From the Editor's Floor: Thursday

STANDING ON THE EDGE OF… WINTER?


THURSDAY are true veterans of Warped Tour, yet this winter, the band will headline another Kevin Lyman spectacle they’ve never been a part of here in the States: the Rockstar Taste Of Chaos Tour. With a new album dropping this month, and a bit of momentum to regain after a year-plus touring hiatus, the band see the run as an exciting opportunity to play before large crowds again, some of whom may actually be too young to remember Thursday’s scene-making early days.



“I think it’s interesting, because we were the forerunners of a lot of the bands that ended up becoming the Taste Of Chaos brand name; bands like the Used–you’d be hard pressed to say that they’d be around without bands like us and Glassjaw,” says singer Geoff Rickly. “But at the same time, if those kids don’t know us, what do they care if we were doing it first? [Laughs.] So it should be pretty interesting. Everybody keeps telling me, ‘Bring Me The Horizon are blowing the fuck up.’ That’s cool. I don’t know anything about them, but good. Maybe there’ll be some kids at the shows.”



One thing that’s nice about playing both Warped and TOC is that the production crews are often staffed with the same people, so for bands like Thursday, things run a bit smoother than when you’re a rookie playing, say, OzzFest. Pair that with artists like Pierce The Veil, Four Year Strong and Cancer Bats lending support, and you’ve hopefully got the recipe for a good time with few headaches.



“On a lot of those big tours, the tour managers will scold people left and right to get things moving on time,” says Rickly. “We know enough of the [TOC] production people that hopefully it’ll be a really mellow vibe on the road: It’s ‘Let’s all just be professional, but be relaxed.’”



Since Thursday’s catalog is comprised of a fairly wide array of material, the band will likely break out their heavier tunes for the TOC stage. That said, Thursday usually seems to operate by trial and error, so guitarist Tom Keeley says the band will figure out what works best as the tour rolls along. “We’re going to experiment with the set list, because if we have a song that’s a square peg, it’s not going to fit into a round hole. Certain songs do not make sense for that tour,” he concedes. “But we’ve got nearly 60 songs to choose from, running the gamut from heavy to not-so-heavy, so it’ll be an interesting experiment. Hopefully by month two we’ll have perfected it.” –Brendan Manley