Interviews

Thursday

Interview with Tim Payne on May 20, 2006 by Archive Bot

Thursday has been one of those bands for so long that one either loves in such a way that it pains them to be without their music, or scoffs at with disgust and cynicism. For seven years, their heavy guitars, catchy choruses and screams where they count have reached out to hundreds of thousands of emotionally displaced young adults. Now two records deep into their major label career, Punkbands.com decided it was high time to get our talk on with Tim Payne.  So I sat aside impending work during my lunch break at the 9-5 grind, pick up the telephone and got down to business.  Tim and I spoke about being a trend-setter, where the new record really came from and the rough spots along the way that could have been the end of Thursday.
 
By: Katie Ellsweig [K-T@hvc.rr.com]
 
I’ve been a Thursday fan for a very long time and in all my observations that seems to be a trend with this band. Most Thursday fans have been there since the beginning.  How has their loyalty contributed to your success as a band?
 
Tim: It’s been the basis for everything that we’ve gone through so far.  When we first started, there were kids that saw us playing to ten people somewhere in Indiana back in 1999 and those kids have stayed with us since then.  I think that one of the biggest things that helps us is our fans’ loyalty.  We’ve been off the road for over two years and now we’re back touring and all the same kids keep coming out.  Most of the fans seem to be in it for the long haul and that’s a huge part of where we are right now and what will help us stay together as a band for ten or fifteen years if we want to.
 
In your own definition, what is success? Can a band be influential without ever being really successful? Is that even possible?
 
Tim: When we first set out to be a band, our idea of success was…well…we didn’t really have any huge goals.  We just wanted to play music and hopefully we could be able to play a show with a band who played with Fugazi once.  We never talked about what we wanted to accomplish so everything that’s happened over the last seven years has been ridiculous.  We’re playing to 1600 kids today and every time that happens it always seems really strange. As far as bands that are influential without being popular- I think that it definitely is possible.  That’s a lot of the mentality that we have.  We feel like we would be successful is we were an influential band even if we didn’t sell a million records. There are bands like Fugazi and Jawbreaker that shaped the way hundreds of bands approach music.  There would be whole genres of music that would never have been started or bands that never would have formed without them.
 
Have you influenced younger bands in a sense? Looking at bands like Lifetime, who were an influence for you, do you see your Lifetime-like influence in other bands?
 
Tim: I think that to an extent, just coming from where we came from at the time, we did. We’re somewhat influential and I can hear some younger bands that have some similarities with us and it ends up being really flattering.  Lifetime was a huge influence for us as far as wanting to even be a band. We would go to Lifetime shows and think about how great it would be to be in a band…
 
So how do you feel about them being back in action?
 
Tim: I was very surprised. I don’t think that they can make a bad record, but we will just have to see.  It’s been however many years, so we’ll see. I think everyone’s really anxious and we just can’t wait to hear it.  Good for them though! If they never broke up, they’d be one of the biggest bands in the country right now with what they’ve influenced and how all these huge bands right now cite them as a major influence.
 
 
I’ve been getting a lot of shit for the review I wrote of A City By The Light Divided. My opinion is that the record is a lot to take in; it’s difficult to listen to.  What’s your take?
 
Tim: We set out to do something that we have never done before. If people don’t like it, I think that there’s an issue with a lot younger people who will say “oh, there’s no screaming.” At this point, there are so many bands that scream for the sake of screaming and we’ve never been a band that wanted to do that for the sake of doing it.  There were a lot of decisions we made as far as what kind of album we wanted to write that weren’t based on what’s happening in music in the present day; it’s based on the people that we were.  That’s really how we wrote Waiting and Full Collapse: we were just friends making music together.  I think that Sonically, War All The Time is a much more dense record.  For me, trying to go back and listen to it, it’s hard to get through the whole thing. You can turn it on and it’s just at full blast all the time.  I think that we got back to the place where we were just a bunch of friends writing a record.  As far as people not liking it; that’s always been the kind of band we were. Kids would either completely identify with the record or they’d get it and hate it. 
 
We love this record. We feel like it’s what we’ve been trying to make for the past eight years. If people don’t really understand it, we want them to have some time to listen to it.  There are kids that have listened to Full Collapse for five or six years now so they have all these emotional ties to that record and they’re trying to compare the new record to that record which has been such a huge part of their lives. 
 
You mentioned that War All The Time is difficult for you to listen to now.  Is that because it was rushed? Are you unhappy with that work?
 
Tim: There were a lot of things going on at the time that caused us to be under pressure.  We were touring for about two years and had just started to do really well.  We had put all this pressure on ourselves, and then it was like we’re on a major label so we need to get this out so we don’t lose momentum.  I think we wrote this record in two months front to back.  Then, we went into the studio and it took so long to record that by the end of it, we knew every song so well that we knew what we liked and didn’t like about each song.  There was so much pressure to get the record out and to finish it up and to do well so in retrospect, it kind of seems like we subconsciously rebelled against that in a way with this record.
 
So you sat down and talked about how you wanted to approach this one? How did you approach this record and what came out of that conversation?
 
Tim: We hadn’t had a break in about four years or so and it got to a point out on the Warped Tour two years ago where we were basically at the end of our rope.  We were so burnt out on touring that we weren’t sure why we were playing shows.  It was like, are we playing shows  just because all these people around us are telling us we have to? Are we playing shows because we love to or because we feel guilty if we’re not?  Nothing was very clear as to what we were doing and why.  We’ve never been a band that does things just for the sake of doing them; we do it because we love it.  We decided to go home and take an indefinite time off. We ended up being home for about four to five months before we even started practicing again. It ended up being a really organic and natural song writing practice.  We basically told everyone involved that they’ll get the record when it’s done and not to call us and ask any questions.  It was very liberation not to have any pressure; just friends writing music.
 
One of the songs on the album that struck me was “Autumn Leaves Revisited.” For me, it wasn’t what made up the song; but what was left out of it.  It was almost minimalist compared to other Thursday stuff.  Can you explain this song?
 
Tim: It’s probably one of my favorite songs that we’ve ever written.  Geoff had the idea for a while and we’d worked on it a bunch, but it had always been this black cloud where we knew that was this great song but we just couldn’t find it.  It kept going through all these changes and no one even knew if it was going to be on the record. What happened was, we went up to the studio to record and our producer had the same thoughts as us where he said the song was amazing but it was such a jumbled mess. We purposely kept stripping it down to the bare essentials.  I think that as far as being a minimal song, that was a very conscious decision. That’s what makes it one of the better songs.
 
We talked about this a little before…but the Thursday influence really is huge right now.  Can you think of any bands in particular that you’ve really seen your band in, and at what point does it become less than flattering?
 
Tim: I don’t want to name names, but I know that there are some bands that have gone into the studio and recorded with certain producers where they give them Full Collapse. There’s a fine line where you’re flattered when all these young band are emulating you…it’s a good feeling in a way but at the same time it can feel like you’ve worked so hard on something and put your blood, sweat and tears into it and someone comes along and basically pours a little sugar on top of it and sells a million records.  I don’t want anyone to think we’re caught up on that though because the state of music is just like that.  We don’t have any hang-ups with it.  There’s an overwhelming amount of bands doing similar things right now and we’ve purposefully taken a back seat so we could write a record that we wanted to write and be a band that doesn’t have to survive on trends.  We’re Thursday; not Thursday that sounds like “x, y and z,” but we’re our own entity.