#thricethursdays

“Deadbolt” - It's funny how this song has become such a staple and fan favorite (I hate that term...is there a better one?). I remember coming up with the main riff noodling around in my room on an acoustic. I started playing a little hokey number and it took shape as the main riff. I found it kinda funny - I was imagining a foot stompin' country hoedown with that riff on a banjo. I'm not sure when it occurred to me that it could be played on electric guitar and could potentially be a heavy-ish riff, but it did and here we are now. I have to admit I resented playing the song for a period of time--I don't think I ever really took it that seriously--but I really enjoy it now. I've gotten past the "it's not artistic and cool and interesting" part and can enjoy it for what it is - a fun little rockin' jam that translates really well on stage :)

“Red Telephone” - B-SIDE?!?...Sometimes you can't fit them all on there. Red Telephone is one of those that songs may have not particularly found it's spot on the record but, definitely feels like Thrice to me. I hadn't heard this one in a while, maybe some of you have never heard it. Enjoy!  

“I Want You (She’s So  Heavy) - We covered this song in 2010 for a split 7-inch with our buddies in Manchester Orchestra, I grew up feasting on a bunch of my parent's LP's, with the main course being the Beatles, accompanied by some large sides of Zeppelin and the Stones, (and perhaps some Steve Miller Band for desert.) Anyway, this song is one of my favorite Beatles songs on probably my favorite Beatles record. It has been hailed by music writers as one of the heaviest pre-Sabbath songs, with some saying that the song may "have inadvertently started doom metal." Now that's something to put on your resumé. I dig that we mostly left the tune alone except for the verse after the first 'She's So Heavy' part being spiced up a bit. Teppei killed it on the engineering/mixing side of things. It sounds raw and well...heavy. 

“The Earth Will Shake” - If this song isn’t my favorite song we’ve ever written, it’s definitely in my top three. It’s got a little bit of everything I love about certain aspects of our band all wrapped up into one song: a) it’s heavy as hell, b) it draws inspiration from somewhere you might not expect (chain gang songs), c) it’s in an odd time signature, d) it incorporates a good deal of dynamics, and e) it translates very well in a live setting. “Earth" has been a staple in our live sets since Vheissu came out ten years ago, and it’s something I really look forward to playing every night.

Backdraft • Fire EP

This song we only ever played live twice...

I was trying to think of any songs that we've never played live, or only played a few times, and why. Setlist making is hard to do when you have so many songs and there are many that you feel like you "can't not" play. I'm really proud of a lot of our music... often songs we don't really get to play much. Here's a clip of one of the rare ones that somebody uploaded from a show in Austin Texas.

ThriceThursdays:  “Digging My Own Grave” - This song is a prime example of why the Alchemy Index was such a fun project to work on. I'd venture to say it's the furthest out there from what we normally do: upright bass, wind instruments, no guitar; it's basically a jazz trio arrangement. Very influenced by Tom Waits' mellower stuff and Billie Holiday's darker stuff (Gloomy Sunday, Strange Fruit). The wind instruments on there were a second hand tenor sax and a clarinet I picked up from a garage sale that was literally taped together. I’d never played clarinet before I attempted tracking it but we cobbled it together.

#ThriceThursdays: “Words In The Water” - This is definitely one of my favorite songs that we have written, and one of my very favorite lyrics that I've penned. My brain naturally wants to write essays and call them songs, so I've been learning over time to tell stories and use pictures and I think this is one where I have succeeded in doing that well. I read once that C.S. Lewis's fiction would generally start with a picture that was in his head. In the case of Narnia, the whole chronicles began this picture in his mind's eye: a faun, with an umbrella, in a snowstorm, carrying a package. As far as I can tell this song started for me with an image as well. I saw someone standing in a river and a book in the river as well. Writing the rest of the song was more like what Steven King describes as the process of unearthing found things, like fossils. "Stories are relics," he says "part of an undiscovered pre-existing world. The writer’s job is to use the tools in his or her toolbox to get as much of each one out of the ground intact as possible." I'm glad I found this one and got most of it out of the ground.