After being a band for a decade, you won’t expect to experience many ‘firsts’ anymore. However, for alternative rock band The Maine that’s not the case. The Phoenix-based five-piece already scored high on the Billboard 200 charts with their latest album Lovely Little Lonely, and are more ready than ever to get their music heard on our side of the pond as well. What is their plan of achieving that? By playing Slam Dunk Festival for the first time after being a band for over 10 years. We talked to frontman John O’Callaghan, he said:
“We are very excited for the opportunity and we’re really eager to put on a performance that hopefully is unique to the festival and could help us create more of a name for ourselves in the UK.”
Since their last UK festival in 2014, the band had two albums come out. American Candy, the 2015 pop-rock banger with singles ‘English Girls’, ‘Miles Away’ and ‘Am I Pretty?’ and this year’s Lovely Little Lonely with singles ‘Bad Behavior’, ‘Black butterflies & déjà vu’ and ‘Do You Remember (the other half of 23)’. Was it difficult to prepare a setlist for Slam Dunk, seeing as it’s your first time playing it?
“Hopefully there will be a few people that are familiar with our band, but we’re going into these things thinking that nobody knows a thing about us, so we had to find a balance of what we know works well for people who know us, what satisfies us to play on stage and what we think will hopefully win over a completely unaware, foreign crowd.”
The Maine just came back from touring Australia with All Time Low and Neck Deep, where they played six shows in front of a similar unaware, foreign crowd that they successfully won over with their music. Aside from that small tour, the band is in the middle of their own world tour on the back of the release of their latest album.
“The North-American leg of this tour is the biggest headliner we’ve done to date and people were really vocal about their enthusiasm of the new music, it has been overwhelming. We don’t like to stray too far from the setlist because we want to deliver the same set everywhere we go, but it’s a goal for me personally to deliver something a little bit unique every single night, no matter where we are. It’s important to be in the room at that moment, to get involved with the crowd and make it more personal, I think we owe it to the people that are there to deliver something authentic and unique.”
For the song-writing process of Lovely Little Lonely, John took a new approach based on the way Talking Heads wrote their album ‘Speaking In Tongues’. Instead of building music around existing lyrics, he focused on the melodies first and wrote the lyrics on top of that. However, this turned out to be quite difficult, he said:
“It was a one-time thing for sure. For me personally, it was the most challenging album that we’ve made so far. I think it was necessary to get out of that comfort of how I always used to write things, because it made it feel special and like whatever I was doing meant something because of the struggle. I think what I’ve taken from the whole thing is that it’s important to make yourself uncomfortable when you get too comfortable with something that you love, because it will give you a different appreciation for that thing.”
In the months leading up to the release of their sixth studio album, The Maine uploaded a series of videos called Miserable Youth, in which fans could follow the band during the making of Lovely Little Lonely.
“It derived from us being so secretive about the creation of our albums in the past, we felt like it was time to show people the real behind the scenes kind of vibe of what happens when we make an album. It’s one thing to be in on the touring aspect of being a band, but I think most people don’t comprehend what it takes to make an album and what goes into it. We wanted to break that wall and let people in for a different perspective and hopefully let them gain a new look on how we work as a band, who we are as individuals and what it all means to us. What we really wanted to convey is how excited we still are about being a band and what this music still means to us.”
The videos were directed and filmed by Guadalupe Bustos who before this, had never done videos and just did photos. Lupe (as his friends call him) became a close friend to the band, which made it easier for them to be a little more vulnerable and reveal a bit more in the videos, and it even led to the making of a second season of Miserable Youth in which they took the concept on the road. To the question whether it’s weird to be followed around by a camera all of the time, John answered:
“It doesn’t always feel like the camera is there because it’s just a little handheld camera and we’re so used to being around Lupe. He’s been so fortunate and his eye for things is insane. He does a great job of mapping everything out in his head so to not have the camera out all the time and be in the way, but at the same time capture a lot of what it means to be on the road.”
The band has always had a close relationship with their fans. Starting out with talking to fans on Myspace a couple of hours every day, to giving fans full control over everything related to the release of the last album. The reason for this?
“We’ve always build our band on the foundation of needing people to be a part of it for it to advance, and fortunately we’ve build this community where it’s about more than just us putting out albums and people coming to concerts. It’s about people connecting and making long-lasting relationships, it’s stuff way bigger than The Maine.”
The Maine will be playing Slam Dunk Festival on the 27th, 28th and 29th of May, where they’re hoping to get more people to identify with their music. Until then, make sure to listen to their latest album Lovely Little Lonely and get to know the band through their beautiful Miserable Youth videos.
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