Thursday delivers solid benefit show

There are not too many bands these days with such a loyal following that fans start lining up in front of the venue at obscene hours of the morning for a show that doesn't start until eight in the evening; or travel across three states, without tickets to a long since sold-out show, in hopes of maybe seeing their favorite band play.

The fans of Thursday, a post-hardcore band from New Brunswick, N.J., happen to be among that dying breed of uber-loyal scenesters who will go to some pretty great lengths to see the band that "changed their life."

Thursday's fans in Atlanta seem to be no exception.On May 16, the New Brunswick rockers played a show at The Loft as part of the Shirts for a Cure Tour, along with We're All Broken, Me Without You and Minus the Bear.

The Shirts for a Cure Tour is part of a larger project whose purpose is to raise money to provide financial assistance to underprivileged women diagnosed with breast cancer. Scores of bands have donated t-shirt designs that are sold by the Syrentha J. Savio Endowment with the proceeds going to help women in their fight with the disease.

The endowment was established by punk rock photographer Mark Beemer; the project was a natural outgrowth through which punk bands could express their social concern.

A few hours before the show, the 'Nique talked with guitarist Tom Keeley and bassist Tim Payne of Thursday about the tour and their new album.

"We had a friend a few years ago who was struggling with cancer for a long time, and we played a bunch of benefit shows for her," Payne said.

"There were a bunch of bands that were really involved with it...and through doing that stuff we have somehow come into contact with Mark Beemer who runs Shirts for a Cure and...through wanting to...continue helping, [it] was kind of a perfect opportunity," Payne said of the band's personal involvement with the project, which seems to be seeing some reasonable success with this tour.

"I've seen a ton of people buying the shirts on the road, because he's [Beemer] traveling with us, and he sells, like, 12 different shirt designs and it...seems that every other kid that I've seen at a show has bought one. So I'm assuming that it's going to be pretty helpful...I don't know what the hard numbers are, though," Keeley said.

Thursday had been touring with Beemer since the middle of March, with the culmination of their involvement with the Shirts for a Cure Tour coinciding with the release of their fourth album, A City by the Light Divided which has met with some mixed reactions from fans, according to Keeley.

"The reactions that I've seen, they're either super excited about it, or they're wanting to be excited about it, but they're kind of confused because we don't have the cookie-cutter screamo sound so much anymore that people have come to expect from just about every band they're listening to," he said.

"Of course, there are always going to be people who love your first record the most or the last record you did the most, but if they're patient and they spend a little time, I think they'll realize this is the best record we've ever done."

City does in fact show some departure from the screamo stereotype that many have lumped Thursday into. Its release came a little less than three years after their last album, War All the Time, and the time and effort put into this album really shows.

"Also, for a long time we would come in with...something we wrote, and a lot of the times [the rest of the band] would be like, 'Oh that's really cool, but that's not like a Thursday thing,' and we had this very strict [idea] of what we wanted our band to be, and if something didn't fit into that, we kind of [said], 'Oh we'll just put that over here.' But on this record, it didn't matter if it was something that we have done in the past...if it was a cool part, we would just go with it," Payne said.

"The Thursday cookie cutter got thrown out a little with this album...it was completely liberating," Keeley said.

Indeed, the freedom the band seemed to experience in the recording studio is quite apparent on the album, which has much more of a live vibe than their previous albums, and there's no better way to appreciate what Thursday can really do than to hear them just plug in and go with it.

A City by the Light Divided bridges the gap that once existed between Thursday's recorded music and their live performances.

While the albums in and of themselves have demonstrated the ability to profoundly move people ("Full Collapse changed my life," said one fan), nothing compares to the emotional experience that is seeing Thursday perform live. One can barely begin to fathom where lead singer Geoff Rickly gets his energy as he runs and jumps around the stage for nearly the full duration of the 80-minute set and is still somehow able to flawlessly belt out crowd favorites such as "Jet Black New Year."

But it isn't just the band that elicits energy and passion from the crowd. The fans themselves seem to feed each other with their excitement and love for this band's music. The guy in the front row who went tête à tête with Rickly briefly during one song looked like he was experiencing the best day of his life (while the Loft's security guards posted on the stage looked as if they might have an aneurism).

As a final thought to the interview regarding the band's new music, Payne had this to say: "Give it some time. We're really proud of it; we definitely think it's the best record we've ever done. I hope people can find patience, because nobody has patience these days; they want the hit, or they want their immediate tastes to be gratified. Just think about it."

From the look of the line at the end of the interview and from the look of the ticket-less fans who claimed they'd do anything to get into the show, it seems that many of Thursday's fans have mastered the art of patience and have listened to the new album. The overall consesus: approval.