Day & Age: 13 Years of Thursdays
- Ripley Scott
- 1 day ago
- 5 min read
The band says farewell after releasing its final album, Echoes When Alone
For 13 years, Day and Age has held a standing practice every Thursday night.
Of course, not every rehearsal happened. Band member Jeremy Melton laughs when I ask if there was ever a Thursday when it almost did not.
“Constantly,” he says.
Life kept trying to get in the way. Illness, work, the usual. Five adults coordinating schedules over more than a decade was never going to be effortless.
But somewhere between changing jobs, relationships, injuries and adulthood tightening its grip around free time, Thursday remained protected.
“We’ve always made time to make it work,” vocalist Cc McBride tells me.
In late May, Day and Age celebrated the release of its final album, Echoes When Alone, at Pilot Light. Now, one more performance remains.
On July 2, the band returns to Pilot Light for a free farewell celebration honoring Cc before she moves out of the country. The event begins at 8PM and features Day and Age’s final performance, opening for Daikaiju with sets from MiniTiger, as well as a roast honoring Cc by friends and collaborators.
While admission is free, attendees are encouraged to donate to Hellbender Harm Reduction and Merciful Hands, the two organizations selected by the band. Proceeds from album sales will also benefit the charities.
Oddly enough, there is no tea to spill regarding the band’s ending. There’s no dramatic band blowup. Cc is moving to Costa Rica to attend school, and rather than continue without their lead vocalist, the band decided this chapter had reached its natural conclusion.
That is part of what makes the ending feel so surreal.
Day and Age never really functioned like a typical band. It became the standing Thursday five people kept coming back to, somewhere to make noise together while everything else around them shifted.
“We need each other to blow off steam,” Cc says. Later, she laughs while referring to the band as her “goofy boy band.”
The band started the way a lot of Knoxville things do: casually, locally and without much concern for genre.
Thirteen years ago, Jeremy, Tim and Mike had band practice at Cc’s house while she worked outside in her garden and listened to them play. Eventually she walked inside and announced she had written lyrics to all their songs.
“I was being so silly,” she says about the “audition,” laughing at the memory of wrapping scarves around the microphone while performing the songs back to them.
Of course they let her in.
Over time, the lineup settled into its current form: Cc, Jeremy, Mike, Tim and drummer Ben, who joined the band when Tim transitioned to guitar.
“As soon as Ben joined, it just set off fireworks,” Cc says.
No one talks about hierarchy much. Cc repeatedly insists there is no leader, that everyone contributes equally, and the others seem to genuinely agree.
Still, everyone talks about each other in ways that reveal long familiarity.
When I ask Jeremy what Cc brought to the room besides lyrics or music, he does not hesitate.
“So much,” he says. “She’s made most of the flyers and visual art we’ve used, including that one questionable horse shirt. She’s got the jokes, plant knowledge and usually a good helping of cornbread and soup.”
“The most important thing about being in a band is knowing everyone’s favorite food,” Cc says.
For years, she cooked meals for the band during practice. These days it is more likely to be cheese sticks from Lucky Shot Billiards, but the impulse is the same. After shows or albums, they check in with each other.
“We’d make sure everyone was still having fun,” Cc says.
They give each other space when life gets heavy. They call each other out when necessary.
“Having a bedrock of appreciation, trust and understanding is a requirement,” Jeremy says.
None of them really talk like they think they are preserving something special. They sound like people who simply managed to stay friends for 13 years.
Day and Age has always resisted genre in the way many Knoxville bands do. They will play with punk bands, country bands, metal bands, whoever is around.
“We never really played out of town much, and I think a small part of that is that we usually had most of what we needed right here, with each other,” Jeremy says.
“Knoxville is special because it’s such a small town that the genre scenes aren’t big enough to separate,” Cc says. “So everybody has to work together.”
The overlap exists outside the music too. The members of Day and Age work in engineering, water restoration, trail building and environmental work. Their songs are deeply rooted in South Knoxville: Baker Creek Preserve, quarries, bike culture and local landscapes.
One song on the band’s final album, “Heap,” was inspired by Baker Creek’s transformation from a dump site into public green space.
Cc grew up nearby. Tim helped build trails there. In the past few years, the band has also played the Appalachian Mountain Bike Club’s Fall Festival, another thread tying them back to the landscape that runs through so much of their music.
Cc talks about scattering seeds while walking and returning later to find giant radishes or mushrooms growing from the ground. After difficult days, she would sometimes go swimming in the quarry.
“Everything seems to make sense after I get in the water,” she says.
Jeremy’s version of the band is less poetic.
When I ask for the first image that comes to mind when he thinks of Day and Age, he answers immediately:
“A bunch of goofballs who took too long to start wearing ear protection.”
They interrupt emotional moments with jokes. Conversations drift from environmental restoration projects to busted amps to whatever injury Tim most recently sustained launching himself off something with wheels attached to it. They laugh constantly.
Even now, talking about the end, Cc does not sound mournful.
“I feel nothing but proud about this,” she says.
And she means all of it. The many albums. The Thursdays. The first love songs she has ever written finally appearing on the band’s last record.
“Being in a band for this long allows you to be vulnerable,” she says. “We’ve all been through so many transitions, jobs, relationships, and they allow me to tell my story in the truest form.”
On July 2, friends, family and longtime collaborators will gather at Pilot Light one last time. There will be music. There will be jokes. There will be a roast. And then, after 13 years of Thursdays, there will be goodbye.
“All the love that I have here, I will take with me,” Cc says. “Everything I’ve learned here, I will utilize wherever I go.”
For the remaining four members, this is not the end of making music together. They’ll continue as a new band with a new name, carrying forward the Thursday night foundation they spent years building.
Cc sold the house where the band rehearsed just a couple of months ago. I remember her once telling me, “If laughs were a dollar, we’d be so rich.” Spend any amount of time with her, and it’s hard to argue otherwise.
I wouldn’t be surprised if echoes of loud noise and laughter still leak out of that rehearsal room for another 13 years, at least.
Listen to Echoes When Alone and previous Day & Age releases on Bandcamp.
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