(This took place inside their van outside of the El-N-Gee club here in CT on April 8, 2001... it was a Sunday. Geoff sings and screams and Steve plays guitar and jumps around a lot. The pictures are from Plea For Peace 2002, much much later)
Josh Nacho: How do you get your songs to sound the way that they do?
Geoff: Part of it is definitely the studio that we went to. They're very much about helping you find what your songs are about. We almost lived in the studio while we were there, and it got really intense. It was wonderful and hard.
Steve: They really pushed us. If we got frustrated, and we were like "Ok, that's good enough", they were like, "Do it again, you can do it a lot better than that".
Geoff: If you started to go in one direction with a part and they didn't get it, they'd be like, "Isn't this part is part supposed to be like this?" and you'd go "Well, no". And they'd be like, "Well, what's the part about? What's the music here about?". And you'd be like, "Well, this is a part where it's intimate". It's supposed to be us in a room, in a basement where we play shows, just make it real on the CD. And they'd be like, "Oh, I didn't know it was going to be that kind of a part. Ok, now we're going to make it like that". We write all the music first, pretty much. We all write differently. Tom and I would write the guitar part and we'd bring it to practice. Then Tucker would be the first person to get a hold of it, and he would put something to it. We'd work on it for a long time and get everybody involved in it. Then another person would have the next part. Like, this goes into this. Then we'd fight about it, because we fight so much when we write. For a while it really bugged me out. It really made me unhappy.
Steve: I think it's kind of essential.
Geoff: That's how our songs come out the way they come out, because we fight so much, it's not until everyone's happy with the song.
Steve: It's definitely not in a bad way, it's just a matter of one person's like, "I don't really like that part", but you believe in the part so you wanna keep it in, so you fight about it for a while and ultimately you don't do anything unless everyone's happy in this band.
Geoff: And then there's always the "Well, at least try it". Every so often you'll be like, "Ok, that was kind of cool, I like it now that I tried it". But some times you'd be like...
Steve: "I told you."
Geoff: Yeah, "I told you". And the person's like, "Yeah, it does sound like ass". And then after that I try to figure out what the song is, as music, and then I try to write something similar or if I feel like the song's about falling apart, then I'll write about something in my life that's falling apart. Or some times I'll make it the opposite. Just something that relates to it in a certain way. I'm very conscious about music, I never write lyrics before... Ever.
J.N.: What do you think are the differences and changes between your first CD "Waiting" and the new CD "Full Collapse"? Did you have any added pressure making "Full Collapse", knowing it would be on Victory?
Geoff: The Victory thing was like, "Yeah, a lot more people are probably gonna hear this". We weren't really concerned with sounding like a Victory band at all. We definitely wanted to grow, because "Waiting" is a really young record. Our drummer learned how to play drums on it. The same with all of us really, we were just learning and we didn't even have Steve yet in the band.
[Tim's cameo]
Geoff: We definitely weren't really concerned with the Victory thing at all. At first we were unsure, because all of their other bands are not like us. We knew there were some people that would probably give us a hard time like, "Oh, you're on the tough guy label now". The truth is that we grew up listening to Snapcase. By the Grace of God was one of my favorite bands ever. I loved them. Everything that they were about, I just thought it was great. We were familiar with Victory and we knew that with Victory we'd be able to get what we were saying out to a lot of people. When I was a kid, I didn't know anything about the d.i.y. scene at all, and I could get Victory records in stores, and that opened a lot of doors into other kinds of music. From going to see Snapcase and seeing the Refused open up. From going to see the Refused and seeing Frotus open up. And seeing Frotus and Four Hundred Years, and seeing all these other hardcore bands. I think if we could do that for somebody, get them into the d.i.y. scene and get them into good hardcore bands and indie rock bands and all the different kind of bands out there, that'd be amazing. That's a lot of what Victory is about for us. As far as changing our sound, we were very conscious about what we sounded like on our first record. We wanna be the same band because the people who like us, and we liked us too, we like what we were trying to do even though we didn't feel like we totally did it on the first record at all. I think we got a lot closer on "Full Collapse"- to doing what we wanna do. Still, we have limitations. There's stuff that we can't play that we'd like to, and there's only so much time to write a record. There's all kinds of stuff that'll hold you back, but we had a really, really good time writing this record, personally and just in the studio together. We're really proud of it. Not in the sense that like, "Oh, it's this great record". There's this quote on a sampler that has me saying how good the record is, that's like completely to try and sell records and that was not our idea at all, believe me. If you ever meet us they'll know that's not us at all. I'm happy about it because of how hard it was and how a lot of the things that we tried work, and a lot didn't. Just the whole thing- the ups and the downs of it make it worthwhile.
[Tom's cameo]
Geoff: I think there was definitely change, but it wasn't conscious like, we wanna sound different change, it was more natural just living together for another year and a half or whatever it was.
J.N.: Why are you called Thursday?
Geoff: We wanted a name that was kind of low key, not flashy, not like...
J.N.: Jets to Brazil.
Steve: (laughing) You said it.
Geoff: (laughing) Yeah, you said that. But, no, they're pretty rockin'. There are a lot of bands out there that just kind of have flashy names, like this that and the other project theory program, we just didn't wanna be a part of that whole craze. We wanted something that was very anonymous. Something that you could see on a flyer and not even know it's a band.
Steve: Which actually we get a lot of crap for.
Geoff: Yeah, we get a ton of crap. People put "Thursday- the band", like real big, right around it. Thursday the band isn't such a cool name.
Steve: Or they'll immediately change it to Thursdays.
Geoff: Yeah, the Thursdays.
J.N.: It gets confusing though.
Steve: Yeah, we totally understand.
J.N.: It's like, "Are you going to Thursday?" and people are like, "What show's on Thursday?" and you're like, "No, the band's Thursday, the show's on this day..."
Steve: We're used to it.
Geoff: Yeah, we're so used to that... "But today's Friday". We're like, "Yeah, you got it, today's Friday".
Steve: "You made the original joke, ha ha ha".
Geoff: Every day is Thursday, ha ha.
(laughing)
J.N.: With bands that have names of the days of the week in their band names-
Steve: It's a secret society. And we all have tattoos inbetween our toes, but we can't tell you or show you.
Geoff: You just told him, dude, you're dead.
Steve: I told him where it is, but I can't tell him what it is.
(laughing)
J.N.: It just seems certain days are neglected.
Geoff: There's the Happy Mondays. The Sundays.
Steve: Sunday's Best. Wednesday.
Geoff: Is there a Wednesday band?
Steve: Yeah.
Geoff: There is?
Steve: Yeah.
Geoff: Really?
Steve: Yeah, I'm pretty sure.
Geoff: There's definitely a Tuesday, they're on Asian Man.
Steve: I remember reading some where there's a Wednesday band.
Geoff: I don't think I've ever seen a Saturday, besides like, Saturday Matinee or something like that.
Steve: We should all go out on tour together.
Geoff: The headliner would be whatever day of the week it was.
Steve: So we'd rotate. That'd be awesome.
(laughing)
Geoff: That's the only way that having any association could be cool at all. Actually, somebody was giving me a hard time about the name Thursday once, and they're like, "Don't you think it's kind of stupid because there's already a Tuesday?" And the person was really obnoxious, so instead of being like, "Well, we didn't really think about Tuesday and there are a lot of names that are similar any way", instead of giving her the real explanation, I was like, "Well, we've been around for 11 years". And she was like, "Really?" And I was like, "Yeah, so we didn't take the name, we had the name first." She was like, "How old are you guys?" I was like, "I'm 22, we put out our first 7" when I was 11.
(laughing)
Geoff: I was just giving her an idea.
J.N.: It's like, "I came up with this idea in my basement when I was six".
Geoff: The best part is, she was like, "Did you guys get better?". I was like, "We still play those songs".
(laughing)
J.N.: How did you guys get hooked up with Victory?
Steve: Good old Alex.
Geoff: Good old Alex. Our friend from Eyeball Records. He's awesome. He's been running a really awesome punk rock record label for years and years now. He put out the first H2O 7", the Casualties, Break Down, like all these great punk rock bands. He was the one who was friends with some people at Victory. I was talking to them and they liked the record, but hadn't seen us. We were kind of like "Oh, Alex, we're happy with you, we wanna keep putting out records with you", and he was like, "No, that's cool. If you guys really wanna put out records with me, I won't tell you not to, but I think you guys are really special and I want you to get up there to more people. I want the best for you guys and I love you guys. I think that my friends at Victory will treat you a lot better than a lot of other people will". So they came to see us with Boy Sets Fire, and we talked to them there and they liked us at that show. It just sort of happened. We went out to Chicago to go to the office and stuff. That was that.
Steve: In a nutshell.
Geoff: It's so not like...
Steve: It didn't happen that quick.
Geoff: Yeah, they didn't just discover us and go "Damn, Thursday!" . We talked to them for a year, and talked to other people and just thought, yeah we could do this with Alex and just tour a lot and that's how people will hear about us. Then it just came to a point where they said they really wanted to do that. I always thought when I was a kid that with labels and bands, labels just saw the band, and then boom, it happened that night. Like they signed them over dinner or something. Then later on we find out it's more drawn out. But it was a lot of fun.
J.N.: In the sense of who did you grow up listening to and what do you listen to now, who are some of your influences, other than Joy Division?
Geoff: You got Joy Division, all right. One down. About three million to go. This is a total whoever you ask in the band you get a totally different story and I think that's a lot of the reason our songs sound the way that they do.
J.N.: Who listens to death metal in the band?
Geoff: I listen to some. You probably listen to some.
Steve: I listen to a little, but not that much.
Geoff: Probably straight metal a lot more.
Steve: Why? You can hear a lot of death metal in there?
J.N.: You can hear the influence. I think someone really likes metal.
Steve: I'm the guy that throws the chugs in there.
Geoff: I grew up on metal, I played in a metal band with Heath actually, from Midtown, we're from the next door town. We all got a little metal in us, I think.
Steve: The Who is actually a huge influence for me, just wanting to play guitar- and it was bass at that time. I was into all this classic rock, I'm not the typical kid who was wheeled in on hardcore, although I love it and I'm real glad I found it. When it first started with me, it was the Who or Velvet Underground or something like that. Then after taking all of those influences and adding the hardcore like Bad Brains and Gorilla Biscuits, that's kind of what it was for me.
Geoff: When I was a little, little kid my parents got me into like confessional folk stuff, like Jackson Browne. Literally when I was five they took me to see Jackson Browne, so I was into that stuff. Then my cousin, he used to live near me here in CT actually, and he moved but his best friend who was always over kind of ended up being my cousin, and he got me into hardcore when I was some where inbetween 11, 12, 13... I saw my first hardcore show when I was 13. He got me into Bad Brains, Minor Threat... I totally wouldn't bite on Minor Threat for the longest time because the recordings were so bad, but I finally got into them. He got me into so much hardcore, like old hardcore. All that first and second wave stuff. I really like that stuff a lot. I was totally hooked when I first saw the Bad Brains- that was my first hardcore show- and hearing hardcore on record isn't really what it's about. You gotta see it. You gotta go to a show, and you gotta be a part of it. It's not even like going to another show where you watch, you can't help being a part of it. Even if you're not up front singing along, there's just a certain sense that every second you're there it isn't this spectacle, it's just this thing going on and at any second anything can happen and that's what grabbed me the most. Then I was into other stuff too. This band Failure, for a long time... 80's new wave stuff... Joy Division, all the dark wave stuff that ended up influencing goth... the Cure- huge influence... the Police, I love... U2... All those bands like that mid-80's period. Especially lately instrumental stuff has been more of what I've been listening to, but especially the dark stuff. We listen to a lot of indie rock. I listen to Raina Maria and all kinds of stuff like that. We all listen to pretty much anything that we hear that we don't immediately dislike. The way it fits into our music is, I'll listen to any indie rock song and imagine what it's like as a metal song. And then vice versa, listening to something straight up hardcore and imagine what it was like if it was done by Ani Difranco. Imagine Tori Amos songs as grind songs. Stuff like that. I think a lot of that influences the way we write. Even though it's a Thursday song, take something that started as a little strum thing and turn it into a break down of guitar, take something that we're all playing really heavy and if it has nice chords, then make it soft. It's kind of more of a war of influences than just kind of sitting down next to each other. Sorry all of these answers are really long.
J.N.: This could be a short answer if you get it right... What's your favorite Neil Young song?
Geoff: Yes.
(laughing)
J.N.: I don't think that was a song.
(much hesitation)
Geoff: I don't know, there was a lot of good stuff on "Harvest Moon". How about you Steve-O?
Steve: I think he wants us to say the one song...
Geoff: Yeah, he's trying to get the reference out.
Steve: The obvious reference, or the suttle one? But there is another... I'm just kidding. So apparently he wants us to say... What does he want us to say? "Sleeps With Angels"?
J.N.: "Heroin"! No wait, that was Lou Reed...
(after a bit of silence, everyone looks at each other and laughs)
Steve: What is the song dude?
Geoff: I'm totally drawing a blank on the name.
(laughing)
J.N.: Is it "Rockin' In the Free World"?
Steve: Yeah.
J.N.: You're trying to think of one that's not the one... That's the only one that I can think of though...
Geoff: I don't know, I was always partial to "Cinnamon Girl".
(more laughing)
J.N.: I'm not moving ahead until I hear my answer.
Geoff: (quietly) "The Needle and the Damage Done".
J.N.: Yeah, that was it. (laughing)
Steve: Wait, you stole that line dude?
Geoff: Nah, I did it first. When I was 2 because I knew. I was in touch with the idea of needles and penetration. I understood the whole interior/exterior reversal thing.
Steve: The funny thing about that line, is some times a relative of mine will be like, "You know that's a Neil Young song, right?" and it's like, "No, we've never heard Neil Young". (laughing)
Geoff: (laughing) Yeah, we're younguns. Anything before 1997 I don't think is music.
J.N.: Anything before Nirvana.
Steve: Yeah.
Geoff: Who?
(laughing)
J.N.: Anything before Creed, ok?
(Steve sings "With Arms Wide Open")
Geoff: Oh yeah, I know them.
(From here, the conversation shifts to a few different topics, but ends up with their being compared to At-the-Drive-In.)
J.N.: You've actually been compared to At-the-Drive-In.
Geoff: Yeah, we've heard that a lot. It's kind of strange too, because they've stayed at my house before and I know those guys- they're really nice guys- and I love their music. It's funny though, because I see them doing their own thing very much, but to me it's very different, even right down to the way you think about the part. If you could break it up, down to the bear bones of how they write their songs, it's a very different way of thinking. I think we're a lot of our influences thrown together and they're their influences, but I think their influences are very different from ours. I hear a lot of salsa in their music, and Spanish guitar, and that's what really first attracted me to them, is I heard that song "Initiation", and it starts off with that really cool salsa guitar line. For me, when we were starting off as a band, writing our songs, when I thought about the Drive In, I thought they were this crazy punk southwestern band, so to get compared to them now is really strange. It's totally flattering because I respect them immensely because I think they stuck to their guns on their music and on their politics and everything that they do. It's just funny to me to hear that kind of their comparison, because I just don't get it. I'd love to think it was kind of like, right on. We didn't really ever consciously say "Let's do an At-the-Drive-In thing", so hearing that we're compared to them- it makes me really happy, because I know how much I love that band.
J.N.: It's kind of weird that they just started to get played on mainstream and now they're canceling their tour and they maybe calling it quits.
Geoff: It's hard to be in a band, even just at the level that we're at- and we never even played Europe. I know that when they were over there, there were all kinds of messes going on. I know for us, we've just had moments where it was like, "Ahhh! We can't go on another day! This is crazy!" We're murdering ourselves, not sleeping, dangerous on the road, half asleep, like crazy. Just so like, you know you're not supposed to do this as a human. But them, I can't even imagine because they've been on the road nonstop for like, four and a half years. So, as much as I hate to see them go, I understand why they're having a hard time right now. Hopefully if they get some time off to do their own thing they'll be all right.
J.N.: What do you think of other Jersey bands?
Geoff: I think they're amazing. There's so many good Jersey bands. Especially where, as a band, we're from, in New Brunswick, there are a ton. The band we share our practice space with, they're called Unsound, they're Steve's little brother's band. They're amazing. They're really, really good. In some ways, they've got a bit of a Cave In thing going on, but some where between Until Your Heart Stops and the new stuff; it's got more melody than any of the Until Your Heart Stops stuff does. They're awesome, they know what they're doing. They take forever to write one song.
Steve: They're perfectionists.
Geoff: And then they'll scrap a whole song that we love.
Steve: Yeah, we'll hear a song that's totally amazing that we're into it, then we'll go away for a week and come back or whatever and be like, "Where's that song we like?" and they'll just be like, "Oh, we scrapped it, we didn't like it any more". And it was just so good.
Geoff: We'll just sit there and be like, "No guys, you're bringing that song back". And they're like, "Well, you don't know, when you left it turned into a seven minute song"... "Then make it a three minute song and it'll be good again".
Geoff and Steve: The Assistant.
Geoff: From New Brunswick, they are amazing, they used to be in a band called You and I, who was also good, but the Assistant's like, I've heard kids in Tallahassee who were like, "Since the Refused broke up the Assistant's the best hardcore band in the world", they are really good. They have keyboards, and jazz parts, and they all sing- all five of them. They're incredibly good.
Steve: Especially live.
Geoff: They're recordings are kind of hard to hear some times, but live, they're mindblowing. They're all really sincere and they're all doing it for the right reasons. It's just wonderful when there's really good music and really incredible people playing it, that's the best combo. There's Worthless, from New Brunswick, Storm Shadow, Low End Theory, and then there's the ones that everybody knows- Lifetime, Saves the Day, Midtown...
Steve: Zero Zero.
Geoff: Yeah, Zero Zero. We played with them.
Steve: Back in the Day. Turning Point.
Geoff: That's right. Oh, Dillinger Escape Plan's from our town too. So you just keep going north from our town, there's just so many fucking good bands. Nora, we love, those guys are awesome. All from one town, we feel pretty lucky about that. 'Cause New Brunswick's not that huge. We're definitely lucky.
J.N.: So many bands are coming out of Jersey now.
Geoff: That's the thing, if we were one outside of New Brunswick, it'd be ridiculous- like, so much worse- just 'cause there are so many bands in New Jersey as a whole. Like, so much worse to try and name.
Steve: There would be a lot of bands.
J.N.: Ever since Bon Jovi.
Geoff: You wanna know a little known fact too? Sonic Youth, from Hoboken. They started getting popular when they moved to New York.
J.N.: That's what a lot of bands do though.
Geoff: It's ok, I don't think we'll ever be able to afford the rent in New York.
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