Battle Fatigue

“If you keep fighting the good fight for long enough, it can become the bad fight,” says Thursday frontman Geoff Rickly, sounding more than a bit exhausted from three years of constant touring. And who wouldn’t be tired? One of the many bands to spring out of New Jersey’s girl-pants-wearing emo scene, Thursday has been on the road since they were shanghaied by the whirling dervish of trend popularity. To not be forgotten by their fickle fanbase means playing every and any opportunity, getting as much face time as possible. This summer’s no different: Warped Tour, followed by the Curiosa Festival. Show after show, night after night. Marveling at their breakneck pace and destructive performance regimen, I ask Geoff if he’s worried about getting burnt out. He laughs an uncertain laugh and unloads.
“You know, we’re so unbelievably burnt out as it is that it’s kinda like a moot point. We’ve been pretty much on tour for the last three years. We stopped to make a record [2003’s War All The Time] but we had three days off before we made the record, and then we started touring again before the record had even been mixed.
“We had seven days off last year total,” he continues. “After Warped Tour and Cure tour we fly straight to play the Reading and Leeds fests this year, and after that we’re going to be off for almost a year, doing nothing…and I think that we’re probably going to decide whether or not we’re even going to be a band anymore.”
Thursday may be disbanding? Perhaps it’s just the fatigue talking. Yet, with the pressures of being a new band on a major label, and the amount of work it takes to rise above the writhing swarms of bands vying for their place in the bullpen, it’s not surprising that Thursday could be ready to call it a day. Health issues are also bogging him down, says Rickly.
“Some of us are probably wondering if we can do it, you know, physically… I’ve been so sick,” Geoff reveals. “We played Coachella after I had been in and out of the hospital on tour, not missing shows but going into the hospital, getting treated for stomach ulcers and anemia, and going straight back out that afternoon and playing a show that night. By the time we got to Coachella I was just so sick that I was like, carried out.”
Rickly’s poor health, hints at disbandment and obvious frustration stem from too stressful a schedule. But like someone who constantly talks about suicide, his insinuations are more than likely a subconscious plea for attention and empathy, rather than the forewarnings of Thursday’s imminent demise. Or maybe he’s just being emo...
Still, there’s likely some truth in his sentiment. For a band stuck in popular culture’s no-man’s land — with name recognition and album sales but still indebted to their label, comfortable with talking to fans and signing albums after the show, but not comfortable signing people (“I hate it when people ask me to autograph skin. I almost feel like I’m desecrating it by writing on it.”) — theirs is a constant battle to remain poised on the turbulent wave of near-stardom, while still remaining who they were when they shipped off to the front.
“I devote the highest respect to music, and if we had unknowingly compromised just the general beauty in music or truth in music, then I feel that we should probably stop. I really want it to come from the best place, you know?”
Whether that fateful day comes next fall or not at all, Geoff Rickly will be making the best of his sojourn in the spotlight, playing every show like it could be his last. It very well might be.
“We’re all at a turning point where I think we have to re-evaluate what we’re doing and how we’re doing it, so we’re really going to make the most of this summer. I’m really excited to play so much, actually, because there’s a chance that it might be the last time that we get to play together.”

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