In the life of a professional musician, it’s always important to keep yourself surrounded by those you can enjoy the company of and trust. Not only in the members of your band and management, but also when it comes to selecting touring mates.

The members of Thrice especially know this to be true. The punk rockers are currently crossing the country with their friends and cohorts in Hot Water Music.

“It’s been going amazing; by far the best tour that we’ve been on, in our opinion,” says guitarist and vocalist Dustin Kensrue. “It’s just been a real good trip with amazing bands to watch every night.”

Kensrue has a rather simple explanation for how this particular set of outings came about.

“We wanted to go out on tour, and they were going out,” he says. “Neither of us had anybody to go with, so it just worked out.”

“We met them almost a year and a half ago. We met them and did a tour with them, Alkaline Trio and Cave-In on the Plea for Peace tour last fall. Then we had some more contact with them randomly at Warped Tour and stuff.”

The Warped Tour, often referred to as “summer camp for punk bands,” was definitely a positive experience for Thrice and a way to run into new and old friends, Kensrue says.

“We were only on it for nine days, but it was great,” he says. “Doing it in a van is not the funnest thing because the drives are terrible and you have to be there at, like, 8 in the morning. You just drive overnight and don’t sleep and don’t shower and whatnot.”

When you spend your life traveling back and forth across the country, Kensrue says you’re bound to meet kindred spirits and see them again soon.

“This year was fun because we’d met so many bands in the last year that you’d be talking to people just walking around and be like ‘Hey!’ and ‘Hey!’ to all these friends hanging out playing music,” he says.

Thrice also finds it important to have good relationships on the business side of the industry. Kensrue says this was particularly important to them when they decided to make the move from indie label SubCity to the majors, signing with Island Records.

“There are a lot of indies that are as corrupt as or more corrupt than certain majors,” he says. “There are a lot of majors that are great.

“I think you just have to look at the people you are working with. If you think you can trust them, they have the same vision as your band or music project, I don’t know why you wouldn’t want to use that to further what you’re doing. We’re really happy with the decision we made.”

Kensrue says that although its relationship with Island is relatively new, the band is looking forward to its involvement on a record to be made in February.

He also says the band will continue its tradition of donating part of retail sales to charity, something it started on its old label.

“With SubCity as a label, 5 percent of the retail cost of the records goes to a charity of the band’s choice for each record,” Kensrue notes. “We did that with the last two records and we just recently signed with Island Records and we’re going to continue doing the same charity. The label has agreed to match us just like SubCity does with the bands on its label.”

The particular organization benefiting from the generosity of Thrice is a California community center called “A Place Called Home.”

“It’s in South Central L.A.,” Kensrue says. “It’s a real run-down area with not a lot of opportunities or places to go to stay out of trouble. The thing that originally drew us to it is they have a recording studio — they let kids record stuff for free. It’s kind of just an all-around program with a lot of different facets to it. We’re real excited to be a part of it.”

Back to the touring, Kensrue says it’s difficult to say what kind of band he prefers to go out on the road with.

“It’s hard because you have to choose between bands that you haven’t met but you like a lot, and bands that are like friends of yours and you’ve already played with. Some of the bands that we’ve had a blast touring with are Piebald, Cave-in and The Movielife,” he says. “They’re real good friends of ours and awesome bands. There are bands that we’d like to tour with that are maybe out of reach — Foo Fighters or I don’t know, Botch, if they’re not broken up. We just got their record and the new Foo Fighters. They’re both amazing.”

Kensrue says the current musical landscape is diverse enough that it just might make sense for his band to hit the highway with Dave Grohl and the fighters of foo.

“People are getting into stuff that’s a little heavier maybe and from the other side people are getting into stuff that’s a little more melodic,” he says. “It’s kind of all meshing and spitting out new things, which is cool. It keeps things interesting.”