PropertyOfZack had the chance to chat with Dustin Kensrue from Thrice just a few weeks ago for a brief interview. Dustin and I talked about Thrice’s current headlining tour with La Dispute, Major/Minor, and more. Read up and enjoy!

We’re just over a week into your fall headlining tour with La Dispute, Moving Mountains, and O’Brother. How have the first few of many shows to come been?
The shows have been really good. It’s a really good mix of bands. There’s a lot of variety, but there are a lot of common threads that run through everyone’s sets. It’s a cool show to watch, I think. It feels like it flows well. It’s not really jerky.

La Dispute was a late addition to the tour. How has it been having them as direct support?
It’s been awesome. I hadn’t heard them prior to a little bit before the tour. I thought it was cool, but I like it live a lot more. For some reason I’m that way with more spoken-word type bands, like mewithoutYou. I didn’t really get them until I saw them live and then I realized it was awesome. It’s similar with La Dispute for me, but they’re great.

Over the past few years, you guys have really toured more with your contemporaries like Kevin Devine, Manchester Orchestra, and Brand New. That being said, these three bands are all obviously a lot younger. Was that move done on purpose?
Not necessarily. I think we’re more concerned with trying to line up more like-minded bands. Not in terms of them sounding like us, but in having a similar approach to music and touring and stuff. We knew the O’Brother guys from back when we did the Manchester stuff, and they’re great dudes. We had heard a lot of good things about Moving Mountains and La Dispute as well.
POZ: Is it also an added plus that a lot of younger fans are now going to come out to the shows with these younger bands?
Dustin: Yes. I hadn’t really thought about that [Laughs]. I don’t think as much about those things as I should. That’s definitely a good thing.

This whole tour is of course in support of Major/Minor. How have the new tracks been going over live?
Most of them are going really well. There are certain cities where we don’t know if anyone actually bought the record, and that’s weird. Overall it’s been really responsive though. I think it’s the best out of the gates response we’ve ever had to a record. There’s been very positive feedback very quickly. People are encouraging us to play new songs.

The album debuted at #18 on the Billboard charts with around 20,000 copies sold. That number sort of means less and less as time goes on, but was that still a great feeling to wake up to?
It’s hard to even know what that means. Aside from Beggars, which got screwed by the early leak, I think our last four records debuted in the top 20. I don’t really know what that means though. What it really means though is that we have a lot of dedicated fans that are excited about a new record. Hopefully getting a bunch of new fans follows that, but we have a strong following that supports us. That’s what that means. We have fans that trust we’re going to make a good new record.

Was the writing process for this record a little more chaotic than Beggars considering the hardships everyone in the band went through over the past year or two?
It was broken up by a bunch of different things between the brothers’ dad passing away, Teppei moving, and I had another kid too. It’s been crazy. Tracking went very well and quick though. It definitely sounds the way we wanted it to sound, and that’s great.

It becomes easy for bands who have been around as long as Thrice to sort of make the same record or become a “legacy” act by means of touring. Is that something that you guys just don’t get and see possible for the band to ever become?
I don’t even know if we know what that would look like. We’ve been pushing on for so long, it’s just how we function. I guess that would mean us making The Artist In The Ambulance over again, but a lot of people would want Vheissu again. I feel like the largest majority, not necessarily the loudest minority, are the ones who are stoked for us to challenge ourselves. We’ve had a lot of cool compliments from fans on this record. There are two kinds of records that you can make: One, you don’t care what people are going to think and you’re trying to think about the next thing for the band, which is not necessarily bad, but it’s very different from two, which is making a record that just sounds and feels good to you to play. And that’s definitely the kind of record this is.

This tour ends in November. Will you guys be taking some time off until the New Year in terms of touring?
We’ll definitely do another big tour in the spring at some point. I’m not sure of any specifics right now.

Can we expect Where’s The Band touring?
I probably shouldn’t say. I always say things when I’m not supposed to [Laughs].
POZ: And in that vein, has there been solo work?
Dustin: Every year I say that I’ll do it the next year, and it hasn’t happened. So I’ll continue that tradition now and say I’ll do it next year. I’ve got songs that I know will be awesome, and I want to get them done.