Dustin Kensrue of Thrice 0
An interview with the singer/guitarist of Thrice
Dustin Kensrue of post-hardcore band “Thrice” recently spoke to us about the band’s new four-disc “Alchemy Index” project, the charity work that the band is involved in and the reason why Thrice always looks so pissed in photographs.
CraveOnline: What was the inspiration or concept behind the four elemental themed EPs?
Dustin: It just kinda popped into my head one day. I just kind mulled it over and tried to figure out if it was actually a good idea or not. But pretty much from the start I had the idea of having the four discs, one being heavy, one being a little more electronic, one being mellow, more stripped down, acoustic instruments and what not, and then one being a little more open and kinda varied in a bunch of different ways. I have no idea were it come from specifically, it just kinda popped into my head and then it grew from there.
CraveOnline: Can you elaborate a little more on what to expect from the “Earth” and “Air” albums?
Dustin: Yeah, it’s really hard to describe the “Air” one. It’s much more open then “Water”. The “Water” one’s really dense. I don’t know how else to describe it, but it’s all over the place, there’s some really energetic stuff, there’s some heavier moments, some electronic stuff. So it’s certainly the most varied out of the four but when you listen to it, they definitely all tie together. The “Earth” one is stripped down, it’s not all acoustic in the way that you would think, like the unplugged thing. There’s stuff that’s kinda bluesy, stuff that’s kinda jazzy, creepy pianos, there’s like a funeral dirge hymn type song, so it’s kinda all over the place too.
CraveOnline: Does anything cool happen if you play all four EPs at the same time like that Flaming Lips 4-CD album, “Zaireeka”?
Dustin: No, we thought about it, but it’s ultimately kinda gimmicky. It’s been done and it’s not really the point of this, even though there are four of them so… We thought about just selling an 8 track that did that but we felt like our efforts could be better spent in other places.
Alchemy Index: Earth and Fire.
CraveOnline: What’s this business about the name “Thrice” being an inside joke amongst the band?
Dustin: Well there were three of us so… who knows if you’d call it a joke, it was just something we said at the time that kind of identified our group of friends in high school and all. I was still in high school when the band started, and Teppei and Eddie were just out of it. And we were all the same group of friends and needed a band name so… It could’ve been worse, I’ll tell you that much. It’s definitely not the worst, but it’s also not the best.
CraveOnline: Well it’s kind of late to change it now though isn’t it?
Dustin: Yeah we kinda went through that for every record for a while. You know, “Is it too late to change it?”
CraveOnline: How is it touring with “Brand New” and “Me Without You”?
Dustin: It’s been great, really fun people, great bands to watch every night and everyone gets along really well. We’ve been having acoustic sing-a-longs outside and stuff, so it’s been fun.
CraveOnline: Any crazy road stories? Fights, arrests, extreme acts of sexual depravity?
Dustin: Ummm… I don’t know. I tend to stay out of big crazy business. Usually it’s more the crews that get into the most trouble. But nothing extremely notable has happened yet. I’ve never had anyone that was out with us get arrested, but there’s been enough times when I figured people probably would.
CraveOnline: Any plans to embark on your own solo headlining tour after this one is over?
Dustin: Yeah we’ll be going out in April probably when the next two discs come out, and before that we’ll be heading up to Canada.
CraveOnline: Do you know who you’ll be taking along on that one?
Dustin: We’ll be taking people but no, nothing definite yet.
CraveOnline: What can you tell us about the various side projects that your members are involved in?
Dustin: None of the are really serious. All that I know is that Teppei, he’s done some stuff with our friend Chris and then done some stuff on his own, but we’re all just kinda screwing around at this point.
CraveOnline: Any plans on releasing another solo album of your own?
Dustin: I do I just don’t know… I’ve just been doing some small releases on my own online and not really going the traditional route of release, you know, just experimenting a little with what’s out there. I feel like there’s new ways to release records that are a little bit more honest and cutting out some of the in-between stuff and saving the artists a little money and saving the fans some money too.
A rare photograph of Thrice looking slightly less pissed than usual.
CraveOnline: What can you tell us about the charity work Thrice has been involved with over the years? Or instance, what’s the story behind “Invisible Children”?
Dustin: Invisible Children they’ve gotten a lot bigger name for themselves these days, but they basically started out trying to help raise awareness about some of the child soldiering problems that are going on in Uganda, the displacement of tons of people from these militias. And a lot of this has changed, there’s been some good progress happening there. They’re starting to try and branch out a little more and starting to raise some awareness about things happening in Burma right now, there’s also a lot of child soldiering problems going on there on both sides of the conflict so… We just help them to get people involved, and we did some charity shows for them and various things to try to raise awareness. We’re working right now with another organization that helps in Africa, and it’s called “Blood Water Mission”. And they basically try to provide AIDS relief and clean water to the villages there. Without clean water, there are a lot of opportunistic parasites that really make it harder for people who already have HIV because they are then getting all these diseases on top of that because their immune systems are shut down. It’s kind of a two-step process, very simple and its very community empowering and sustainable. They try to just give these people the resources to do these things so they take responsibility for it and ownership. And it’s a more lasting benefit.
CraveOnline: How can our readers get involved?
Dustin: That’s one of the main reasons that we even publicize this is so that people can get involved and see these things going on. There have been a lot of people that have given their time and resources to help them, people that have done yearlong internships helping out. If people are interested in any of these organizations that we have worked with you can contact them through the various websites, and the best way to go about it is to simply ask them what they need. There’s always a bunch of things that need to be done that people don’t want to do. It’s not the glorious jobs, but the hard little things that really keep a lot of these things going.
CraveOnline: Is there any way that you can elaborate on the “differences of opinion” that resulted in your split from Island Records?
Dustin: Not a whole lot… It’s like a very nebulous thing… Ever since “The Artist in the Ambulance” we really had been drifting apart. A lot of people that were there when we signed on are gone now, most of the people really that were really behind us, and the industry has just changed so much in the last couple of years. And everyone is just scrambling to figure out what they’re going to do and how they’re going to stay afloat. And we’ve never been a big success for them really, I feel like they stopped investing in us after “Artists” and so with this record, it’s just something totally out there and different, and they felt that they weren’t going to do a good job with it and we felt like they weren’t going to do a good job with it and it was mutually beneficial for us to leave. And we got to keep the record we’d made and they got to keep some money they owed us so… We’re happy with it.
CraveOnline: Sounds like a square deal.
Dustin: I think they’re happy with it. It was really not a very messy thing.
Alchemy Index: Air and Water.
CraveOnline: How is it working with Vagrant?
Dustin: It’s going well. I mean, labels are not all that dissimilar. But we have some people that we feel like we can communicate with and get things done, and that helps a lot.
CraveOnline: “The Alchemy Index” sounds quite a bit different than your previous studio albums. What can you tell us about your recording process?
Dustin: Sounds different in what way?
CraveOnline: A little bit less cooked. This sounds a little bit more raw and true. Was that a purposeful design?
Dustin: We did this completely ourselves. Teppei engineered it and mixed it. We all produced it together. We did it at home in a very small little garage studio that we built. It’s very different, there’s no outside opinion, no fifth person… so it was just a very different process. We were at home; we weren’t gone for two months somewhere else. We did it for a longer period of time, and while did it while we were writing still so it’s more of an organic process, just trying to get things down on tape. And keep things fresh, not get bogged down by some of the things that you do over the normal course of recording, with a producer and engineer and reps from the studio. There are kinda too many cooks in the kitchen sometimes. And especially with the mixing, we kept a lot of it rawer then I think you would normally hear. There’s some kind of idea of what’s commercially viable and what people want to hear. But as musicians and as lovers of music you wanna hear things that are interesting, you don’t want to hear everything on “10” all the time and fighting for space. There are a lot of interesting mixes on the record, especially on the other two discs as well, so I’m excited for people to hear them.
CraveOnline: Here’s kind of a funny question… Why do you guys always look so pissed in photographs?
Dustin: Ha ha ha! Uh we’re not like mean or even very serious people, we’re just all introverts. So we don’t naturally play around on camera. We basically hate photos being taken of any of us, so we generally try to just stand there and be presentable or whatever. I don’t know. The first time we ever had a photo shoot for AP a super long time ago, they tried to make us like jump on each other and stuff, and we were trying to be nice and cooperative and in the end of it we just felt like we’d been raped or something and very uncomfortable. So we decided never to let someone tell us to do something we didn’t want to do. It’s kind of weird, but you know.
CraveOnline: I understand that you guys are altruists and all of that, but our readers love drama. So who’s your least favorite band out there and why?
Dustin: I don’t know… We don’t like drama so; we’ll stay out of that question.
CraveOnline: My least favorite is Tila Tequila, if that counts. Now you go…
Dustin: I don’t even know who that is.
CraveOnline: Oh good lord you’re lucky then.
Dustin: Oh is she that MySpace girl? I couldn’t pick her out of a crowd. I don’t know. I still don’t want to answer that.
Either Thrice is watching an invisible movie, or they’re too pissed to look at the camera.
CraveOnline: Fair enough. Who are you guys listening to right now then? And you can’t say either of the bands you’re currently touring with, that’d be too easy.
Dustin: Um… I’d say collectively between the four of us Radiohead is probably our favorite. We all kind of listen to a bunch of different things but that’s something we can all agree on a lot. Other than that the main things I’ve been listening to are Josh Ritter, Marina Taylor and 11-11.
CraveOnline: We’ve heard rumors that The Alchemy Index will be the final album by Thrice as a band. Is this true? And if so, why?
Dustin: At this point I think we all feel pretty strongly that we’re excited to make other records. I never know where those rumors originate. It’s definitely not the plan right now. I feel like we’re in a really positive state of mind, very tight as a unit right now. The only time we ever have any tension is in the middle of recordings, which is understandable. When you have a creative process that you share between four people equally you’re gonna have hard times. But we’re all really proud of this project and excited to be touring on it, and excited to make some more music. And I feel like I’m really excited for the next record because I feel like this is the first time in my career that we have a completely clean slate to do whatever we want.
CraveOnline: What’s the next step for Thrice as a band? How do you follow up something as ambitious as this?
Dustin: Well it is all pretty separated so I don’t know; it’s probably going to be some kind of amalgamation of these things. But at the same time trying not to have it completely chaotic. I really have no idea.
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