Thursday on 10-24-2000 by propheci

This interview was with Jeff of Thursday. He was on a cellphone in a car for the interview so the connection wasn't the greatest, but I got it done.

First, introduce yourself.
My name is Jeff and I sing for Thursday.

When did the band form?
We formed about a year and a half ago.

Were you guys in other band before? How did you meet?
I was. I played in a few other bands before. I played a little bit of saxophone.

What about the other members?
Actually, they just literally learned how to play their instruments a month and a half before the band formed.

Jeff stops to pay a bridge toll..hahah..

Why did guys decide to form a band?
Well, I guess it was because all of us had gotten so much from music, and we wanted to see if there was anything we could do to add to what's going on in music. All of us are huge music lovers. Even before we played instruments. Every point in our life, we can trace to a record. We can say, "At that point, we were into Bad Brains." Even as late as that first Boy Sets Fire. We kinda wanted to see if we could do something that will affect people in that way. We just wanna do something good.

How would you define your music?
I consider ourselves a hardcore band. A lot of people will say that we're a emo band or whatever. I just think that's a really dumb label. If music doesn't have emotion in it, then it's not really music. Everything I listen to have emotion in it. I listen to Dave Matthews and I feel that has a lot of emotion in it. I listen to Grade. I listen to most heavy bands. I listen to You and I, and that has a lot of emotion in it. For us, I still consider ourselves a hardcore band even though a lot of people consider us a pop band.

What bands do you listen to yourself?
I like a lot of Jazz stuff. I listen to Miles Davis all the time. My favorite current bands are probably The Assisstant, You and I. I really liked Refused before they broke up.

What about the other people in the band?
Our drummer really likes the new Radiohead record. He loves At the Drive In. Fugazi is a big influence for everybody. We listen to a lot of instrumental stuff. We have a lot of tastes. When we write a song, we never agree on what it should sound like ever.

That's pretty cool. So you have a whole range of influences.
Yeah, when we finally write a record. It's very fulfilling. But trying to get there is really hard. We all really love music and we really care about our music. We really care about how we sound. So it gets really bad sometimes. Yelling at each other like "Your drum beat sucks there. It's not heavy enough..blah, blah, blah." We go at it. In the end, it's like "Aww. I love you man, don't worry about it." We're like a family.

Have you guys released CD already?
Yeah, we've got one CD out. It's called Waiting and it's on Eyeball Records.

Are you going to record a new CD soon?
We're going to record at the end of the November through December. We're going to record in a place in New Jersey called Big Blue Meanie. Our producer is going to be Sal from the band Demon Speed. He's actually out playing bass for another band right now. He's good cuz he'll bring on violin players and stuff like that. And help us find piano players for parts like that.

Are you going to tour from now until then?
Yeah, we're gonna tour like crazy. We are actually starting a little tour this week and then we're going to record. After that, we might tour with Snapcase. Then we'll end up on tour with Grade a little later in the year. Around the beginning of summer, we might tour Europe.

Where did you get your band name?
We had our first demo out before we had a name. Jeff's cell phone cuts in-and-out here. Basically, Thursday was a good name. It had a very pleasing sound for us. Everyone know what it is since it's universal. At the same time, it represents a transition for us. More cuts...But I think he was saying that Thursday is a transition between the week and the weekend for people to reflect back on the week. We work a lot with light and heavy music. A lot of transitions so we thought a day of also transition would be a good name for us.

Do you know when your new CD will be out?
They're thinking it's going to be March of 2001, because they like to give people some time to get psyched about us. That's good for us since nobody really knows who we are yet.

Are you in a car right now?
Yeah. Laughs. I'm actually driving to Long Island to drop my mom off at the airport.