How Musicians Are Fighting Coronavirus by Turning Merch Into Masks

Like seemingly every other musician on the planet, the members of the New Jersey post-hardcore institution Thursday recently found themselves wondering how to spend their time. The coronavirus pandemic forced them to cancel all of their 2020 shows, and one member was about to be a father. They got together remotely to make plans for the immediate future. “It was a conversation that started from our own needs and self-interests,” frontman Geoff Rickly said. “But we kept being like, who has money? Our fans are from the same economic background that we are. They don’t have money—they’re probably out of work.”

The conversation turned toward what they could do for their community with what they had—and what they had were Thursday T-shirts, lots of them, stockpiled to sell on tour. They realized the shirts could be repurposed to make the sort of face masks recommended by the CDC for use in public, and began donating the fabric to grassroots sewing collectives along the East Coast like SewYouCare and FaceMask Warriors. They also started selling factory-made Thursday-branded facemasks on their website, with proceeds going toward masks for frontline healthcare workers.

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