Thursday Guitarist Starts Project On Side

03/26/09 5:34pm

by Sheena Lyonnais (CHARTattack)

Thursday guitarist Tom Keeley is branching out from the post-hardcore group in pursuit of something slightly less heavy: shoegaze, to be exact. The new band are called Black Jets and feature fellow Thursday members drummer Tucker Rule and keyboardist Andrew Everding.

Black Jets were born in the two years that Thursday took off between touring and recording albums. While they maintain the darker feel that Thursday have become synonymous with, Keeley likens it more to the Smashing Pumpkins and Secret Machines.

"We were trying to take different influences that we hadn't used and try to force them into the Thursday equation and they weren't really fitting," Keeley said via telephone from the Texas stop of the Taste Of Chaos tour.

"We decided to take six months and go work solely on our side projects and not do any Thursday until we absolutely had to. I got to go and explore the different styles of music that fit exclusively with my side project and from a technical standpoint really explore different styles of playing to its fullest without having to think, 'Well, this wouldn't fit with Thursday, so I shouldn't explore this.'"

While the break allowed people to explore other things musically and individually (singer Geoff Rickly worked on experimental punk supergroup United Nations), something about Thursday's magic resonated throughout the break and inspired Common Existence, which came out last month.

The new record comes across as much more focused than 2007's Kill The House Lights, which polarized Thursday fans and forced the band to recalculate their efforts. The six-month break became essential to Thursday's creative process.

"We got to go off and do our own thing and really learn what we loved about our side projects and then remember after we were doing it for a while what we loved about Thursday," says Keeley. "It was kind of like our intentions in writing Thursday songs were no longer convoluted on these dreams of other things we wanted to do. It was just more focused."

Keeley is still figuring out the semantics of Black Jets, debating adding another guitarist and pondering if he or someone else will sing. It's really an outlet to explore his influences that are "not quite as claustrophobic or violent as some of the things I'm doing in Thursday," he says.

A Black Jets record probably won't be out for a while considering Thursday just began touring Common Existence. For now, you can check Thursday out here:

March 26 Boise, ID @ Knitting Factory (Taste Of Chaos)
March 27 Portland, OR @ Roseland Ballroom (Taste Of Chaos)
March 28 Seattle, WA @ Showbox (Taste Of Chaos)
March 29 Spokane, WA @ Knitting Factory (Taste Of Chaos)
March 30 Vancouver, BC @ Commodore Ballroom (Taste Of Chaos)
April 1 Calgary, AB @ MacEwan Hall (Taste Of Chaos)
April 3 Edmonton, AB @ Edmonton Event Centre (Taste Of Chaos)
April 4 Saskatoon, SK @ Odeon Events Centre (Taste Of Chaos)
April 5 Winnipeg, MB @ Garrick Centre (Taste Of Chaos)
April 8 Toronto, ON @ Kool Haus (Taste Of Chaos)
April 9 Montreal, QC @ Metropolis (Taste Of Chaos)
April 11 Cologne, Germany @ Live Music Hall (Give It A Name Festival)
April 12 Munich, Germany @ Backstage (Give It A Name Festival)
April 14 Vienna, Austria @ Flex (Give It A Name Festival)
April 15 Bologna, Italy @ Estragon
April 16 Zurich, Switzerland @ Volkshaus
April 17 Meerhout, Belgium @ Groezrock
April 18 Manchester, England @ Academy (Give It A Name Festival)
April 19 London, England @ Brixton Academy (Give It A Name Festival)