This Saturday, the Ramapo News sat down with The Maine for an exclusive interview before their performance at this year’s spring concert.
Ramapo News (RN): Do you feel like there is anything different between performing at a college compared to a different venue?
The Maine (TM): We read a lot of books, like a bunch of textbooks. We do our times tables and division series.
RN: How do you choose the playlist for a concert at a college versus a regular venue?
TM: It depends on who we’re playing with and how long our set is. Tonight we have 50 minutes. But we approach it like any other show.
RN: Do you have any plans for a new album?
TM: It’s already done! We recorded it; it’s finished. Mixed and mastered. [It’s coming out] in the summer time. We don’t have a specific date yet, but it’s done. We did it in Nashville with Brendan Benson, who’s in The Raconteurs.
We took a different approach [than with 2011’s album Pioneer]. We recorded everything live this time, and we recorded it to tape, so it’s got that feel and for somebody that listens to music and can distinguish the sound of digital to analog recording I believe will appreciate that.
[With] the mindset and the approach, the only thing that really varied was we went in with less songs and we had more of a focused goal at hand.
I think the biggest thing is the human-sounding song. Before, it’s kind of just become the standard in recordings with rock bands and music in general that everything is perfect and snapped to a grid and this and that, the album has a feel to it, it speeds up, it slows down, it’s human.
RN: How did you come up with ideas for your songs?
TM: A lot of the lyrics pertain to personal experience this time around. I think it’s the first record that I’ve written songs actually about things that I’ve experienced, as opposed to perceiving everything around me and kind of taking other people’s experiences and turning them it into stories and songs. I’m really proud of that aspect and I hope it makes its way into people’s heads and hearts the way it has mine.
RN: Who are some of your musical inspirations?
TM: I think knowing that we were going into this album recording live, I think we really started to appreciate the analog age. So everything from old David Bowie, the Rolling Stones, Neil Young, anything good. I don’t think anything necessarily directly influenced the actual album.
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dreed1@ramapo.edu
