The Maine Talks Sticky, XOXO: From Love and Anxiety in Real Time, Writing Process & Old Hairstyles

[vc_row][vc_column][vc_video link="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SzNJRI6yLfA"][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text][/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]beautiful human you clicked on our conversation with the main we got a whole lot to talk about very exciting real quick we've noticed a lot of you don't subscribe so please subscribe to our channel turn on notifications leave your honest thoughts on this interview in the comment section below hit like and yeah you're amazing and today's conversation is sponsored by total wireless do amazing hello we are two-fifths of the main hey just sitting here on the zack saying show just talked about pretty much about everything like the past 15 years yeah some secrets that we were keeping from each other yeah that's true we hashed out a lot this is more than just a good-looking couch it's actually therapeutic so yeah stick around watch it let's do this hi beautiful human my name is zach that's stan and welcome to the studio the main hey hey two of the five we have to do our the own applause too yes you know i'm sure there's people for it but we can't afford that if it makes you feel any better we are running on literally shoestrings half a paperclip and just just willpower and a dream yeah yeah yeah thank you that's a great compliment but it's an honor to have you guys here you uh y'all been making music for a very long time 2007. just wondering as of today like do you put the mane in a genre do you care to put the mane in a genre when people always ask us like if you know if whatever our mom's friend was like hey what kind of music do you make i definitely by saying say rock and roll well i don't do that anymore nobody understands it's a joke but yeah it's like rock and roll brother right bro i would say i just default alternative pop okay but i don't know i think nowadays especially with the way that music's trending i feel like there aren't i don't know there's so many artists that don't have genres like they don't have boxes to check so i don't know i you know it's really interesting because as we as you say like there's artists that don't have genres that's true like people shouldn't limit themselves people shouldn't feel like they have to fit a mold but in the same breath there seems to be a resurgence of pop punk like we haven't seen in a minute for sure and do you consider yourself a pop punk band anymore i don't think we ever were we just somebody handed that title to us early on and it was i mean i don't know what else i would have called us back then too it's what you know associate us with a bunch of other bands you know especially our peers and people we toured with a ton i mean we did the warp tour we did the warp tour i wouldn't say so many times but enough times to people would say like oh you're a warped tour band yeah and then i actually got tripped up and thought that we had done warped too like nine times and our drummer was like yeah we actually only did it four times but just by association you know we were wow yeah so i don't know you feel like you you were making music within a era that like yeah you're right like if you were part of this tour warped tour or if you played bamboozle exactly yeah totally but but in the same breath like you know kesha played bamboozle mike posner did warp tour yeah katy perry was on warped tour like you know i think we've just we've taken a lot of detours over the years musically just stuff that caught our attention stuff that we wanted to do and so i think the best answer would be like are you guys pop punk it's like we we can still do that like yeah i don't think it's like outside of the wheel i think sonically we've always probably been more uh to the pop side of things and i think with the way that we operate as a band that would be the more punk aspects of what what the main is i think just the diy approach is a very hands-on approach the very for lack of a better term organic approach to the way that we operate um i think those are like the punk rock kind of aspects but i think our sound's always gravitated towards pop yeah what is a pop sound is that how a song is structured how do you define that i personally feel like it's the it's in the arrangement i feel like traditional pop arrangements and at least in my brain the way that i kind of think of songs is more linear and and i think that very early on actually before we were in a band together we would kind of uh dick around and like send fruity loops like rap beats to each other and that was kind of where my brain started to associate like building a song and ever since then you know the thing that's always attracted me about song arrangement has always been hooks like always been choruses um and that's kind of been just it's hard it's so hard to like once you develop a a process like once you develop an approach it's so hard to unlearn how you go about doing that and i i we've tried to do it so many times and then we always like within like what like a week we're right back to the same first chorus verse chorus bridge chorus it's it's like i can't uh know it you know i can't unlearn how to do it so you know especially when we make records now it's really imperative that we like try to get uncomfortable and try to you know break that i guess tradition that we've kind of fallen into so do you feel like you get too comfortable because you've been doing it forever for sure 100 i think up until this past 19 months you know life in a band or at least in our band was very cyclical it was like you know you put out a record you tour for two years you get back in the studio do it all over on the dot you know it was like literally every two years so until this happened we never really took time to like you know try to and it's every every record you try to do something different but when you kind of develop such an incredible routine um it's really hard to kind of break that tradition again you know it's like i don't know did you not like how the song sounded when you tried to break that or did did it just not feel right at all it never felt like forced just because our goal was to go in and do some wild stuff over the years like we did on our third record i think we had like 27 tracks that were like all over the place like some of them were like electronic and some of them were like folk and it was just like at the end of the day we had to cut it down to how many songs weren't pioneer 12 i think 14 14 and that's still like for us that's a long record but i think even on that record specifically like like in retrospect and looking back and like thinking about our catalog there are songs that like kind of they're kind of pretty manic in the the way they sound sonically and i feel like isn't that punk yeah i think that's like i think inevitably it creeps into what we just are i think it just i don't think we could look at ourselves in the mirror if we just photocopied something we'd already done i think it would feel too inauthentic from our side of the fence and i i know that i wouldn't be down if we just like you know phoned it in so every i guess to answer your question like every record that we write it's whatever we're feeling in the moment and sometimes those moments are super brief because of the cycle that we kind of fall in like you have to we we definitely fall under the category of like giving ourselves a timeline because if we don't you'll get like the third record you get 27 songs and you'll get like the hardest part is definitely being like okay we're done like that's just for me at least yeah that's to be like okay that's it there it is and like with this like he was saying we had how many months to do this compared to normal like usually a whole like writing and recording process for us is just a couple of months yeah and we had this thing we've had it done for a year a year yeah so it's just like we're just like when do we when do we go you know it was wild even though you you you change it up sonically but the structure is always the same in the songs no matter what not necessarily no and and that's kind of the you know it that heavily falls on how the demo feels to begin with so if it feels good and especially on this record we produced this one ourselves so we didn't really have the ability to rely on somebody that you know wasn't on team domain it's like you know when you get into that aspect of things it's like it's really easy to kind of bs yourself and be like we're the best and we're the greatest and this is amazing it's fun too but this record specifically a lot of these songs didn't change from demo form so they like you know we went back and replaced sounds and recut vocals but like for all intents these songs kind of were the the demos yeah and you'll notice like there are songs that you know start with the chorus or you know kind of they go all over the place so again it was probably a combination of not having a producer and us having a bit more of that freedom and and kind of exploring i guess new aspects of of songwriting is that one of the big differences between this latest body of work and you are okay a hundred percent yes and i think this one just again differs from every other record because every other record we've had the ability to kind of fall back on a producer and and that you know extra brain in the room that being said we did have a good buddy matt keller who is an incredibly talented producer in his own regard and engineer and engineer and he kind of engineered the whole thing so he was the one kind of flying the ship and and we we have the ability to be like all right now for this part we're gonna set up a snare drum in this room and keep the door open and then we're gonna close the door as you play it so that it gets it was just like and he's like down i'm down so the other weird thing is like when you when you're laying something down like you kind of turn around and see like how everyone's like gauging it and it's just us there's no producer so it's just a couple guys being like yeah i think that's the thing like let's move on you know that's kind of fun that's kind of the fun part because you're not like looking to one person to be like you know um to kind of add that one flavor to the thing i think it's all five of us being like how do we all feel about this yeah so that was fun you're looking to nobody but yourself for validation yeah for sure why did you guys decide to do this without a producer whose decision was that it was kind of just a group decision and and um to be candid i mean we had finished the tour at the end of february yeah and we were in europe and we were like all right this is do this this will do it for the cycle and then as coveted started picking up we were almost like out running the shutting down of like all these european countries we were like we almost didn't make it back in to the us so it was more clear you know that we needed to like figure out how we were going to operate you know all of last year we knew we needed to record a record that was of the utmost importance so it was just kind of like not having time to to really freak out and and overthink it we also can't be idle we started to see that like that what we thought was me like three weeks was going to be a lot more so we were like what do we do with all this time and the most natural thing was like we got to make the next record we got the most natural thing kicked my wife out of my house she had to go live yeah we did that for two weeks we went to john's house and like bubbled there and like we just rare she was bummed shout out to megan thank you megan yeah shouts out where did you send her to fortunately my folks lived right down the street so yeah in arizona in arizona do you like the fact that you still live where you grew up i do i ended up buying a house before covet as well this is the first house i ever bought and it was kind of in the same world that i lived in i it's i had lived in a different apartment um in a different part of the valley and i don't know i'm an older man now i i like quiet i don't like uh i don't like the boom boom so does it help for uh creativity um i think what helps me creatively is being able to travel like especially you know with everything that happened i i went on a couple i love camping so i went outside a bunch and i got to see a lot of national parks that i had never seen it was odd because again so much of our our lives for the past 15 years have been spent on the road and so having this abundance of time was i don't know it was you know it makes you stir crazy but i also got you know to see a lot of parts of the united states i'd never seen before so are you creating music while you're doing this or when you go and you all get together for two weeks do you try to finish everything at the end of the two weeks so i had written a good portion of things in europe so for the first time um i was able to write on the road and we had had quite a few songs that came from that batch and then we ended up writing together a little bit and we're just bouncing stuff around on the laptop so that normally we don't write really at all on the road it's just chaotic and it's a weird environment to do it in but we had a lot of downtime so just be like laptops open every day like coming up with whatever little bits and pieces here and there and then came home with a good amount of stuff i mean you had a bunch of stuff stacked up and then to to kind of further it's like once we kicked my wife out um that's when kind of the the real kind of like whittling process happens so we're we're super hard on ourselves and and super um i guess specific when it comes to what songs we want to tackle um and we kind of whatever from 40 ideas whittled it all the way down to to 11 and then from there nixed one more yeah do you set any goals before you start making this thing or what was kind of nice is um i had written with uh a buddy andrew goldstein and big deal yeah he's a great dude and and that was sort of the very start of the writing process so i wasn't even supposed to stick around um and that night i was either gonna book a flight or go do this session and i'm fortunate that i went and did the session because we wrote the opening song on the record sticky thank you so much and and that day was like i don't know it just felt very i mean it sounds hippie but it's it's felt very like like fate had intervened and that was supposed to happen because having that feeling is something that i don't think we've ever felt with a song of ours of just like the immediacy of falling in love with the tune so having that under our belts really kind of set the stage and it kind of took the pressure off of the rest of the record and that we felt that confident in that song that we could kind of have a bit more freedom so oh wow so were you do you mean freedom like okay you know that this song has a potential to be a hit i just have some boxes knowing that we had one yeah more so just like the overwhelming feeling that we all were in agreements on a track like we knew that that could just be what it for whatever it means anymore a single you know for whatever it means anymore i don't know you know it's like because for us you only have so much say in like what songs you're gonna release before a record comes out but the beautiful part about releasing a record is that then people can come together and tell you what they did you know and and they can dictate the songs so now once this thing got released it was like there was this second half of the record that nobody had heard that people are now like you know they're coming together beautiful and high forever are like the songs and we're like go okay i didn't know that you wanted those okay so but before sticky we didn't have we we i mean we had all these demos that we're talking about but before that moment it was like like you're saying not knowing where to take the record not knowing what to do on your eighth studio album it's like that's it's a feed dude it's a feat and it's like hearing that the thing about john that's i find it's kind of funny is like we've known each other for so long but like it's rare that i'll get that text from him that's like got something like we have something right now and then like we got that and then we heard sticky and all of us were like holy [ __ ] like this is legitimate like this is a really awesome first thing to have it was so strong and i mean you know i just thought that like that the timing of it was perfect because that was the jump off point for what came after and it allowed us to kind of really spark that creativity on the record yeah and create an album behind it yeah well john where did sticky come from like how did you even start that so it was i kind of have a quirky little like ways that i go about uh writing or like jotting down things ideas and titles and stuff so i had my computer open and i usually run with like pages and pages of working titles it'll be like whatever zack song or blue blue sky and it's like oh i had this idea for a song called blue sky and it's like oh i was looking up and you know whatever it is so sticky was hanging around in like the middle of one of these pages and andrew actually was like sticky he's like what does that mean it's like i was taking it like the you know something about you stuck in it and i couldn't shake it and couldn't kind of wiggle it free and he's like oh that's cool he like grabbed the guitar it's like okay and then it just kind of like started to kind of fall out and it sounds really like again hippie but it felt very like serendipitous that it was just like that and then this and he played a riff and i'm like okay yeah but what about if it's like this and then we wrote the course and it kind of just fell out jared when he sends it to you do you immediately know like okay this is what i can add to the song or do you guys have a discussion about where you want it to go what was sticky it was just kind of like why don't we just do what what's happening there and just keep that going like you know it didn't really need much it was it was it's one of those like one listen tracks to me it was where it was like oh i heard it and like by the second chorus i'm like i know what you guys did and it's in my brain now like which to me was awesome it's we haven't i haven't heard that really out of us ever you know so that was a cool kind of new territory with other songs sometimes it's like as stuff is flying back and forth it's like well i can maybe this needs to be feel more like a rock band or it needs this like more more of a global sort of like idea at first and then once we get into the studio or pre-production we start to whittle down into what that actually means there are definitely battles too where it's like where where it's like do i what do i do you know from his perspective it's it's it's a hard thing to navigate because it's like do i just make the parts that are there sound better and more high fidelity or do i you know implement this other thing yeah so it's definitely that's why turning around and looking at people's faces while i'm doing it is like very helpful i'm like yeah they're like nah yeah they're like yeah yeah so yeah it's but it is it's like that it's very tailored to the moment and what's actually happening kind of dictates the flow of how things get edited and worked on and yeah i think what was sticky it was just like like good job guys like let's do it would you say it's the most pop or mainstream song you guys have put out maybe isn't it your first like big radio hit in 13 years i mean yeah this is like the only time we've ever like really tried to go to radio so it was like but to aunt to the pop thing i mean we i don't know we have like our first record has some real poppy moments yeah i mean that for sure i mean well and there was a there was a track on that right was it was it into your arms the one that we took already it was like they told us one of them was on the radio but i never heard it so yeah yeah so yeah i would say sticky this is definitely the first time we were you guys just hopeless back then what was it fearless fearless fearless that's it yeah that's when i first interviewed you guys on the phone that's so wild yeah it was a long time ago very long time but you work with matt squire on can't stop loan stop yeah he's a big deal yeah but do you stop you that's the only project you work with him on right you switch immediately do you like a christmas ep after that full circle after that we did you are okay with him once again why did it take so long in between i think it was just more so like the idea of of not you know only having one experience you know so it was like go into the the studio for can't stop have this moment with this guy you know it it might be the same way as like if i went and wrote with andrew again like you might not be able to recreate that but you almost have to appreciate it more for for having had happened you know if that makes sense right it's beautiful i know people who work the opposite who are like okay we did it once and now i'm gonna we're gonna work together every day absolutely i guess we also kind of got in in a roundabout way kind of forced into uh signing with warner brothers so fearless was saying that they were going to sell and we didn't know where we were gonna end up so it was like the shittiest situation ever absolutely so we had to kind of uh you know try to convince people at warner brothers or atlantic or wherever like hey we're good like you want us none of them signed you they have no investment in you but now you have to resell yourself exactly that's yeah that was the weird part well and like he's saying things changed so quickly after that first record too that it was like by the time we had landed at warner there was just a whole new set of like um blueprints for where we were supposed to go next and i think at that point can't stop the first record was just kind of like in the rear view mirror we were just thinking about what happens next so you've got people to label like oh i've got this connection i've got that connection and then you know next thing we knew we ended up in the studio with howard benson and it was like that for us was like another dream come true we wanted to do that really bad you know he did a lot of records that that i liked or that he liked so and then ironically enough everybody that was working at warner brothers um that convinced us to sign there ended up getting fired and so [Laughter] well i don't think because of that maybe maybe but we we eventually kicked and screamed till we got off warner brothers so it was like a [ __ ] up they were like situational hey nice to meet you guys when you see the next day all their stuff is in like a box and they're like leaving the building where are you going so let me just get this timeline correct you get signed to a label and then the label then you they sell it right they okay so the even more [ __ ] up thing is that fearless never sold their company they never sold their record label so we're like oh we're glad we got off yeah but they were they were in talks so you know yeah if you know that you're going to be stuck on the ship then you're going to try to find a way to like get it you know yeah you got to find your own way which is what we were doing so with no knowledge of where they were headed that we just made a decision based off of that so whether or not they sold or not we just made the decision basically we go to warner brothers we released the record then like six or seven weeks into the release it was like oh well yeah like good job i gotta like work on green day's record and it was like that's kind of the focus so then it's actually kind of crazy we went to jersey and we were playing a summer tour and the ceo at the time had us over for dinner and he's like without saying it he's like basically like yo i'm going to get fired and you should probably leave yeah didn't say it the whole vibe was like guys get out yeah you know which was very wild it was very sopranos dude it was wild he's like i've got some information for you like a guy i know yeah told me it's like it was very much coded but we were like i remember leaving the house and being like what was that we were like i remember leaving being like man that house was awesome that food was really good hey what was that vibe yeah like you know and we all talked about it and thought about it and then the more we kind of like zoomed out and looked at our situation we were like i think we have to try to get out of here you know like sure enough to like two like two and a half weeks later it was like i'd like to formally announce my you know yeah my resigning from yeah it's like whoa and then with him everybody else left yep yeah a lot of people a lot a lot of parts moved around over there a lot of the people that we had known you know that we had work worked with directly like 2010 2009 2010 yeah and it was it was just like you know the time regime came in and we were like yeah well we got a record done and they were like well we don't make records like that like we like to be involved we're like oh we made a record it's like so then we wrote a letter and told our fans and it got messed up and let us out of here yeah kicked and screamed and then yeah let us go we were bratty enough and they they let us go and no label now not until this record yep and we finally met and teamed up with people from photo finish that mike marquis and matt galley who have helped book us for pretty much 14 years um that was the only we had made up our minds like we're never going to be on a record label unless it's with people that we trust like unless it's with people that we know and we fortunately just had such a uh i don't know just like such a a great symbiotic relationship with our the people that dig our music that it's been just like very harmonious in that we can just put out music and they come to gigs and they dig it and yeah up until then we we had never kind of dabbled so who knows your fans better than you and then also like you deserve to be in a place and with people you trust and are comfortable with and also you have faith in and i mean dude like you've been doing this since the dawn of time especially and i mean that's like a joke but like yeah 2007 a long time yeah i've been doing this for a long time too like at a certain point you deserve control for trust and to be with people that you like you're comfortable with totally god yeah yeah i mean we actually were walking um down by venice today and we were reminiscing about a photo shoot early early on where like the people from the label like told us what to wear and like told us you know like they were wearing these sandals and they were like you can't wear sandals like yo i was literally wearing sand which was a good call like don't wear sandals on this photo shoot yeah but you're also at the beach that was at the beach what to do with your hands and like that was just such a i don't know it's funny because i actually had this pulled up but like what do you guys do yes what do you guys think when you see some of these pictures like it's crazy let's see can we see the uh okay there's one from uh i think it's from bamboozle the one second row okay uh with the logo or logo right to the left of that one yep that one is that sandals i have sandals on that what year is this you think 2012 2000. 2008 there it is dude photo bucket oh yeah look at them back there look at that it's a pair of rainbows well this also answers your question about what genre you know like pop punk this is what pop punk looked like at the time never the case even if you didn't listen to our songs you'd be like oh that's a pop punk band for sure yeah you go to hot topic 100 jeans are your sisters for sure it's so funny because everyone i remember everyone being like you guys all have the same haircut and at the time i was like no no we don't and then you look at it now and you're like oh my god we totally did for sure i used to be so offended by that oh my grave is we all go to different people like we don't know ah like he creates it i don't straighten it dude i mean you guys have the swoop and the mullet going at the same time yeah i got some yeah there's some rod stewart stuff happening they got wild for a little bit there but everybody looked the same for sure i remember like harassing people to do interviews with me backstage at warped tour and bamboozle and like i was on a still a pop station but like the alternative scene at least locally was it was big from coast to coast but so specifically new york new jersey pennsylvania i mean like the venues like every they were always touring absolutely always doing shows do you think it could be what it was like do you think a warped tour or bamboozle could ever exist the way a lala does today like where it's just this kind of like i don't know because like you said even like i remember even like the merch for bands looked the same like everything looked you know what i mean it wasn't just like it was a format it was a there was a format to it for sure but also the internet wasn't as available i feel like it was like it was but it was still it was just starting it it was like my space you know so i don't know if it could ever like well i mean we're doing sad summer right now i mean how many hair metal bands are there around right now like it's it's just that sort of niche thing where it's like i do but i do think i do think that like for what's happening right now there are a lot of people that have really good memories like tied to that especially it was the first time on the internet first time everybody was connected to each other and like agreeing and like you could find out that there was somebody on the other side of the country that was into this thing that you weren't looked like you and it was like that sort of thing was so powerful back then and we really relied on that when we were getting started so i think to bring that forward into what's happening now it's like something like sad summer is kind of a direct uh result of all of that stuff and it's just kind of the more focused more grown-up way to do it's for sure not as big as lava no but no to be honest like we played anaheim and it was it it was it looked amazing it was 9 000 people it's a big show that's a huge yeah totally you know and huge credits all-time low you know it's like for them headlining this this festival like it's been great to have this sort of crossover with all these fans and with the bill that we have like it's been really really fun to see all that stuff come together they're all cut from the same generation for sure for sure i mean come on who all time love was playing all the same orb tours and all the same bamboozles what is it like having these fans grow with you like i can imagine the shows aren't as crazy as they were because the the fans are older and not want to go like jump around anymore definitely not as um not as crazy when it comes to like moving but arguably crazier now that there's like heavy amounts of alcohol because it's like not so much anymore but like i remember when we were like when they were noticed they'll be like now they're 21. now it was just like and just like the it was like no no rules because they were just like oh we can have as many drinks as we want in the venue and i remember like doing meet and greets and just being like oh my god guys yeah like and there's there's a guy and a girl just like oh my god you're just like thank you thank you so it's like having like a little sibling it's like it totally is you know it's like growing growing up with a fan base huge blessing like it's amazing and there's so many fans that we'll see and like i remember faces a lot of names of people around for years and years there's a lot of they'll follow yeah oh yeah we have fans that will come to like 10 shows on a tour like a lot of fans that will i mean there's loyalty that i've only found is read in genres like that yes like anything that like has rock attached to in any way like did i go to more pop shows than anybody else i've never seen anything like that like people will tour and follow you all i'm sure we're very fortunate uh a girl named steph show up at the meet and greet before one of our shows in phoenix in phoenix at a record store and she had come from new york and said she was going to hit 200 on this tour that's so easy yeah 200 like and to to go to your point i remember being on tour with good charlotte in 2008 and i remember they had fans that were like i'm at 400. you know i'm at almost 500 shows crazy it's like that's wild yeah but we've watched it have we've watched them go from like then until now so you know it's just been funny to see it's like they've gone through the same awkward phases that we did for sure you know just like in front of us and vice versa so it is a very like kind of i think it is right it does does feel very much like sibling because you know there's another girl that we had talked to a couple weeks ago that said that she just got her doctorate wow and went through medical school and now he's a doctor it's just like i remember being their age and them being 16 17 years old and it's just like it it's very full circle and we never got our phd and we're not doctors yeah yeah no never say never what do you attribute the connection and the strength of the connection too is it the lyrical content because my sister is a huge fan of you guys to the point where like she was calling you non-stop today insane she just had a baby and my nephew wears oh like he's seven months and he wears like a onesie thing that is yours that's amazing amazing it's like my mom is the main fan whatever the [ __ ] i don't know that's amazing i got a picture but yeah shouts out to the fam first yeah that's awesome thank you congratulations to that baby yeah good style jackson's cool yeah he dresses well i don't know i mean the no the non-humble answer would be i hope it's authenticity and just us being like normal ass people but you are that in the lyrics i hope so you know because we're not we're not trying to preach anything but we have no [ __ ] idea just like everybody else like we don't like and i think that it's really important you know especially for me to vocalize that like you know not everything's all right all the time you know and i i think that that's what i found in music that's what i took from music before long before i was writing songs was solace and knowing that somebody else was feeling some semblance of the the same feeling i was you know and i think that i i hope that's what people you know what what resonates with people i think it i mean my sister has your lyrics at tweet on her body that's amazing a few of them my question is at this point what does music give to you now that you know what it gives to others it's very cathartic for me to to still write like it's very cathartic to like it's almost like you know some form of therapy you know it's free technically is revenue positive yeah yeah but it's it's you know i still love firstly i love the process of making music i love the studio i love um kind of exploiting everything that the studio has to offer um and like i said i i think i find a lot of arguably just as much from kind of being vulnerable that hopefully people you know feel um in return i don't know it's it's something that i still love doing and i'm very passionate about you know from songwriting standpoint that's still like the most fun part of the whole thing i mean i love playing a big loud rock show like that's incredible and it's they're basically on the same level but we still have a lot of fun making music and a lot of like unique experiences in the studio where it doesn't feel like what we're saying earlier like it doesn't feel like we're copy pasting stuff right now like it still feels like fresh and it still feels like it's spaced out enough for us where we can still go in and still find a new experience and still have fun so and then know that we get to share that with these people who are waiting for it like that's such an awesome part of being in this band is that you're making something and you care so much about it and you also know that there are already people there that are waiting to see what you do with it like that's a really fun sort of interaction that we get to have with our fan base i don't necessarily think that we can fully comprehend how it feels to actually perform in front of people i think because it's still here and it's still tangible i think that we can some how take it for granted in in our brains at least for me like i i go into such a place live that i don't think i can fully appreciate you know like even after the anaheim show it was like we went straight into the bus and had you know a two and a half hour conversation about how we played and our ear mix and the way that my vocals sounded and you know everybody and and then you're like people had a blast and like just chill out just like appreciate it but i don't think that it can actually happen you know until it's gone yeah i think if that's anything that that the past 18 months has taught us too is that it can go away pretty quickly you know so anything can absolutely do you care about reaching new people or are you focused on feeding what you have i think that was part of the decision behind partnering with a label at this point for this record you know i feel like we have really harnessed what we do as 81 23 which is our everything our our everything that we do is ran through 81 23 it was a parking garage that we used to hang out on in high school yeah awesome and it was on in us it was a lyric on the first record and and like it's so funny because it's literally everything for us and it means so many things to so many different people but the the actual concrete of it just derives from a parking garage that wasn't even the actual number of the garage it was the garage that was in front of so we would like smoke clove cigarettes and like bring skateboards up there and be like [ __ ] the world and like listen to under oath yeah and like you know i don't know so it's been like like you talk about your sister having a tattoo there's there's so many people with 81 23 tattoos and and what's the most incredible thing to me is that what that means to us now means something completely different but just as important for so many other people and i think that it's crazy yeah it's it's wild to see like people meet from different parts of the country and it's just been pretty pretty humbling well so that being said that is handled that's taken care of like this community takes care of each other like it's all inward facing everybody that's in our sort of 81 23 family is like they're reaching out to each other and they're like making friends and all this stuff is happening so our goal is is especially after seeing the reception for this record and seeing how accepting they are of new faces and new fans of this band i think that our goal is to bring this to as many people as we can and see how big this community that we have can get because we know that you know we have something there that for us is tangible and is super important it's something we've been working on for over a decade you know so i don't know that's that's the idea so bringing more people into the fold i guess would be the answer to that yeah we do want to share that and how do you do that more songs like sticky i have no idea do you only work with andrew like i mean like i want to get back to the fact that like you you have this great moment with this great writer producer andrew goldstein and then you're like you you like flee like you don't you don't be like okay we're gonna i'm gonna lock you in this room for the next two weeks and we're gonna try to crank out a couple more of these i think it was i hadn't written with anybody since the first since the second record on warner brothers and that experience for the two of us was very that's crazy it was terrible you went that long without writing with another person yeah we had such an awful time not to say we didn't meet good people so bad you know we had we had incredible experiences too we wrote with butch walker cool awesome session we did there were a few sessions in there that were really great but there were a few that were just so bad that we were like you know what let's just let's just do this how about just just us i won't name i won't name the person for the sake of anonymity but we showed up to a writing session and the there's a sign on the door and um it says like come around back and we're like oh cool i've got my like acoustic like in a case and we hear people like laughing and like splashing around in a pool and the guy totally forgot that we were writing and we had literally that was like the only thing we had to do was write with this guy and he's like oh [ __ ] that's today he's like uh you guys want some board shorts and a beer and we're like i mean yeah kind of but also like we've got to get this record done like you know we've bounced to in and out but it was just like experiences like that and then just being in rooms with people that don't care and the thing about andrew is that we had met him when he was in his band friday night boys and that's i think the experiences that go so well are the ones that uh you're in a room with a person that understands what it's like to be on the artist side of things like what it's like to tour what it's like to be in a room with some random person writing you know i think that's why it works so well with andrew and i i ended up writing a couple songs too with colby wedgeworth who had produced a couple of our albums and that's the same thing it's like we just i don't know we just and to be fair it's not we're not like it's not like we did that sticky with andrew and it's like we're not gonna no go back and hit up andrew yeah and been like yo whenever you're free like let's totally dude you're fortunate for him he's crushing it he's busy and we're in a place now where we just released records so we don't need music asap but i've i've certainly texted him quite a few times yeah yeah please please sir no he's such a good dude and again the experience was so amazing that when it comes time to write again it's a no-brainer for sure clearly it's like really hard to mix creative energies like not all of them mesh and god when you have it you like try to keep it for sure because we were coming off that fearless record that we did the first record and where we did it mostly i mean we did that record ourselves it was like um going into the second one you get signed to warner and you're like oh well they signed us because they love this first record and they're like okay just go do all this other stuff with all these other people so we kind of went in songs you don't know what you're doing yeah so we kind of went in a little bit closed off because of that i think and it just took a long time i mean as you were saying it took years and years to kind of like shake that off and be like let somebody into that circle and see what happens and and i don't know you know it when it wasn't close because now that now that that world exists again for us it'll be amazing to kind of go back into whatever's to come next on your turn absolutely and you want it how you want to do it i feel like there's a there was confidence issues on my part too like feeling like you don't not that you don't belong but that you you somehow your voice is going to be diminished yeah especially with writing with somebody else you know and i just like you said like for me it you know lyrics are really important and a message that i want to convey is really important you know in my head it's important and it's important that i get it out and in that scenario on the second record it was like one session we literally went into it was like uh our a r guy was like they need to write the next uh american girl by tom petty and but they told them that before we got there so like and they hit space bar when we walked in the room and it was literally the drum beat for american girl and we're like what the [ __ ] is going on dude like that's really something yeah it's just little things like that where we were like it's not listen that's not that's not a minor it's a minor offense but for sure like you're in that situation you're like all right this doesn't feel like how i would do it and i've already kind of lost control of the scenario for sure you know so whatever it's we're back to feeling good about it we're back baby xoxo from love and anxiety in real time is this album kind of done in real time like do you take notes while you're experiencing something and then go into absolutely yeah in the same way that i kind of keep all those working titles that i was talking to you about i actually like on my phone i text my own number and so and my wife will be like at first when we were first dating she's like who who are you texting all the time like myself myself especially because uh we do set time timelines for ourselves like we we timestamp it it's like this record is what i was feeling in the moment and and very much so on the sonic level too like this is what we wanted to do at the time and it's not to say that you know we don't want that now or it's just whatever's to come next is going to be you know in the moment as well and and and feel hopefully just as fresh as this one now didn't you say you didn't like if your light goes out at first is that you i was the only one yeah why was that i i don't know i'm it's kind of one of those things where like it just never felt right to me and i was in the complete minority it's that moment that i was talking about though where you look back and you're like probably the four of us are going like dude yeah and then it's like i don't know i don't know literally it was like my girlfriend's parents said that that's the best song that you guys have ever written and i was like why why but then you kind of have to get out of your own way you know it's like the lyrics or was it the sound what didn't you like it's not the lyrics because i hadn't pen the lyrics and i don't normally pen the lyrics until it's time to to sing and i don't know what it was it just never it never hit a chord with me and these guys were abundantly clear like this is going on the record i was very we were very vocal about and there have been instances in the past where i've also done the same thing where i'm like this song just doesn't doesn't feel right for some reason well yeah i saw you say you rewrote pretender didn't you have to go back and kind of yeah that was the first one that i'd tracked vocals for on this record um and again it didn't feel right and i feel like that they they allow a bit more freedom on that end of things because they know that i'm gonna have to be the one that sings it every night but he said i think that's well candid i mean we haven't even talked about this but like my first reaction like on the first cut of it i thought that i had was like because we never know it's we're in in all of our demos john's singing gibberish he hasn't put words in until there's melody there why do you wait until the last second i don't know i ask myself that all the time because it brings me nothing but legitimate pain yeah yeah i don't know more pain than what you're writing about i heard i think what it is and i'm going to cite david byrne from talking heads but he did a record called speaking in tongues and he talks about that record and said that that was his process and i was like dude that's i want that and like i don't know why and then for the last three records i think i've done that listen like it's that's the probably the most exciting part because he goes in with this language that sounds like like the sims talking to each other and it comes out and the syllables are different you have to like kind of because i've been listening to this gibberish for months at this point so then you have to like relearn it and i heard the first cut of what ended up being pretender and i remember thinking like i was like dude i bet i bet he could beat that but i'm not going to say that to him i'm not going to say a word and then i like i felt so good when you like you're like i'm hitting that again and i was like i i think that's the right call but i'm still not going to say that and then it came out and i was like this is like this is what the song is so what do you keep from the original and what do you look to change the whole content was different on pretenders specifically but it was just almost like it felt forced i was trying to like force um whatever it was i was like i had just uh i i had been engaged for a while and i was like going to talk about marriage and then i was like this is like i don't know it just feels like something i haven't experienced yet and we hadn't been married yet so it was like i don't know i think i ended up yeah i'm not sure there was just a moment where like there's it's like with any part on the record where you're like i don't know if this is actually working for the thing that it is and it wasn't like he has this incredible analogy for for like for fashion but it would be like um i went to a store and bought a shirt that i thought the pattern was really cool on the front right and then turning around and it being like one of those like ed hardy shirts like all that pattern like the you know it's like it's presented so well then you turn it over and you look at it you're like oh like a good pair of jeans that fit really well and then the back pockets have like the rhinestones and like that vibe jared do you think he would have spoken up eventually if he wouldn't have gone back in no you would have let that happen yeah for sure that's that lyrically and like that's the thing is i'm not i don't we don't the four of us aren't really conceptually putting anything into these lyrics like that's his that's his entire sandbox to kind of lean into the if your light goes out thing it was like if it weren't for these guys on our record american candy one of our songs unlost wouldn't have made it on the record and that song for for the people that did what we do is like a really important song um i've seen a ton of tattoos with those lyrics specifically and it's um yeah if i was if if i was allowing myself to be in my way and not heeding the advice and that that's again what i think is great about being in a band and being in this dynamic is that even if i am the only one writing lyrics and and sometimes writing the song it's like still these guys are gonna have to perform it you know so it's a it's kind of a two-way street yeah i mean a nudge some like maybe but i don't think i it's it's not mine i had like a do better yeah but you know they are in the room when i'm doing vocals so it is like you know it's still that whole thing where it's like yeah dude or it's like that's palpable like i can feel that from the other side of the glass like if if i'm not getting like this is cool and i'm getting like then it's definitely time to reassess how do you think you would take it if you did get a hey man we could we could do better than that it's funny because i don't know it's like again with routine and dynamic roles and stuff like that i think we got to a point where we all were very comfortable in the roles that we kind of assumed and i think now i think i would accept it more than ever before because it's like i know it's not malicious and i know we're all working towards the same thing yeah so you also have to know where you're like where do you sit in the process too it's like for me it's like there could be something that i'm working on he'd be like oh i'm hearing it this way then i can hand him my guitar and he can be like this is what i'm hearing and we can bounce that idea but if i go in the booth i'm like this is what i'm hearing johnny you don't want to hear any of that there's a reason why i don't really touch the mic that often you know so it's like there is that you got to kind of bounce that off each other and know what the strengths are so you know everybody naturally just fall into the different roles that they play within the group yeah yeah over time yeah you know it's like it there's it's it's also been points of frustration you know where it's like without vocalizing how you're feeling like no one's no one can just understand you know no one can understand how you're feeling unless we come together and talk about it and we've had to learn that the hard way you know there's been times when it hasn't been easy to talk but it's been necessary um and that's something that we still are figuring out you know still figuring you know how to to to navigate our dynamic but it's uh i think we're more so more than ever before we're on the same page than not like what if somebody said like i'm gonna join you and write a song with you or i have a lyrical idea i mean the past especially for this record jared sent me the the most demos he's ever sent and i talked about him or talked about this with you on the way out to california a couple weeks ago but it was like just i i honestly i mean pretender came from a demo that he had but for me it meant more that he was sending things because it meant that while i was kind of like in my head kind of you know killing myself for this this this process and this record and songwriting it meant that he was thinking about it too and it meant more that he the act meant more than even any of the songs not to say they were bad because obviously some made it on the record but it was like it was a very important thing for me to know that he was thinking about it and it meant just as much to him as it did to me and and that sounds weird because you'd think like well yeah it just means the same to everybody but you again without vocalizing it without talking about it you don't know how other people feel you know and everybody has a different role for sure and we we very much uh have our own lives too you know we're very much we're with each other a lot but when we're not we're we're you know living our own lives too so it's it's hard to know does it surprise you guys that you've been able to maintain for so long it doesn't surprise me because i i i genuinely enjoy these guys like i i like like them as people and i think that you know being in in the main is a really important thing for us and it still means the world to us so i think that's why we're still a van is that everybody still digs each other absolutely it's like having a full-on family yeah you know and it's like because there's people involved with this operation that have been here almost as long as the five of us you know whether it's people that we tour with or people that we work with and chelsea what's up hey chelsea um our tm our tour manager and sound engineer he was literally in the suburban playing filling in for for garrett while we were first touring touring this is this means like playing shows to zero people yeah but you know he's been around for that entire time and it's just so having that and and having that energy around and having that between the five of us um and seeing it kind of be um i don't know sort of a magnet for other people to want to be around that and i think yeah you're gonna have your differences sometimes like it's gonna like what else would you expect if you take you know 10 people and cram in a tube and throw them on the road for you know there's obviously going to be moments where it's like you know you have to give up a little bit or maybe take a little bit more at the time but i think we've learned where everybody's threshold is at and everyone's pretty respectful of like when do i need to approach this thing or should we talk or can we let this go and it's really about just like knowing the nuances that exist you know within our band and we've kind of dialed into that over the years is there a lyric or a song that you created that you still reflect on today i mean i have i have to preface this by saying i did i wasn't the one one that wrote the lyrics so but i implemented them in one of our early songs um and i got them tattooed on my chest but it um it's we all have been degraded we all be the greatest and it's just more i think it's more about the nostalgia of the time and less about the content of of the wording um for me at this point but there's things off the new record that um especially in like face towards the sun i was talking about my grandmother and and her passing but i think i was talking more about just the inevitability of death in general and as we're getting older and sort of entering this new phase of of life ourselves i think as our parents are aging at least for me it's like you know recognizing more of that fragility and and more that comes along with the passing of time and um i think that song at least because it's so fresh will definitely stick around but there are things like from unlost that like i still see people with tattoos or asking to get tattoos and um they are just good reminders of like where my head was at at the time and like you know good or bad um all just learning experiences i guess for myself and it sounds yeah sounds weird that i have tattoos of our lyrics but well i mean to be fair it was a whole other thing yeah yeah that's fine you have the band's logo on your arm i do inside yeah yeah i don't have many tattoos and most of them aren't great but that one's pretty good i had a question about some of your lyrics do you connect them on purpose with older songs because i can't take credit for this because i saw your fans talking about it but in sticky is there a reference to black butterflies in deja vu yeah yeah yeah and actually i feel like this is the first time i consciously did it on this record and i don't know why it became a thing i don't know why i did it but i there were little nods to the past it felt like um i don't know maybe a convergence of like the idea of us producing this ourselves and again the passing of 15 years in january and just i don't know it's they're more like appreciation nods and the fact that like people pick up on them like easter eggs is pretty sweet yeah i saw another one is uh the way we talk is that connected to lips yeah yeah okay yeah cool yeah so it's it's i don't know it's funny because i didn't know he was doing that and then i'm such i'm so bad with lyrics and then the record came out and i saw kids like talking about it was like oh so you had no idea you know man he didn't even like say hey guys i've heard the song so many times you know i just wasn't in my head i wasn't making these connections and then kids were like oh my god and i was like oh my god is there a song that's taken on a new meaning to you other than when you wrote it and release it yeah i mean a lot of them do um and that's kind of based on how people react to them and like the stories that they share with me um one definitely is black butterflies in deja vu and i wrote the song about an acid trip that i took and people it's it sounds like a love song but it was a love song but not about a person and about what it was about falling in love with the world and i was on drugs that were making me like make these connections that i'd never felt before and i'm not gonna say it wasn't spiritual because it was but when i wrote the song it was more how do i kind of um uh how do i how do i like pull the blinds over the eyes without you know and not be overt about drug use because i'm definitely i don't use drugs often if ever but this was just such an incredible experience and now people had always related their relationships to it and then i fell in love after that record with my now wife and now that song to me is more about her and less about what i intended from the the start so that's pretty cool yeah yeah it's weird and and people you know came together and really dug that song so like live it's it's a really powerful thing to perform because people connected with it so well and now it's it's very much a different experience than what it started out as yeah it's really special do you think you guys would ever bring back i know we were talking about how you're not really pop punk band but would you bring back those pop punk chants cause on the first album especially in like girls do what they want you had a couple of of them in there for sure i would say that we like gang vocals in general we strayed away from um and i think we tried to do things in our songwriting that like inferred gang vocals if that makes sense without being like so on the nose like here's a group of guys there's a group of people yeah i think i don't know if we did it now we'd probably be weird about it and be like okay somebody wear a muzzle dude and like something like that that process is so funny by the way in the studio so like we'll have like usually it's just buddies of ours like hey can you like come to the studio or like whoever's in town and then you get everybody around this big like mic in the middle of the room and then whoever's running the board will like cut a couple takes and then we'll kind of have to figure out which guy needs to stand further from the mic and it's sort of this process where you're like hey can so and so just turn around and have us back towards the mic like this isn't like you're really peeking through it's like your vibe is good i can only auto tune like three voices at a time i can't do like 10. and it's so funny man it's like you know you have to like kind of tag somebody actually on that first record you can hear it's the last song on the record um we'll all be and you can if you knew the person's voice you can specifically hear it it's one of our buddies and it's it's pretty amazing to listen back to the actual recording jared you actually get to sing on these ones i do i'll go and i'll like volunteer to go in there for those you know and then everyone's like yeah tell jared to kind of yeah like pulling teeth though because everybody's like i can't sing i can't sing it's like yeah well we're going for like an i can't sing kind of vibe so yeah you're going for like the crowd at the show shouting back at you yeah which is actually pretty crazy people at shows can sing or like when like they're singing together maybe it's just i don't know it's actually scientific it's got to be i've heard that like if you create a song within a certain range it's like a range that both men and women can sing in unison okay and it's like if you're within these the certain i don't know octaves or whatever you call it you can strike everybody and like nobody has to really stress themselves to sing it like that's like right yeah like garth brooks that's his zone yeah like i went and saw him two years ago or something like that and was just friends in low places and that song specifically is like chef's kiss yeah chef's two two oh yeah that's the one man okay we've covered a lot here so far yeah gosh yeah i have this deep desire for pop punk to come back do you think it even still exists today like would you call machine gun kelly or jaden or nessa barrett pop punk i'm not sure because do you know them i do know machine gun kelly's music like i feel like he was a rapper at one point and that kind of goes to what we were talking about earlier like there is no genre that like he belongs in i'm not sure or maybe he does it's really pop alternative but like but you've got i don't know you've got fast drums you've got repeating vocals like it's pop and it's punk i mean it's like yeah it's pop punk i think there's like a again we were talking about classifying certain things it might sound different than the stuff that you know exactly but most things do that like listen to hey listen to hip hop in general like stuff goes all over the place yeah there's like an evolution can you exactly but are we gonna call it hip-hop probably yeah you know but to me hip-hop is like the most punk thing happening it really is now probably the most punk thing that's happened in 20 years where it's just like so innovative have you i mean watch any these guys have mosh pits now yeah like straight up mosh pits but also there's hip-hop artists that are being played on alternative radio 100 so it's a really great thing you know especially for us like this the first time taking a song to radio like if there ever was a good time for this renaissance to happen for us it's right now you know because by association even if you know we aren't necessarily fitting every you know ticking every box of the pop punk thing just by association like having having real drums successful guitars are cause that's you know yeah for sure having that element yeah for us huge like that helps that only opens the door wider for bands like us totally i just think it's on like alternative radio not to shy away from new music for sure they need to not make their playlist or current base they need to find a mix that'll like welcomes everybody in i mean i call on the big uh alternative programmers like if there's a spotify playlist that you want your songs to hit what is it is it is it the new rock <br><!-- wp:image {"id":1776,"sizeSlug":"large","linkDestination":"none"} -->rn<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img class="wp-image-1776" src="https://en.videoencontexto.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/The_Maine_Talks_Sticky_XOXO_From_Love_and_Anxiety_in_Real_Time_Writing_Process___SzNJRI6yLfA.jpg" alt="The Maine Talks Sticky, XOXO: From Love and Anxiety in Real Time, Writing Process &amp; Old Hairstyles" /></figure>rn<!-- /wp:image -->[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]