‘Can you do half five today? The Maine are in Glasgow.’
I look at the time… 3pm.
‘SURE.’
I hopped into the car and got myself into the city in record time (thank you, Sunday traffic gods) and headed into King Tuts. Of all the times I’ve been inside that venue, I’ve never seen behind the scenes, it was pretty cool seeing the crazy amount of kit strewn all over the place – where normally an excited crowd would be standing.
Headed up the stairs to what I’m guessing is a green room, where I was introduced to the one and only Pat Kirch, drummer of The Maine. The band landed in London yesterday from their home in Arizona, then DROVE from there; you can only imagine the level of tiredness happening at that point.
‘I got to sleep at 6am this morning’ Pat explained. Jetlag is not a babe.
Feeling very lucky that he’s taken the time to have a quick chat with me – because that’d definitely be nap time if I were him!! Sunday night was The Maine’s first show of their headline UK & European tour, following the release of their album ‘Lovely Little Lonely’ – and a sell out king tuts show is definitely the way to kick off a tour.
You can hear my chat with Pat by clicking
Off to the gig we went. Plenty of space for the crowd now with all of the kit set up and on stage, the venue fills up quickly, with fans wanting to get to the front to see their favourites.
The Technicolours – another Arizona based band kick things off with a bang, followed by the Night Riots (and their surprise lightsabre drumsticks that highhhhly entertained the crowd.)
The Maine took to the stage and everyone in the room was instantly oblivious to the fact it was 10.30pm on a Sunday night. Starting their set with a track from their latest release – everyone in the room was singing along at the top of their lungs to ‘How Do You Feel?’ and the singing didn’t stop for the whole hour and fifteen minute long set.
The band smashed out fan favourite after fan favourite and the more tracks played, the more the crowd got into it, squashing in as close to the front as humanly possible, to get close to the band they’d queued up hours before to see.
John O’Callaghan being the perfect front man the entire way through the set, constantly checking up on people to make sure they were having fun, and getting them to rate their night so far, out of ten. One particular guy had been dragged along by a pal, so at the beginning of the set he was only a “five outta ten,” O’Callaghan vowed to make him a ten by the end of the night.
Their set was a perfect mix of old and new, as a band with ten years worth of songs in their pockets, they knew exactly what the crowd wanted to hear – from 2008’s hit, ‘I Must Be Dreaming’ to current single, ‘Taxi’ – which was played live in the U.K. for the first time at that very gig.
Not one to break a promise, John went back to the guy with the happiness level of five during fan favourite ‘Girls Do What They Want,’ and when he still wasn’t at a ten, pulled the guy up on stage with him. The crowd were introduced to Alistair – who admitted he had no clue what the words to the song were, but, after a short lesson he was bouncing about with the band on stage, singing the catchy ‘girls do what they want, boys do what they caaaaan‘ loop over and over. By the end of the song, Alistair was at level ten happiness – along with everyone else in the room who had been captivated by the band’s need to please and obvious love of what they were doing.
Finishing their set with ‘Another Night On Mars,’ meant a huge singalong and everyone leaving King Tuts Wah Wah Hut with the lyrics still ringing around them…
“this one goes out to my closest friends, the ones who make me feel less alien.”
gigs & glitter. 