EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW: We ‘Blame’ The Maine For Our Amazing 2023

It’s been a crazy year and an even crazier one for The Maine! Celebrating 8123 Day, 16 years as a band, and their new self-titled record, 2023 was truly their year! So imagine how special we feel that they took time out of their schedule to sit down and talk with us! So grab your favorite snack and drink, and get ready to see what their lead singer John O’Callagan, has to say about their year! Let’s dive in!

Hello and welcome back to THP! Thanks for taking the time to chat with us. We wanted to start off with a fun one: If you had to assign a song from The Maine to describe the vibe for each of your bandmates? What song would you pick for each member and why?
‘When I’m At Home’ – Garrett. He’s always one to push for left-of-center ideas. The bridge was our attempt at a Nels Cline-esque from Wilco approach to a guitar solo and it was championed by Garrett. ‘Thoughts I Have While Lying In Bed’ – Kennedy. I lean on Ken for certain vocal parts live when I either can’t get to them or think his voice would be better suited and this tune is a great example of Ken holding it down.

‘Blame’ – Pat. ‘Blame’ started as the hook mostly as you hear it and a very vanilla approach to the verse. Pat texted me a prompt that pushed me to create what you hear now in the tune and it’s an example of how his brain can help flip things on their head and push our band into different realms. ‘Girls Do What They Want’ – Jared. There are a lot of tunes that Jared has put his stamp on, and this one isn’t a great example of that, but I remember this song as one of the first that I had a lyric for without music and he played the opening riff while I crooned over it. It’s one of my earliest memories of collaboration and one that I still vividly remember.

Okay, so we need to talk about ‘thoughts i have while lying in bed.’ This track feels like the melding of ‘Love In Real Time,’ ‘Taxi,’ & ‘Anxiety In Real Time.’ As in, it’s a lyrical masterpiece that is making us feel 1803974 emotions at once, and we wish it lasted for 30 hours tbh. Can you walk us through the process of writing ‘thoughts i have while lying in bed’ and tell us about where the inspiration came from?
That’s too kind. Towards the back half of the record I wanted to create songs that went through the different stages I’ve experienced while falling in love. ITAYATT was about those first fluttering feelings of not being able to think of anything or anyone other than that someone. Thoughts was me trying to find reasons why I wasn’t falling love but not being able to find a single good one. 

Speaking of ‘Anxiety In Real Time,’ that track has one of our favorite lyrics from you potentially: “And I’m lit just like the ash of my cigarette.” What does it feel like when you write lines like that one that are metaphorical masterpieces for what it’s like to be a human doing their best to survive?
 I look up to lyricists that possess the ability to say things that we all experience just said in ways that I’ve yet to hear. Maybe my favorite lyric of all time is from Jeff Tweedy…”the ashtray says you were up all night,” I think this was my modest attempt at biting a bit of his style.

We know 8123 Fest is 2025 us’s time to shine, but is there anything you can tell us about the fest so far? Maybe even just some of your hopes for the festival lineup or experience wise? And the most important question: Is sticky cider and more importantly, sticky CAKE coming back in 2025?
We were gutted to have to postpone ‘24, so just the thought of it happening in 2025 has me elated. Our hope is to make it both familiar and foreign at the same time so that newcomers and regulars alike can be satisfied. We’ve just started to create a list of bands that we want to ask to play, and even though we can’t divulge, I know it’s gonna be one to remember. It may not be Sticky cider or cake, but we will absolutely have some libations of all sorts to celebrate with. 

We know you guys do your best to accommodate the setlist divas in your fanbase, and the Sweet 16 Tour setlist truly proves that. If you were the only setlist divas to be taken into account, and you got to play the setlist of YOUR dreams, what are some songs we could expect to see on that setlist?
I think we’d go with our most weirdo songs. Not sure on specifics but you can bet that we’d extend jams and get stoney.

Okay spill, whose heartbeat is sampled in ‘funny how’ and who came up with the ‘blame’ claps?
The heartbeat is my daughter’s. I think my wife got annoyed with me in the ob’s office as I leaned in with my voice memo app (I’ve already done it with my to-be son’s heart). And the claps were a me thing at zero hour in Franklin, TN with our producer. A happy little accident.

Back during Sad Summer 2021, there was a performance where Collin Walsh from Grayscale ended up joining you guys for ‘Black Butterflies and Deja Vu,’ is there any possibility of us getting a studio version of that track with Collin one day?
Hard to say, but we are definitely more open now than ever before about collaborating with people. Nothing is off the table.

“I don’t have a plan but I got your hand” is a theme mentioned more than once in the album, can you talk a little bit about what that means and how it became so prominent in the album?
This record is partly about finding someone you don’t mind getting lost with. After hearing Fred Again, I loved how personal his candid conversational bits felt. It gave the songs a life in a way I hadn’t heard before and I wanted to bring some of that into this album. So thanks, Fred.

You once joked about making a 3-hour-long Grateful Dead-inspired album on stage – what Grateful Dead inspiration can listeners find in your discography? Or more specifically your new album, if there is any!
Maybe Cars and Caution Signs. It’s a bit self-serving and meandering but we felt strongly about wanting to include something like that on this album

You recently collabed with Demi Lovato on ‘Neon Lights.’ How did that come about and is there any other pop artist you’d love to collaborate with next?
It happened so quickly and organically that it’s hard to say exactly how it came to be. All I know is we got asked and I recorded the vocals in a hotel room on tour. So grateful to have been asked at all. As for people we’d love to collaborate with, we just released a version of Thoughts featuring Nick from Beach Weather, and we already have a few more on deck that I’m so excited to share!

In honor of The Sweet 16 Tour, if you were to have your own episode of My Super Sweet 16 what would your dream Sweet 16th birthday party look like and who would perform?
At 16, I would just want to play Halo with my buddies and crank some shit we listened to in high school. Maybe even drink some Mountain Dew Code Red if we wanted to get real loose.

Thank you again to John and The Maine for taking time out of their insane schedule to sit down and talk with us about their new album and 2023! There’s only more to be excited about on the horizon, and you can count on us to be here telling you all about it as it happens! Let us know what bands you’re hoping are on the 2025 8123 Fest lineup in the comments below, on Twitter, Instagram, or Facebook!

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