The Maine

With 2012 marking The Maine's five year anniversary, this Arizona five piece have seen a lot. After stand out shows at Soundwave 2011, Arizona rock band The Maine will be returning to Australia as part of the massive New Found Glory/Taking Back Sunday tour, they return with new material off their latest album Pioneer which saw the band change things up a bit. Guitarist Kennedy Brock sat down to chat with Kill Your Stereo about the upcoming tour, their latest album and the band's journey over the last five years.

Hey Kennedy, how you doing?

I’m good, how are you?

I’m good thank you. Thanks for chatting with Kill Your Stereo.

No problem at all, thank you.

So we hear The Maine are coming back to Australia. Are you excited to tour with Taking Back Sunday again as well as New Found Glory?

Absolutely, absolutely. We really really like the Taking Back Sunday guys and we are excited to meet New Found Glory, and especially excited to be in Australia.

You guys were last here for Soundwave, but what are you expecting going into the tour this time around?

You know, I am not sure what to expect exactly. We haven’t really played many venues in Australia, we’ve only played really the festival shows, so it should be great. We kind of know the Taking Back Sunday guys so we are already going to be friends with them so I think it should be a pretty comfortable tour at least.

And what can fans expect?

Well we have been having a great time recently just switching up our set list every night so I think at least our fans are going to be excited about hearing and having something new to expect.

It has been a year since The Maine was in Australia for Soundwave, how has that year been for you?

It has been an incredible year, we have been to a lot of places since then but we are really really excited to go back. I think that the Soundwave festival really stood out in our minds and we had a really great time on it so we are definitely really excited to be back in your area.

With such a variety in musical style throughout your catalogue, do you find it difficult to make a set list?

At first it was a little challenging, but now I think it has become a lot more fun for us to just kind of change the set list up. If we are not feeling the set list in the first day or two of tour then we can just switch it around and throw a bunch of different songs into the set. More recently we have been working on trying to be able to pull any song out so it is kind of more fun for it to just be random.

Will Australia be hearing material from right across your catalogue?

I think definitely we will play some recent stuff, we are really excited about the new record and really proud of the new songs so I think we are going to make it thoroughly new song based, but I know we are going to play some old songs as well and like I said we might change it as the tour goes on.

If you had to pick one, which song do you personally love to see on a The Maine set list most and why?

You know, I really like playing, there is this song called ‘Waiting On My Sun To Shine’, it is basically my favourite song on the new record and its my favourite song to play live, its just a, I don’t know, that song just stands out to me, im not sure why exactly (laughs), but it does.

What sort of things are you guys hoping to get up to while you are in Australia?

Im not too sure, we are only in Australia briefly so I am not sure what we are going to do exactly, if we have any down time we are definitely going to walk around and explore

From your experience last time, what is your favourite part about playing in Australia and just being here in general?

The weather is incredible. We are from Arizona so we enjoy nice, sunny weather. Really, I had a great time as far as our shows, everybody was really energetic at our shows. I had a good time, we went and got to experience the koala park and that was really really exciting for us. Basically I love travelling so its really fun to be out of your element somewhere you don’t know. I really just loved every part of Australia, really.

Towards the end of last year you released your third album, Pioneer. How have things changed or expanded for The Maine and you personally since the release?

Its been great. We had a lot of, I guess, struggles to get this record out and basically since it has come out we have had a lot of really positive response and I feel like that has been great for us as a band just because it reassures us that we made some of the right decisions in putting out this new music. So I think there has been a lot of growth in our creativity since then, which is great, and I feel like our fans are really grasping on to the record as well as people who may or may not have liked the previous stuff we put out. So it has been great so far.

Looking back on the whole experience, how important was it for you guys to self produce the album and is it something you will think about for future records?

You know, it really wasn’t planned at all, we kind of just fell into it. We started recording and basically just decided we could try it on our own. I think it is something we would really enjoy doing again, I think we would also like to work with a producer as well, but I think on this record it was really important for us because we just wanted to eliminate all the extra influences going into a record and we just wanted to sit down and do it ourselves and I think it will be nice and refreshing to work with a producer on a record after this if we choose to, just for the fact that there will be somebody telling us whether we are making stupid decisions or not (laughs).

You released your clip for ‘Misery’ yesterday; it is quite a cool concept and is getting some great feedback. How did you guys go about planning and creating it?

There were a few ideas that were bounced around, we sent them to the man who directed the video and he really sent back a few ideas and we messed around with the concept, but we really wanted it to be very simple and we didn’t want it to be jumping back and forth between performance shots or anything else like that, we just wanted to have a clear concept and a simple storyline to follow and I think that he got really really great shots on that video and I think that that really made a lot of the emotion come to life for that song.

This year marks 5 years of The Maine. What are some of your personal highlights from that time?

Oh man, there has been a whole crazy , woah, its been a crazy five years. It is hard to pick something that stands out exactly. Basically every time I come home from a tour I’m so excited and jazzed on the fact that we were just doing what we were doing and just so shocked, basically over and over again I experience, this is my favourite part, so I don’t know, there has been a lot of really great things as far as shows and things like that but I think , we were just talking about the new record and that was a really important thing and I think its something that kind of stands out because we were able to choose to do what we wanted to do and fight for that and I think that really stands out because that makes me really proud as well as the, you know, going around and playing shows and getting to have people experience this with us. Its all really, its too great to pick one thing.

And what is the craziest tour story you have?

Hhmmmm (laugh), our craziest tour story, (laughs) I am not sure exactly what to pick. We were kind of overwhelmed when we went to Brazil, we have never experienced, there is a lot of people there that are very very excited and very fanatic and when we arrived at the airport we were not expecting anybody there and there were a couple of hundred kids outside and everybody was just going berserk, so that was just pretty like crazy for me , just visually seeing everybody, I was just not ever expecting to see that in my life so I was pretty stoked.

Besides coming to Australia, what else does 2012 hold for The Maine?

We have got a lot of music that didn’t make the record that we have out right now and we are really proud of some other songs so maybe we will be doing something with those, also we are working on other tours surrounding the Australia shows and hopefully we will be back to Australia after the Taking Back Sunday and New Found Glory tour because we are really excited to get to play in front of a lot of new fans on that.

You guys have been touring quite a lot recently, so what artists or bands have been getting the most play in the tour van?

Well I’d say Taking Back Sunday is really an influence on our band at least in the early stages in our wanting to be in a band and career so I think that that band really sticks out. I still really love and listen to a lot of their music so its really a pleasure to be on the road with people I admire.

Is there anything else you wanted to add before we let you go?

Thank you so much for taking the time and I cant wait to be in Australia.

No problem, thanks a lot for chatting with us, congratulations on everything and we shall see you soon in Australia.

Absolutely, thank you, have a good day.