Meltdown chats with Thrice

Beasley Digital

4/17/2025

Transcript

00:00Alright guys, here in the Rock Lounge, do you guys ever play so nice?

00:04It's beautiful.

00:05Beautiful.

00:05It's lovely.

00:06Tepe, what do you think?

00:07I love the curtains.

00:08The black curtains are a great test.

00:09They can't see the curtains.

00:10They're on the other side of the room.

00:11Anyways, Dustin Tepe joined us here today from the band Thrice in town tonight.

00:16And the new record, Palms, is out.

00:17Who wants to take the new record thing?

00:19What's the deal with the record named Palms?

00:23I woke up in the middle of the night and had this idea of using a palm, like your hand,

00:30as a really broad metaphor for a bunch of different things and using it almost as a hub.

00:36And the rest of the songs revolve around that.

00:38So whether it's talking about being open to new ideas or vulnerability or, yeah,

00:45just that it's kind of a wide variety of things all circling around that.

00:48And weirdly enough, I was also seeing that you could kind of see our Thrice logo,

00:54these bars in the lines of your hand.

00:56I could see it all in my head and it was a weird moment.

00:59Now, Tepe, did he text you or call you with this brilliant idea or what happened?

01:04No, I feel like you kind of like let that simmer for a moment.

01:06Yeah, for like a month I sat on it.

01:08I was like, that was weird.

01:08Yeah, and then you kind of approached us and was like, hey, guys, I have this idea.

01:14It's kind of cool when something comes in the middle of the night like that, right?

01:16It's like I've had those ideas before, too.

01:18And then do you get up right away and start writing stuff?

01:20Yeah, I mean, because I was just wide awake, so I was just writing down everything I could think of.

01:25Now, I listen to the record, and it's kind of cool because I guess the second side, I'm kind of old school or something,

01:30but I love the way the record is put together.

01:32It seems like the songs are put in a certain order on purpose, real deliberate.

01:37And that's kind of cool nowadays, the day of streaming and all that kind of stuff.

01:41Yeah, I mean, we definitely think through a lot of how it goes together.

01:45I mean, we always have, but especially with trying to make it sequenced for the vinyl well.

01:51And so it kind of has, I feel like, two arcs for each side.

01:56And yeah, it's really hard to sequence a record.

02:00There's so many ways you can approach it.

02:02Like I said, in today's world with streaming and downloads and stuff, I don't think fans,

02:06well, they probably still put that kind of energy into it,

02:09but the fans probably don't even think about it that much.

02:12Yeah, I think so.

02:13I think it's cool that you caught on to the vinyl arc of the sequencing.

02:19Yeah, I don't see it often.

02:20I definitely notice it with some Arcade Fire records or whatever.

02:23You'll definitely feel the flow, especially that with Reflector, it's double,

02:29so there's like four kind of movements, and it works really well.

02:32Yeah, I mean, I like listening to full albums, not just select songs or whatever.

02:38So, I mean, I definitely appreciate that stuff.

02:41Yeah, I just got back into vinyl, and I was talking to somebody about this before,

02:43and they say when you drop the needle on the vinyl, you're committed to the record.

02:46Yeah, totally.

02:47Yeah, yeah.

02:48It's a different experience for sure.

02:49And I love how the record ends, just kind of slowly fades out and stuff.

02:52It's kind of, like I said, that's kind of put in there perfectly.

02:55Cool, yeah.

02:56That whole moment was kind of on the fly, too.

02:59So, I finished tracking that guitar part and then turned up a delay and started just going.

03:06It was just kind of ad-libbing, and it made this weird, beautiful outro.

03:12So, that was it, yeah.

03:13And the record's got a lot of texture, too.

03:14I heard some harps in there and different things.

03:17It kind of does take you on a little bit of a roller coaster ride.

03:19Cool, yeah.

03:21Yeah, we tracked all the instruments ourselves this time at a friend's studio.

03:26So, I think it, I mean, it was a pretty deliberate decision,

03:29and we just wanted to feel a little more free experimenting with different sounds and whatever.

03:33And, you know, I think that was kind of part of the result.

03:36And you feel you got it.

03:38I think so, yeah.

03:39Yeah, a lot of cool textures on there are different stuff.

03:42I mean, there's, like, all the bass on My Soul is all Ed playing his upright bass.

03:51We tracked both, but it ended up just sounding great like that,

03:54and he's got some bass clarinet on the song he plays.

03:59Now, one of the songs, The Dark, I'm super interested by,

04:02you guys asked the fans to kind of submit some stuff to that,

04:06and you guys have the fans, I guess a thousand of them or something,

04:08they send stuff in on their cell phones and whatnot.

04:10Talk about that song, and how did the fans get, like, the harmonies,

04:14or how does that work?

04:15Yeah, so I had this idea to include people.

04:19Like, the song's trying to build a framework for a bunch of people

04:22to kind of attach their own stories to,

04:25and then I wanted that to be more literal,

04:27like, how can people actually join into the story?

04:30And I didn't want it to be just, like, okay,

04:33whoever lives near L.A. or something, you can participate.

04:37And so I was thinking, how can we do this bigger?

04:39And I had the idea that for someone to be able to,

04:42I would kind of play just an acoustic track

04:46they'd be listening to in headphones,

04:48maybe on their computer, a different phone,

04:50and then using another phone to record themselves singing along.

04:54That way the timing would all be right,

04:57and the end would be, hopefully we mix this together

05:00and it sounds like a big choir,

05:01and it, yeah, so it was over a thousand people,

05:03and it sounds amazing.

05:05You would never know it was on all those phones.

05:07Well, how'd they get the song?

05:09I sent, I sent out...

05:10Oh, you sent it to them.

05:11Yeah, like, I put out,

05:12hey, whoever wants to participate, do this,

05:14here's the video of me singing it,

05:16so they're watching me sing and play it.

05:19On an acoustic?

05:20Yeah, they didn't have the whole song,

05:21it was just in the right key and in the right timing.

05:24Yeah, because nowadays they keep everything under wraps.

05:26You can't hear anything about a new record that's coming out,

05:28but you guys were cool enough to let your fans in on a little bit.

05:30Yeah, just a little bit.

05:32Kind of, yeah, I mean, it was just like, you know...

05:33Just the chorus.

05:34Yeah, just the basic chords and melody, I guess, yeah.

05:37Hey, talk real fast,

05:38before you guys get to doing your acoustic thing here,

05:40about the last record.

05:41I mean, it really kind of blew up for you guys.

05:44Yeah, it did well.

05:46Black Honey got played a lot,

05:48Hurricane a little bit,

05:49and it's totally unpredictable,

05:53at least for us,

05:54what's ever going to work in any kind of...

05:56We've never had a lot of radio play

06:00and times where people thought,

06:03oh yeah, this is the song.

06:05It's not the song, I don't know.

06:06It's never, no...

06:07And Black Honey, for us,

06:08was not even on our radar of one

06:10that was possibly the song.

06:12We were just like, that's cool, we like that song.

06:14And then people heard it like,

06:15oh yeah, that's that one.

06:17We're like, really?

06:17Okay, cool.

06:19Yeah.

06:19Yeah, it was totally unexpected.

06:23I mean, for us, the exciting thing

06:25is just new people getting to hear the music.

06:29And so there's been a lot of people at shows now

06:32who have gotten into us just on that last record,

06:35which was awesome.

06:36Then to go back and maybe listen to some older stuff on that.

06:38Well yeah, I mean, it's kind of cool

06:39because at this point we've been a band for 20 years.

06:43Overnight success.

06:44Yeah.

06:44And so, I mean, the idea that there's new people

06:47still finding out about our music

06:48is pretty exciting, I think.

06:50Now we're going to do an acoustic set here

06:51with you guys, a couple songs.

06:53How do you like the acoustic stuff?

06:55It's fun.

06:55Yeah.

06:56It's like a different, I don't know,

06:57you get to showcase the songs in a different way, I guess.

07:01Yeah, and then trying to reinterpret it is interesting.

07:05Especially like the Grey was one,

07:07yeah, I think I'm going to play it.

07:08Grey, it's a weird one

07:11because it's a pretty heavy rock guitar song.

07:14And then feeling it out, like stripped down,

07:17it's actually got this kind of cool bluesy quality underneath.

07:21Are a lot of the songs written with acoustic guitars?

07:27Mostly, well, it's pretty...

07:29Like Black Honey started as like a...

07:31Yeah, it was an acoustic kind of riff, yeah.

07:34I mean, we actually got to meet Rick Rubin like years ago.

07:40And one of the things that he said that stuck out to me,

07:44which is not an obvious statement,

07:46but it's like, you know, if you think about it,

07:48it's kind of like, yeah, okay.

07:49But he said, you know, a good song,

07:53like you need to be able to strip away

07:54all the like bells and whistles in a song

07:56and play it in its bare bones

07:58and it still needs to be a good song.

07:59And so that's kind of stuck with me

08:02and I think, you know,

08:03it's always fun to try and strip away all the stuff

08:06and see if your song holds up, you know.

08:08Do you use that kind of...

08:10Do you use that today when you're recording songs?

08:12I mean, is that kind of in the back of your head all the time?

08:14I think it is, yeah.

08:16At least when we're songwriting,

08:17we just, we want to make sure there's a song there, you know.

08:19Yeah, it's cool when something so obvious gets told to you.

08:22You already knew that.

08:23Right, right.

08:23Now someone else told you about it.

08:25Yeah, I think we've always a bit operated internally

08:28doing that to where we've always been able

08:32to strip the songs down

08:32and it's been there even if we haven't been thinking about,

08:35you know, necessarily making it to work that way.

08:40I don't know.

08:40Yeah.

08:41Well, I'll tell you what,

08:42we're going to strip it down right now.

08:43Acoustic.

08:44That's the guys from Thrice here on 101 WRAF The Riff

08:47and, of course, WRAF.com.

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