its own festival<\/a>, nine studio albums and decades of experience between its five core members. With\u00a0Joy Next Door,\u00a0the band\u2019s 10th studio album set to release on April 10, we caught up with drummer Pat Kirch about making their toughest LP yet and why he\u2019s excited for their 8123 fanbase to hear the record for the first time at Brooklyn Bowl on March 24.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\nI saw\u00a0you guys\u00a0as a teenager performing at the Henderson Pavilion almost 20 years ago.\u00a0It\u2019s\u00a0surreal to be here talking to you about album No. 10.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
I cannot believe it. It feels like\u00a0we’ve\u00a0been doing it forever, but at the same time, it feels like we just began. I think for us,\u00a0that’s\u00a0the biggest thing: It still feels like\u00a0we’re\u00a0working for something, and it feels like\u00a0we’re\u00a0putting everything we have into making the best albums possible and the best tours as we can. I\u00a0didn’t\u00a0think it would be possible to still be doing it for this long, but now that\u00a0we’re\u00a0here, I\u00a0can’t\u00a0imagine us ever doing anything different.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Vegas is the first stop on the\u00a0tour,\u00a0but\u00a0it\u2019s\u00a0been quite some time since\u00a0you\u2019ve\u00a0properly played here.\u00a0How\u2019s\u00a0it\u00a0feel\u00a0to finally return?\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
It\u2019s\u00a0awesome. Because of the\u00a0When We\u00a0Were Young fest, we\u00a0haven’t\u00a0played a headlining show in Vegas in like … I\u00a0don’t\u00a0even know when the last time it was. It was\u00a0a very long\u00a0time ago.\u00a0So that feels exciting to be back in the place and actually to be able to bring people a full show and an experience that they haven’t had with our band in a while.\u00a0It\u2019ll\u00a0be our first time performing songs off the new record like ever at that Vegas show.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
I know\u00a0you\u2019ve\u00a0said before that each album correlates with\u00a0a different color\u00a0and mood.\u00a0Joy Next Door\u00a0represents\u00a0green. What does that color mean for\u00a0you guys\u00a0emotionally as a band?\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
This\u00a0time period\u00a0and this era of the band is about\u00a0showcasing\u00a0us in the most natural way possible.\u00a0There’s\u00a0a lot of acoustic instruments on the album, and there\u00a0isn’t\u00a0a lot of computer trickery going on. It feels very much just like an organic representation of the band. And I think\u00a0that’s\u00a0the plan for the tour as well, to\u00a0showcase\u00a0us as a band and not relying on LED video walls behind us. Over the course of 20 years,\u00a0we’ve\u00a0built up\u00a0a chemistry\u00a0between the five of us.\u00a0So\u00a0the tour is really about the showcasing of that.\u00a0 \u00a0<\/p>\n
John O’Callaghan said the track \u201cDie to Fall\u201d is about him having a dialogue with himself about wanting to let go. Does that feel like a running theme with this album? Allowing yourself to relinquish control?\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
I think\u00a0it’s\u00a0about coming to terms with the fact that things are always going to be difficult, and that happiness\u00a0isn’t\u00a0a destination that you get\u00a0to,\u00a0it’s\u00a0just this constant thing.\u00a0It’s\u00a0all about coming to terms with the anxieties of life that\u00a0don’t\u00a0end. \u2026 At the same time, coming to terms with that,\u00a0that’s\u00a0not\u00a0a bad thing\u00a0if you can have the mindset of continuing to want to grow and understanding that there\u00a0isn’t\u00a0an end destination. \u2026 For a band\u00a0that’s\u00a0been around for this long,\u00a0there’s\u00a0a lot of parallels\u00a0of what\u00a0it’s\u00a0like to be in a band, and\u00a0it’s\u00a0a constant up and down, and you\u00a0have to\u00a0make it all work.<\/p>\n
If you love something,\u00a0it’s\u00a0going to be difficult because\u00a0you’re\u00a0going to pour so much of yourself into it. Making the album was super hard, and I think\u00a0that’s\u00a0because\u00a0we’ve\u00a0done it now 10 times.\u00a0So,\u00a0if you\u00a0don’t\u00a0want to just recycle what\u00a0you’ve\u00a0done before, it takes a lot of digging to get to a new place.\u00a0I’m\u00a0not going to say the album was fun to make, because it was\u00a0very hard. But when I heard the whole album done for the first time, it had me in tears because it just felt so good, and I was so proud that\u00a0we pushed through the difficulties.\u00a0<\/p>\n
You guys\u00a0came out of the pop-punk\u00a0era\u00a0but\u00a0you\u2019ve\u00a0really grown above that and matured your sound. What were you eager to experiment with on this album that you\u00a0hadn\u2019t\u00a0had a chance to yet for\u00a0previous\u00a0projects?\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
The modern way of making albums is you’re\u00a0gonna\u00a0go in with a producer that you’ve never met and make a song in a day, and then you’re\u00a0gonna\u00a0do that 20 times, and then a record label is going to tell you these ones sound like they’d be big on\u00a0Tiktok, let’s put them out. For us, the inspiration is to make an album, to make a piece of work that feels like it goes somewhere.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
We recorded the album in chronological order from the first song to the last song, and so we could really figure out how we wanted it to go into each other.\u00a0We’re\u00a0inspired by artists like Wilco and Tom Petty, the same artists that have inspired us forever, but to really dig deeper into challenging ourselves to take the time to make it important.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
I think our fans\u00a0want to hear\u00a0a body\u00a0of work. We don’t have one song that we have to\u00a0play\u00a0every show.\u00a0Some of our more popular songs from the first couple albums, we haven’t played in 15 years, and then we bring them back every once in a while.\u00a0We like the idea that\u00a0we’re\u00a0making a body of work. The inspiration, I guess, was to make a record and to\u00a0have\u00a0it feel as natural as possible and keep the takes as natural as we can, and so people will appreciate that. All that we can do is make what we love.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
How do you want those fans to feel walking out of Brooklyn Bowl, having experienced all this?<\/p>\n
I want them to feel like they were a part of a community for the night.\u00a0There’s\u00a0something within our fan base and the 8123 family\u00a0that\u2019s\u00a0this unspoken thing, and people get this feeling of being a part of it. Some of it has to do with us in the show, but a lot of it has to do with the collection of people in the room all being there for the same purpose. I want them to be speechless, because they felt something that is hard to put into words and hopefully\u00a0it’s\u00a0something that\u00a0they’ll\u00a0keep with them forever.\u00a0<\/p>\n
THE MAINE\u00a0March 24, 5:30 p.m., $57. Brooklyn Bowl, ticketmaster.com.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"During the height of the pop-punk emo era, The Maine\u2019s 2008 album\u00a0Can\u2019t\u00a0Stop,\u00a0Won\u2019t\u00a0Stop\u00a0had every teenage girl within a 10-mile…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":167302,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[98,100,99,9,24,63],"class_list":{"0":"post-167301","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-brooklyn","8":"tag-brooklyn","9":"tag-brooklyn-headlines","10":"tag-brooklyn-news","11":"tag-new-york","12":"tag-new-york-city","13":"tag-nyc"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/167301","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=167301"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/167301\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/167302"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=167301"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=167301"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=167301"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}