks like little, tiny things and it was filled. I was blown away by the crowd, they were awesome. But you don’t see a lot of the crowd. Just like, the first song they put on is the first song we played and the next song they cut to is almost the end of the set so we’re drenched in sweat. So it’s weird, we’re never totally, completely happy with watching ourselves live. Every time we see something or hear something we say “Oh, that was really bad, we need to work on that.” So it’s hard knowing a bunch of people are gonna see it when you yourself is still critiquing it.

Pastepunk: What are you listening to on the bus?

Tim: On the bus I’m listening to the “Lost in Translation” soundtrack, it’s phenomenal. I just picked up APHEX TWIN, I don’t know why. Geoff has an APHEX TWIN CD and he put it on and I thought, “This is kind of cool.” So I saw it at a store and said, “I’ll just buy it!” Oh, my CD got all scratched up so I’ve been listening to a lot of DRIVE LIKE JEHU lately. Their first CD. I have “Yank Crime” already but their first CD was totally fucked up and unlistenable and I found it the other day in Orlando.

Pastepunk: In a hypothetical Thanksgiving dinner situation with you guys, THRICE, and COHEED AND CAMBRIA, who is most likely to steal the best piece of turkey while everyone else is saying grace?

Tim: [Laughs] Between all three bands. Umm…definitely nobody in THRICE.

Geoff: Steal the best piece of turkey?

Tim: Yea, definitely nobody in THRICE.

Geoff: Why do you say that? Because they’re all too nice?

Tim: They’re too nice, yeah. And it’s during grace, so they’re going to be thinking about stuff. I’m gonna say, just on a gut instinct, I’m gonna say Josh from COHEED AND CAMBRIA. It just seems like something he would do.

Pastepunk: Last question: don’t you hate pants?

Tim: [Laugh] Don’t I hate pants? He hates pants [pointing to Geoff, wearing only a towel].

Geoff: Huh?

Tim: I like pants. I just ripped the ass of my favorite pair of jeans sitting on a curb, though.

Photo Credits: Geoff (green) – Dan Berman Tim (red) – Elliot Cole