Spring Break
Pop-punk rockers look back on origins, tour, cereal
Alissa Harris
Issue date: 11/18/05 Section: Entertainment
Thrice, Orange County's finest, rolled into town Nov. 4 for a show at the Electric Factory that brought together kids from all different scenes to create a night filled with the best sounds of current heavy music. Opening acts Veda, The Bled and Underoath, created a diverse palette of sounds for the audience to enjoy, and the headliners proved to everyone how they can truly rule a stage. I managed to catch up with Eddie Breckenridge, Thrice's bassist, inside the venue before the show started, to discuss all of the important matters of the day: the incredible new album Vheissu, the band's influences, and of course, Lucky Charms marshmallows.
?: Who are your biggest influences?
EB: I have to start off by saying that my influences change monthly, if not weekly, but I tend to like the same basic ones: there's a band called No Knife that really means a lot to me and also a band called Cave-In, their album Jupiter was a huge influence on the band. Recently I've been completely overloading myself with Jeff Buckley; I love everything about that album Grace. Recently it's been a lot of singer-songwriter stuff, like Jeff Buckley, Damien Rice, and Pedro the Lion.
?: Of all the songs off of the new album Vheissu, why did you pick "Image of the Invisible" as the first single when it's the most different from the rest of the songs on the album?
EB: If I were to pick, I probably wouldn't have picked that one, but it usually has to do more with what the label thinks that they can do better with. It's cool because we haven't run into situations that I know other bands have run into with labels, when they finish writing albums and the label says, "Yeah, you guys have no singles." This one, they were like, "Yeah, this would be the most popular single" and they picked it because it has a catchy sound. For me, it's not the most artistically satisfying song, but I definitely think it's a cool song.
?: Are there a lot of songs you recorded for Vheissu that didn't make it onto the album that sound more like "Image of the Invisible"?
EB: No. We were going to put out an EP [with the songs that weren't included on the album] but now we're not sure. There's four songs that didn't go on the record, actually five if you include one we didn't actually record, but a majority of those are more energetic and they didn't really have the feel of a song like "Image", they have more of a spacey and rocking feel to them. We ended up choosing the songs that went on the album - because we originally wanted to have a fifteen track album, which would have been ridiculous - because they had the best flow to them, they went together like a story almost. Starting it out with "Image" and closing with a song like "Red Sky" makes all the songs really flow into each other nicely.
?: What's your favorite song to play live?
EB: I have a feeling that my favorite song we have yet to play live yet.
?: Is it off of the new album?
EB: Yeah, I'm not really having too much fun playing a majority of the older songs just because we've played them so much and I really like how intense these new songs sound live - maybe not in an aggressive way, but in a deeper, dreamier way. The songs that we're playing though I really like playing, songs like "The Earth Will Shake" and also "Stand And Show Your Worth", which we're actually not playing live tonight, as we just took it out of the set last night. It's a droning song, but I love bands like Isis - it doesn't necessarily sound like Isis, but it definitely has that dreamy feel where you can almost get lost in the music. It's amazing playing live - it's really fun.
?: Speaking of "The Earth Will Shake", how did you record the interlude in that song?
EB: We were actually in an old house in the Woodstock area that Liv Tyler used to live in with her husband.
?: Were they still living in it at the time?
EB: They weren't living in it at the time, all of their furniture and stuff was gone, but they left their books and small items behind. The guy's [Royston Langdon, Liv Tyler's husband] motorcycle was in the garage.
?: Did you test-drive it?
EB: No, I'm scared of motorcycles [laughs]. It was basically this mansion with vaulted ceilings and big rooms that had a great echo because there was no furniture in any of the rooms. We went in there and recorded a bunch of times - multiple harmonies, sometimes the same, sometimes different. We were actually modeling it after a recording that Teppei [Teranishi, Thrice's guitarist] had of prison songs. It's from the 1930s, I think, and it's chain gangs working on the side of the road, so it didn't have that inside of a room feel, but you could hear them breaking rocks or chopping wood or whatever they were doing. You could hear how one person would be singing and a bunch of people would come in and sing harmonies, sort of like a call and answer thing.
?: In your opinion, who is the biggest disgrace in music today?
EB: Disgrace? [Long pause] I don't know if I want to answer that. [Longer pause] I don't really know. The problem is that most of the music I think is a disgrace might actually be truly coming from that person's heart but they just don't know any better. I get really upset with a lot of the groups, a lot of the pop stuff, where their image is more important than the music, it's kind of like spoiling the art of it. A lot of the times, the people who actually write that music are amazing writers. The music's amazing, but the image is always first.
?: What's your favorite Lucky Charms marshmallow? [Note: This question was a request for a friend.]
EB: I don't know. I like green marshmallows, so I like the clover one.
?: The video [for "Image of the Invisible"] I heard was partly influenced by Gerard [Way, lead singer from My Chemical Romance].
EB: There's a little confusion - he did the art direction. He thought of this thing where people get kidnapped, and we were on tour, and we watched their "Ghost of You" video on their tour bus before it premiered on TV. We thought it was really cool, and he suggested that we should work with this guy Marc Webb. We were talking and Dustin [Kensrue, lead singer of Thrice] came up with using costumes in the video and not having just a standard band performance video. It ended up being that Marc Webb couldn't do it, which in the end ended up being kind of awesome for us, because the guy who ended up doing it, Jay Martin, was a really good person to work with.
?: What other videos has he directed?
EB: He did a Death Cab for Cutie video, the New Year one. I don't know exactly what else, but he's a cool guy. Gerard ended up tying in the artistic elements and he came up with the idea for a city of lost children and we really based a lot of the colors and stuff around that. Jay took those ideas and ran with it and that's how the video turned out the way it did.
?: Which song on the new album is closest to your heart and why? They all seem pretty sentimental, at least more sentimental than any previous album.
EB: They're way more personal than on the previous albums. It's weird because there's a song that I didn't write too much of, but for some reason the song "Atlantic" definitely has a connection with me. I was glad we were able to record that one. When I listen to it, I can almost listen to it objectively because Dustin wrote a majority of that, and we added a couple of changes, a couple of notes, but nothing else. But I love that song and how it sounds like we originally intended.
?: The Artist in the Ambulance [the last Thrice album] has some of the craziest bass work I've ever heard in my life. How did you guys record the bass on that album? What kind of technique did you use?
EB: I just played it. We actually recorded it without any DI. I don't know if you're familiar with recording, but there's usually a mic-ed version, with the microphone through a speaker cabinet, and also a direct input. There was no direct input, partly because we knew that the guy who was mixing it was really into using the direct input sound and our producer didn't want it to sound that way. A lot of the bass parts I was playing were more featured parts that most other bands would have, where it's just a background instrument. It's just a lot of bass with a lot of distortion, playing a lot of Gibson instruments.
?: We've heard that you're doing the Taste of Chaos tour next year. Can you explain this? Are you excited?
EB: We were a little worried about it at first, because it's a heavier tour with a lot of metal bands, and we're trying to, not necessarily move away from that label, but distance ourselves kind of. We're not into labeling ourselves but we always get lumped in with whatever seems to be popular at the time - we've never really fit into a metal scene, we never fit into a hardcore scene, and then we got lumped in with this "screamo scene", which is kind of bummer because the bands that influence us - Fugazi, Drive Like Jehu, Engine Down or Cave-In, were never labeled screamo bands. It has no meaning anymore, it's turned into pop culture almost. So we were worried about clumping us into that screamo thing again with this tour, but there are a lot of good bands so we're not worried. There's a lot of good bands doing the tour - the Deftones, The Receiving End of Sirens and a band called Pelican. And also Thursday, who are doing some of the Canadian dates.
?: How did you guys get the name Thrice?
EB: It was actually kind of a joke. When we started the band, we didn't really know that it was gonna be a band, we had gotten together and we were making music, and we ended up playing a battle of the bands in our community, which was our first gig ever. We ended up having to come up with a name, and we picked Thrice because it sounded kinda metal, which we thought was kinda funny. In the end, it's actually kinda cool because the name doesn't really put us in any scene.
?: What's your favorite guilty pleasure?
EB: I guess it would have to be, by far, crocheting, and I do it a lot. I might actually do an interview for a crocheting magazine. Musically, I really can say I don't have any. I don't have a lot of pop records, but I'll definitely sing along if I hear it on the radio if I know the words if it's catchy. Pop music is just fun.
?: What's the most embarrassing thing that's happened to you on this tour?
EB: On this tour? [Long pause] I ripped the crotch of my pants on stage. The thing that was almost more embarrassing, but was good for the show, was that I didn't notice it until after we were done playing. That, or playing in short shorts on Halloween. The tear was right in the crotch, but I was wearing underpants so it was okay.
?: Who's your favorite standup comedian?
EB: Mitch Hedberg, who is sadly no longer alive. He's amazing.
? Who's your favorite band to see live?
EB: It's one of three bands: Cave-In, who we've toured with, Hot Water Music, who are by far one of my favorite live bands, and a band that we never toured with but I wish we could have, called No Knife. I've seen more of their shows than any band I wasn't on tour with. They're no longer together, and seriously, if you haven't heard of them, that band totally changed my life. That band took me from being a hardcore kid to being a fan of music, which is an amazing thing that a band can do that.
Thrice's new album, Vheissu, is out now on Island Records. Thanks go out to Brandon Weiss, Thrice super-fan, for all of his help with this interview.
?: Who are your biggest influences?
EB: I have to start off by saying that my influences change monthly, if not weekly, but I tend to like the same basic ones: there's a band called No Knife that really means a lot to me and also a band called Cave-In, their album Jupiter was a huge influence on the band. Recently I've been completely overloading myself with Jeff Buckley; I love everything about that album Grace. Recently it's been a lot of singer-songwriter stuff, like Jeff Buckley, Damien Rice, and Pedro the Lion.
?: Of all the songs off of the new album Vheissu, why did you pick "Image of the Invisible" as the first single when it's the most different from the rest of the songs on the album?
EB: If I were to pick, I probably wouldn't have picked that one, but it usually has to do more with what the label thinks that they can do better with. It's cool because we haven't run into situations that I know other bands have run into with labels, when they finish writing albums and the label says, "Yeah, you guys have no singles." This one, they were like, "Yeah, this would be the most popular single" and they picked it because it has a catchy sound. For me, it's not the most artistically satisfying song, but I definitely think it's a cool song.
?: Are there a lot of songs you recorded for Vheissu that didn't make it onto the album that sound more like "Image of the Invisible"?
EB: No. We were going to put out an EP [with the songs that weren't included on the album] but now we're not sure. There's four songs that didn't go on the record, actually five if you include one we didn't actually record, but a majority of those are more energetic and they didn't really have the feel of a song like "Image", they have more of a spacey and rocking feel to them. We ended up choosing the songs that went on the album - because we originally wanted to have a fifteen track album, which would have been ridiculous - because they had the best flow to them, they went together like a story almost. Starting it out with "Image" and closing with a song like "Red Sky" makes all the songs really flow into each other nicely.
?: What's your favorite song to play live?
EB: I have a feeling that my favorite song we have yet to play live yet.
?: Is it off of the new album?
EB: Yeah, I'm not really having too much fun playing a majority of the older songs just because we've played them so much and I really like how intense these new songs sound live - maybe not in an aggressive way, but in a deeper, dreamier way. The songs that we're playing though I really like playing, songs like "The Earth Will Shake" and also "Stand And Show Your Worth", which we're actually not playing live tonight, as we just took it out of the set last night. It's a droning song, but I love bands like Isis - it doesn't necessarily sound like Isis, but it definitely has that dreamy feel where you can almost get lost in the music. It's amazing playing live - it's really fun.
?: Speaking of "The Earth Will Shake", how did you record the interlude in that song?
EB: We were actually in an old house in the Woodstock area that Liv Tyler used to live in with her husband.
?: Were they still living in it at the time?
EB: They weren't living in it at the time, all of their furniture and stuff was gone, but they left their books and small items behind. The guy's [Royston Langdon, Liv Tyler's husband] motorcycle was in the garage.
?: Did you test-drive it?
EB: No, I'm scared of motorcycles [laughs]. It was basically this mansion with vaulted ceilings and big rooms that had a great echo because there was no furniture in any of the rooms. We went in there and recorded a bunch of times - multiple harmonies, sometimes the same, sometimes different. We were actually modeling it after a recording that Teppei [Teranishi, Thrice's guitarist] had of prison songs. It's from the 1930s, I think, and it's chain gangs working on the side of the road, so it didn't have that inside of a room feel, but you could hear them breaking rocks or chopping wood or whatever they were doing. You could hear how one person would be singing and a bunch of people would come in and sing harmonies, sort of like a call and answer thing.
?: In your opinion, who is the biggest disgrace in music today?
EB: Disgrace? [Long pause] I don't know if I want to answer that. [Longer pause] I don't really know. The problem is that most of the music I think is a disgrace might actually be truly coming from that person's heart but they just don't know any better. I get really upset with a lot of the groups, a lot of the pop stuff, where their image is more important than the music, it's kind of like spoiling the art of it. A lot of the times, the people who actually write that music are amazing writers. The music's amazing, but the image is always first.
?: What's your favorite Lucky Charms marshmallow? [Note: This question was a request for a friend.]
EB: I don't know. I like green marshmallows, so I like the clover one.
?: The video [for "Image of the Invisible"] I heard was partly influenced by Gerard [Way, lead singer from My Chemical Romance].
EB: There's a little confusion - he did the art direction. He thought of this thing where people get kidnapped, and we were on tour, and we watched their "Ghost of You" video on their tour bus before it premiered on TV. We thought it was really cool, and he suggested that we should work with this guy Marc Webb. We were talking and Dustin [Kensrue, lead singer of Thrice] came up with using costumes in the video and not having just a standard band performance video. It ended up being that Marc Webb couldn't do it, which in the end ended up being kind of awesome for us, because the guy who ended up doing it, Jay Martin, was a really good person to work with.
?: What other videos has he directed?
EB: He did a Death Cab for Cutie video, the New Year one. I don't know exactly what else, but he's a cool guy. Gerard ended up tying in the artistic elements and he came up with the idea for a city of lost children and we really based a lot of the colors and stuff around that. Jay took those ideas and ran with it and that's how the video turned out the way it did.
?: Which song on the new album is closest to your heart and why? They all seem pretty sentimental, at least more sentimental than any previous album.
EB: They're way more personal than on the previous albums. It's weird because there's a song that I didn't write too much of, but for some reason the song "Atlantic" definitely has a connection with me. I was glad we were able to record that one. When I listen to it, I can almost listen to it objectively because Dustin wrote a majority of that, and we added a couple of changes, a couple of notes, but nothing else. But I love that song and how it sounds like we originally intended.
?: The Artist in the Ambulance [the last Thrice album] has some of the craziest bass work I've ever heard in my life. How did you guys record the bass on that album? What kind of technique did you use?
EB: I just played it. We actually recorded it without any DI. I don't know if you're familiar with recording, but there's usually a mic-ed version, with the microphone through a speaker cabinet, and also a direct input. There was no direct input, partly because we knew that the guy who was mixing it was really into using the direct input sound and our producer didn't want it to sound that way. A lot of the bass parts I was playing were more featured parts that most other bands would have, where it's just a background instrument. It's just a lot of bass with a lot of distortion, playing a lot of Gibson instruments.
?: We've heard that you're doing the Taste of Chaos tour next year. Can you explain this? Are you excited?
EB: We were a little worried about it at first, because it's a heavier tour with a lot of metal bands, and we're trying to, not necessarily move away from that label, but distance ourselves kind of. We're not into labeling ourselves but we always get lumped in with whatever seems to be popular at the time - we've never really fit into a metal scene, we never fit into a hardcore scene, and then we got lumped in with this "screamo scene", which is kind of bummer because the bands that influence us - Fugazi, Drive Like Jehu, Engine Down or Cave-In, were never labeled screamo bands. It has no meaning anymore, it's turned into pop culture almost. So we were worried about clumping us into that screamo thing again with this tour, but there are a lot of good bands so we're not worried. There's a lot of good bands doing the tour - the Deftones, The Receiving End of Sirens and a band called Pelican. And also Thursday, who are doing some of the Canadian dates.
?: How did you guys get the name Thrice?
EB: It was actually kind of a joke. When we started the band, we didn't really know that it was gonna be a band, we had gotten together and we were making music, and we ended up playing a battle of the bands in our community, which was our first gig ever. We ended up having to come up with a name, and we picked Thrice because it sounded kinda metal, which we thought was kinda funny. In the end, it's actually kinda cool because the name doesn't really put us in any scene.
?: What's your favorite guilty pleasure?
EB: I guess it would have to be, by far, crocheting, and I do it a lot. I might actually do an interview for a crocheting magazine. Musically, I really can say I don't have any. I don't have a lot of pop records, but I'll definitely sing along if I hear it on the radio if I know the words if it's catchy. Pop music is just fun.
?: What's the most embarrassing thing that's happened to you on this tour?
EB: On this tour? [Long pause] I ripped the crotch of my pants on stage. The thing that was almost more embarrassing, but was good for the show, was that I didn't notice it until after we were done playing. That, or playing in short shorts on Halloween. The tear was right in the crotch, but I was wearing underpants so it was okay.
?: Who's your favorite standup comedian?
EB: Mitch Hedberg, who is sadly no longer alive. He's amazing.
? Who's your favorite band to see live?
EB: It's one of three bands: Cave-In, who we've toured with, Hot Water Music, who are by far one of my favorite live bands, and a band that we never toured with but I wish we could have, called No Knife. I've seen more of their shows than any band I wasn't on tour with. They're no longer together, and seriously, if you haven't heard of them, that band totally changed my life. That band took me from being a hardcore kid to being a fan of music, which is an amazing thing that a band can do that.
Thrice's new album, Vheissu, is out now on Island Records. Thanks go out to Brandon Weiss, Thrice super-fan, for all of his help with this interview.
Be the first to comment on this story