[EXCLUSIVE] Photos, Live Show Review & Interview : THE MAINE

The Maine (Tempe, AZ) continues to impress and embrace their fans launching a Free Tour. Yes, they will be playing two types of shows across the country, one playing American Candy in its entirety and a free show that consists of everything that the band has done up to date.

I was lucky enough to catch them at their NYC stop, playing American Candy in full followed on by 8 more songs to create a memorable experience that was truly unforgettable. It is a completely different environment and one that is whole heartedly welcoming in being able to listen to an album that was released a few months ago played in full, especially when most other bands are out celebrating their decade anniversaries of records and playing to the nostalgia notes.

Be sure to not miss this amazing show and a once in a lifetime experience with The Maine.

TOUR DATES

The Maine Presents American Candy

9/24 – Austin, TX – The Parish

9/26 – Tucson, AZ – The Rock

9/29 – Los Angeles, CA – The Troubadour *SOLD OUT

9/30 – San Francisco, CA – Bottom Of The Hill

The Free For All Tour

9/18 – St Petersburg, FL – Jannus Live

9/19 – Orlando, FL – House of Blues

9/20 – Atlanta, GA – The Masquerade

9/22 – Dallas, TX – House of Blues

9/23 – Mission, TX – Las Palmas Race Track

9/28 – San Diego, CA – Quartyard

10/1 – Fresno, CA – Strummer’s

10/2 – Tustin, CA – District At Tustin Legacy

The Maine Interview with Garret Nickelsen and Pat Kirch

NYC – September 15th 2015

Exclusive Interview with Zack Lee of SwitchBitch Noise:

SBN: Hi thanks for having me here today! To start could you state your name and role in the band please?
Garrett Nickelsen: I’m Garrett and I play Bass.
Pat Kirch: I’m Pat and I play drums.
SBN: So this tour is really surprising for a lot of people and especially coming from you guys, its free and you’re doing an underplay of American Candy in full. So how did that idea come about?
PK: We’re been trying for a while to do a tour for free. We had the idea probably back in 2010.
We just wanted to find a way to thank our fans and get more people to come, so as time went on it was really hard to make that happen because of the logistics that go into doing a free tour are insane. Finally we felt like we were in a position where we could actually make it happen, so we are doing it and it’s been crazy.
SBN: I liked the whole dual show thing where you guys have the free shows and from what I heard in the crowd, some people have been following the tour. I was talking to someone in the crowd who drove up from Philly to come see this show, and they were also excited to hear American Candy played in full. Why did you decide on American Candy as the album?
PK: Um… we’re excited about it. We like all the songs and honestly, booking the tour it forces us to learn the whole album, where like a lot of our records we only know a couple songs and we couldn’t play a lot of them so, it forces us to know and play all of it. And its just fun I mean, we’re still just so excited about the record that it just feels good to play it every night.
SBN: Yeah, its a great record. Every song is catchy, every song makes you want to dance along and I know everyone here is ready to sing along and have a good time.
PK: Uh huh, and I think it feels like for some reason when we put this record out it just feels like our fans have just gotten like so behind it and compared to like any other record. I guess in a time of everyone behind so caught up in playing all their old records and all that stuff we were like, hey lets just do the opposite of that. Lets go on tour playing a whole record but lets do the one that just came out a couple months ago.
SBN: It’s almost going to be ten years that you guys have been a band together, what are your thoughts behind that? A lot of bands have been doing their ten year anniversaries stuff.
GN: We talk about that quite a bit actually. It’s really strange that its been almost ten years, thats pretty insane. But as for the ten year record thing, its weird. I don’t know if we would do one just because it makes it like “thats the album, thats the one everyones going to remember”.
PK: Its so interesting, and we not going to say its not going to happen because who knows what we’ll feel like then. We still play a lot of those songs so it doesn’t feel like we’d be changing much.
GN: Yeah.
PK: But, I don’t know. It’s interesting and weird. I like it when certain bands do it and there are some bands when they do its like, just disappointing. So like we don’t want to be like that band that people get disappointed in.
SBN: That’s a pretty interesting take. I know you guys talk about your fans a lot and are one of the few bands that legitimately embrace all your fans and see them as an extended family. So how did that come about? Because everyone knows that you’ll stick around after shows to sign cd’s, posters, take photograph and make everyones night. Did that happen overnight or did you all collectively say that you guys didn’t want to be one of those bands that rushes to the tour van?
GN: I mean, its just something that we always just did. I think it started as like, hey we’re playing a tour where no one has heard of us, come get a photo with the band you’ve never heard of and hopefully you’ll go home and listen to us. There’s a girl and it’s her hundredth show tonight. So it’s like now we have connections with people that we’ve seen like a hundred times. It’s not even worth getting photos with them anymore its like, your having a conversation continuing on from whenever the last time you talked to them. It’s pretty crazy. Now you have these like little extended conversations from months ago that just keep on happening. It’s pretty cool.
SBN: What would you say is the biggest difference back from when you guys started and now, as a band, the environment of recording American Candy compared to recording your first EP?
GN: I think… confidence. A little more confident. Which is a nice place to be.
PK: I don’t know. Every time you do anything new you gain some type of knowledge and experience from it, so over time we learnt what we like, what we don’t like, the types of people we like to work with, the type of people we don’t like to work with. We’ve kind of gotten past any of the music industry type problems that we can have. We’ve had all the run ins with the record labels and all that stuff, and now for so long I guess pretty much for like half our career now we’ve been doing indecently which is crazy to think about. Now it just seems like everything is easy. We just do what we want to do and we don’t have to ask anybody. Any problems we had before were from people disagreeing on what we wanted to do and now we just do whatever the hell we want and that’s what makes it fun.
SBN: So what lies ahead for The Maine?
GN: Definitely touring.
PK: That kind of goes without saying that we’re going to be on the road a bunch.
GN: We recorded some tunes a few months ago and that’ll probably come out at some point. We’ll see when that happens.
P:K I think the goal is to always push what we can do as a band and what we have done, always do different stuff. We’re going to continue to try new things, whether that be a tour, a type of record we make, or a EP or a song and finding new ways to connect with our fans. I just feel like we’ve been a band for eight and a half years but this record feels like a beginning. It doesn’t feel whatsoever like we’ve been doing it for that long and it feels very much like we still have so much more to do which is really exciting. It makes it feel like anything is possible.
SBN: I guess my last question to wrap up this interview would be what would be your dream tour to be on, past or present bands?
PK: Umm…. Rolling Stones. Bryan Adams. Wilco.
GN: Replacements.
PK: And us.
GN: Yeah, that’d be cool. I wouldn’t even really want to play I’d just want to watch it.
PK: Yeah but what if we got to play every night, it’d be cool.