July 8, 2006
Thursday – Tim Payne

C = Cath, T = Tim

I just want to give a little thanks to Tim really quick, for being so helpful and sympathetic towards my situation during the time of the interview, when my recorder decided to malfunction a couple questions in, forcing us to start the interview over from scratch. His patience and kind attitude was definitely appreciated.

C: For the record, can you state your name and what you do in the band?
T: I’m Tim & I play bass in Thursday.

C: A few months ago, you released a new album. What’s the main difference between ‘A City By The Light Divided’ & your older records?
T: When we wrote ‘Full Collapse’, we weren’t really touring, so we did it at our own pace. We started touring and everything from that point on, and it was really stressful. We wrote ‘War All The Time’ in 2 months, and then just went right back out on the road. We had been pretty much writing and recording for about 4 or 5 years straight, and this was the first time that we got to really take a breather & write in a way that we used to write, where it was just really natural, and there weren’t any deadlines or anything…
C: And there wasn’t any pressure…
T: Yeah. The only pressure on us was just to make a good record, and we put it on ourselves. It took us a year to write and we just made sure everything was exactly what we wanted it to be. It was really getting back to our roots as far as how we work best as a band which was really good.
C: Are you planning on doing that for later records as well?
T: I hope so! It’s funny, every record has kind of been a different process. There were things that we did this time that, in retrospect, were maybe not the best ideas. So, you learn from your mistakes. Even though we took a lot of time to do it, there were still some things… We were like, “We’ll write as many songs as we can!” and we wrote 17 songs and had to choose which songs we wanted to put on the record. No matter what, you do find problems in it, so we’ll see what happens with the next one. We’ll learn from our mistakes.

C: What’s your favorite song off the new record? Why?
T: My favorite song, personally, is ‘The Other Side Of The Crash – Over & Out (Of Control)’ just because I think it’s a microcosm for everything we do. It’s got fast parts and slow parts and Andrew’s in the band now, so it’s got the keyboard break. As a whole, it represents everything that we do. So that’s my favorite.

C: How have fans responded to the new CD?
T: So far, so good. We started touring in March on the new record and it wasn’t even out yet. When you play new songs and kids don’t know them, you kind of get… not discouraged, but you wonder if they don’t like it. But, the more we’ve been playing new songs live, the more it seems to catch on with people. I think it’s the same with anything, though. When we put out ‘War All The Time’ people were like, “Oh, it’s different than ‘Full Collapse’”, but then once you have time to live with it and understand it and not really just compare it to the old stuff, it comes into its own. People seem to like it right now, and hopefully they’ll just grow into it more if they don’t.

C: What’s the most memorable show you’ve ever played?
T: There’s a bunch. The most recent one was on this Warped Tour when the Buzzcocks were on tour. They are one of our favorite bands ever, and we did a cover of one of their songs for the Tony Hawk video game. We started talking to them, and then somehow it came up and the singer from the Buzzcocks came up on stage and we played the song together. I felt like I was 12 years old, it was really awesome.

C: If you could tour with any band, still together or not, who would it be and why?
T: Probably Jawbreaker. They are my absolute favorite band of all time.

C: What are your plans for after Warped Tour is through?
T: In the fall, we’re doing a tour with Rise Against. That will be in October, I think. After that, we’re really undecided as to what we’re doing. We’ve been on tour since March, so it will be 9 months straight at that point. I think we’re just going to take some time, maybe take the holidays off, and just reassess everything and see where we’re at and see what we want to do next.

C: Let’s say that Thursday never existed. What would you be doing instead?
T: Oh god, I don’t even know. I would probably be working at the liquor store – hopefully I’d be manager at this point. I dropped out of school and was just working full-time in a liquor store, which was horribly depressing, and then we started touring and I quit that job. But if I didn’t quit that job and start touring… I hate to say that I would still be doing that, but you never know. That was the last job I had so…

C: That kind of ties in with my next question. Do you have a back up plan for if something happens to the band?
T: Uhm, no. I try not to think about it too much. When we were touring 2 years ago on Warped Tour, we went through a thing where we were just so burnt out and fried that we weren’t even sure what we were doing…
C: There were a lot of rumors going around then.
T: Yeah. We were just like, “We’ll take some time off and reset & not really worry about anything” and everyone’s like, “They broke up!”. But it kind of put it in perspective for us, like “Oh shit! I don’t know what the hell I would do after this”. Hopefully, if all went well, it would definitely involve music in some way, shape or form, but I don’t know how or what I’d be doing. I’d just have to see.

C: If you had the chance to interview your biggest musical influence, who would it be, and what’s one question you would ask them?
T: I don’t know, I’m not good at questions. It would definitely be Jawbreaker, but I would just probably sit around and hang with them.
C: Your question: “Would you sign this for me?”
T: *laughs* Yea! I would be a total fan boy and just follow them around for an hour and try to be friends with them.

C: If you were stuck on a deserted island with no food and no one but your band members, who would you eat first and why?
T: I think I would eat Andrew because he looks very tender. Very tender and succulent.

C: Closing statements?
T: We love the new record and we hope that if people don’t like it now, they’ll give it a chance and see what they think. We think it’s our best record, and it’s the one we’re most proud of so we hope people enjoy it.