The Maine Keeps the Dance Floor Alive
If you’ve engaged with modern music criticism in the last decade, you’ve likely encountered the question that haunts nightclubs and concert venues: Is the dance floor dead? Americans aren’t partying anymore; we’re largely self-conscious and sober. But on the edges of mainstream, rock shows are keeping the raucous, endearingly awkward party alive.
The Maine is a Tempe, Arizona-based emo-rock band formed in 2007. The band includes lead vocalist John O'Callaghan, Jared Monaco, Kennedy Brock, Pat Kirch, and Garret Nickelsen. Over two decades, the group has evolved from a cult favorite to a staple of the emo-rock scene. They’ve remained dedicated to affordable ticket prices and intimate shows for fans who have followed them for almost twenty years.
What seems to keep fans so loyal is The Maine’s dedication to the concertgoers’ experience.
In a statement released in 2025, The Maine set a “reasonable” ticket price with vendors, opting out of the controversial practice of dynamic pricing. For their 2026 “I Love You, But I Choose The Maine” tour, tickets sat around $45-$50. To avoid resellers and scalpers, the band also created a fan presale. Finally, they rejected paid meet-and-greets, hoping to create a more relaxed environment to chat with fans organically.
Proceeded by three openers, the show’s runtime was close to six hours in total. In effect, it created a retro concert experience that contrasts modern barricade culture, where fans will camp out for hours in the hopes of proximity to the artist. Fans screamed along to Broadside, Nightly, and Grayscale before The Maine took the stage. The atmosphere was akin to a festival. Fans adorned green outfits (as requested by the band) and danced in equal measure to each of the openers. It didn’t matter if they knew the words or not.
"Black Butterflies and Déjà Vu", “Kennedy Curse”, and “Into Your Arms” were among the crowd favorites. The set, which was handpicked and altered based on the city, felt like a tribute to the audience. People moshed, crowd-surfed, and screamed away the evening as beach balls flew through the ornate dressings of the Brooklyn Paramount. It was a special evening filled with old favorites and surprises.
The Maine’s dedication to an affordable concert experience and the crowd’s intensity were intimately linked. In an environment where attendees paid a reasonable fee for a high-energy, constantly evolving show, there was less pressure to push to the front, fight other fans, or watch the concert through a phone camera. It took the pressure off. The experience was just as much about the fans as it was about the artists.
As we see a flood of big artists cancelling tours due to poor ticket sales (The Pussycat Dolls just cancelled all but one leg of their North American arena tour), we can look to fan favorites like The Maine for a remedy. If you’re tired of a dead dance floor, if you actually want fans to show up, you might have to lose a little money.