Confessions From… The Maine

One of the highlights of my summer was definitely meeting and interviewing one of my favorite bands The Maine. They blew up in 2008 with their album Can’t Stop, Won’t Stop and Everything I Ask For was the anthem of my youth-pop-rock-loving days. They’ve developed and changed their sound a lot during the last two albums and thanks to Faze Magazine and Jessica, I had the chance to sit down with Jared Monaco, Patrick Kirch and Kennedy Brock in their tour bus while they were in Toronto for their 8123 tour. (Stepping into a band’s tour bus is always pretty damn cool.) The full article can be found in the back-to-school issue of Faze and below I’ve included a few questions from our interview for this week’s Confessions From…

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Out of the 12 tracks on the album, Forever Halloween, do you have a favourite? Is there one that’s more meaningful to you?
Jared: It’s been kind of changing a lot because it’s only been out for a few weeks
Pat: It’s hard to pick your favourite especially with all the songs so new.
Jared: Yeah and we haven’t been able to play everything live yet. But I think I feel like sad songs right now, that’s my jam of the record.
Pat: I can’t pick.
Kennedy: It’s hard to pick. I’m happy with all the songs.
Jared: Good, so Kennedy’s favourite song is Happy.
Pat: And I hate it.

You’ve been on tour with so many bands, from Lydia to Taking Back Sunday and Mayday Parade, but is there one artist or group that you haven’t toured with that you really want to?
Kennedy: Oh there’s a bunch. There’s a lot.
Jared: The Replacements are back together which is cool.
Pat: If The Foo Fighters would like to go on the road with us that’d be nice. I’d go on tour with a lot of people.
Kennedy: The Killers!
Pat: If there was going to be one last Rolling Stones tour, if they don’t die, I mean yeah if they wanna take us, sure.

Most important thing for you when it comes to creating music?
Pat: I think we just enjoy the process of it all, it’s really fun to write songs and extremely fun to be in a recording studio for a month and a half and just be like a little kid doing whatever you want. I think at that point we do it more for ourselves when we’re writing and then it’s really awesome to go and share with other people and see how they experience it and perceive the songs.
Jared: Yeah it’s a werid translation to if we like a song we wrote a lot, we don’t always necessarily know if our fans are going to like it. I think Forever Halloween was a success in that aspect. The response from fans has been awesome so we feel even better about the songs that we wrote.

What else are you guys planning?
Kennedy: First of all, a whole lot of touring, we are going to do a lot to support this record, we’ve got a lot of things planned.
Pat: Yeah we’re going to be on the road for a while, we’re always doing something new, that kidn of stuff just comes out of the blue, you get inspired and some idea to record, some EP, or make a book, or make a DVD.
Kennedy: Yeah it’s inevitable we’ll be doing something along those lines.
Pat: You know the goal, maybe, hopefully by the end of 2014 by the time we make the next record, just make The Maine’s own recording studio. Like maybe something we’re beginning to talk about. Big project in the distance.

Ultimate career goal?
Pat: The goal is just to be able to put ourselves in the position to be able to make as much music as possible. So that’s the goal for the band for the rest of year.

Be sure to check out The Maine’s newest music video for Love & Drugs:

–@Naomi_ML