Love Letter to a Band: Thrice on Their Love for Hot Water Music

Music Feeds’ Love Letter series asks artists to reflect on their relationship with the music they love and share stories about how it has influenced their lives. Here, Californian post-hardcore band Thrice sing the praises of their pals and mentors, Hot Water Music.

Thrice are headed to Australia in September 2023 to celebrate the 20th anniversary of their beloved third album, The Artist In The Ambulance. Released in July 2003, The Artist in the Ambulance was the band’s major label debut, following 2000’s Identity Crisis and 2002’s The Illusion of Safety. Ahead of the anniversary tour, the band members reflect on the period leading up Artist and give props to Hot Water Music.

Thrice’s Love Letter to Hot Water Music

Thrice: It’d be really tough to pick a single band or record that influenced the writing of The Artist In The Ambulance. The record itself is all over the place, and while the four of us have always had a handful of shared favorites, our tastes are fairly disparate otherwise. Not to mention the fact that much of what was driving us creatively at that time didn’t really rear its head until we wrote and recorded Vheissu a couple years later.

However, when I think back to that era of the band’s career, so much of it is intertwined with the legends in Hot Water Music. Whether it was sharing stages with them around the globe, listening to their music as a source of comfort, or leaning on a piece of advice they’d shared or exemplified, they were always a part of the picture. We were young, green, and highly impressionable. They were seasoned, sage-like, and running like a well-oiled machine. It was hard not to soak everything up like a sponge.

Hot Water Music – ‘Jack of All Trades’

The first time we toured with them was in 2001 – The Take Action Tour. I was only slightly familiar with their music, but they absolutely floored me on night one. I’d never seen a band that soulful, impassioned, and surgically tight. I didn’t know a single lyric, but Chuck and Chris’ vocals alternated between making me tear up, giving me goosebumps, and making me want to run through a brick wall. You could tell they meant every goddamn word they sang, they played every note like it was the last note they’d ever play, and they left absolutely everything on the stage. We watched them do that for eight weeks straight. It was impossible not to be moved and motivated by that.

Over those eight weeks, they took us under their wings and treated us as contemporaries even though we were just four clueless So Cal dorks. That spoke volumes about their character, as a lot of bands would have just ignored us or left us to our own devices. As a result, we learned how to tour from some true road dogs. The lessons we learned and friendships we developed back then have lasted a lifetime. They’re the kind of lessons you can draw from anytime, anywhere, in any application. We’re forever grateful for those fellas.