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POZ Interview: Thrice

PropertyOfZack hopped on the phone with Riley Breckenridge from Thrice several weeks ago for a great interview. Riley and I discussed the band’s Anthology release, a new band with him, Ed, and Mike from Hey Mercedes, other projects, and much more. Check it all out below!

We’re right around the corner from Thrice’s release of Anthology, which is the end-cap of a long farewell. There’s been some time since the final tour now. How has it been for you, just truly stepping away?
It’s been kind of weird. I guess that I’ve been trying to distance myself from the band stuff as much as possible as I figure out what I’m going to transition into. I haven’t spent a lot of time thinking about the band or the release. I’ll get an email here or there from management for promotion for the release, but for the most part, I haven’t been thinking about the band too much. Due to social media, people can reach out to me whenever they’d like. I went to the Circa Survive show the other night and there were people there who had really nice things to say. That’s really the only time I think about it. It’s not like I’m here balling over the end of Thrice. We kind of had to come to grips with it a long time ago when we found out that we’d be taking a break. I think I’m moving past that at this point.

In terms of the live release, we’ve seen a few songs so far from it. There’s no new material, but it’s special to fans. Have you seen a lot of excitement for it?
I think people are pretty excited, especially for people who couldn’t come out and see the show. It’s a legit audio recording of the songs on that tour, rather then watching crappy YouTube videos. We had our friend Jonathan Weiner, who has worked for Alternative Press in the past, come out to shoot a bunch of stuff. He has a really good eye for candid shots, so he came out at the end of the tour and snapped live photos and all that. He took a lot of candid shots, and they all came out really cool. That’s what the insert of the vinyl is. It’s a photo collection giving people a behind the scenes look on the tour.

Was the farewell tour satisfying in terms of closure for you?
I couldn’t have asked for anything better. The bands we had out were great and the fan response and attendance was great. To finish it up with four or five shows that were all about an hour away from home was really comfortable and nice as well.
POZ: And arguably the greatest tour prank of all time.
Riley: Yeah [Laughs]. For those who don’t know, O’Brother stole our encore and played a Creed song. Very well. It was scary how good it was. If O’Brother falls apart and are not successful doing their thing, they could make a living as a Creed cover band. Or not. It was a satisfying end to something that I didn’t want to end. It was as satisfying as it could’ve been. It was definitely bittersweet, but all good things must come to an end at some point.

We’ve seen you write over the years, but there’s been a lot more of that whether it be album reviews or baseball blogs. Have you begun figuring out your next steps yet?
Ed and I have been working on music at our little rehearsal space. Ed, myself, and Michael Shumaker, who was in Hey Mercedes and has done front of house sound for us, have been working together. The three of us have similar taste in music and can work together in a way that works really well creatively. He’s been out here a few times since we finished that tour to jam on some stuff. Ed and I have been working when we have time. Geography is making it tough because Mike’s in Cleveland, but we’re trying to do what we can with filesharing and email to piece something together so we can get into a studio and bang out an EP. We’d like to have it out sooner than later. There’s no date or schedule, but it’s something that will be decided upon fairly soon.
POZ: That’ll just be you three?
Riley: I think so. I think we want to get the ideas that we have a little closer to song form before we decide to add something else. Or if there will be vocals or not vocals. Right now it’s cool, heavy, and weird and kind of dissonant and riffy. It reminds be a lot of Fugazi-type stuff. It has an East Coast sound to it, which is cool. We’ll see how it goes. It’s too early to tell right now.

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