Philly Chose The Maine and Showed Up to Prove It
- Rebecca McDevitt
- 2 days ago
- 3 min read
Article & Photos contributed by Rebecca McDevitt
If you have never seen The Maine live, Friday night at Franklin Music Hall would have been the perfect introduction. The five-piece rock band out of Tempe, Arizona have been at this since 2007, eighteen years and ten studio albums deep, and they perform like a band that genuinely cannot believe they still get to do this. Their latest record, Joy Next Door, dropped just last week and they brought it straight to the road with the "I Love You But I Choose The Maine" tour. Philadelphia was one of the stops, and the city took that personally.
Broadside, Nightly, and Grayscale opened the evening, with Grayscale turning their set into something of a homecoming -- the Philadelphia band had the crowd warmed up and already feeling it before The Maine ever touched the stage. By the time the headliners were ready, Franklin Music Hall was packed, loud, and impatient in the best possible way.
We have seen The Maine live more times than we can count and yet they still found a way to make Friday night feel like something.
From the first notes of "Thoughts I Have While Lying in Bed" the room was already singing not politely, but fully and it never really stopped. The Maine have always been a band that knows exactly what to do with a crowd, and Friday night was a masterclass in it. "Sticky" was an early standout, groove-forward and drum-driven in a way that felt almost hypnotic, a deliberate shift in texture that made the songs around it hit differently. The set moved through moods without ever losing momentum, and the crowd moved with it.
The crowd had already made their intentions clear long before John O'Callaghan noticed a fan with "moshing and crowd surfing here" pulled up on their phone screen. When he spotted it and commented on it, Philadelphia took that as permission to turn things up even further. The crowd surfers were relentless for the rest of the night.
The nostalgia hit hard when the band pulled out songs reaching all the way back to Can't Stop Won't Stop, and the crowd responded like they had been waiting for it all night. "We All Roll Along" was its own moment entirely -- the room was already screaming "8123 means everything to me" so loud it felt like the walls were singing it back, and then somehow John was in the balcony, mid-song, working his way through the crowd up there, handing a mic to a fan to sing part of the chorus. How he got up there remains one of Philadelphia's great unsolved mysteries. How any of us can hear today is another one.
The set kept building from there. "Slip the Noose" had the pit fully committed despite being one of the more emotionally gutting songs of the night, which is very pop punk of everyone involved.
By "Quiet Part Loud," one of the newer tracks from Joy Next Door, the room had fully given itself over to the evening, while John was on a couch like he was about to give Philadelphia its own therapy lesson.
Before closing out the night, The Maine brought out Kenny Vasoli of The Starting Line for a cover of "Best of Me" and the room absolutely lost it. For anyone who grew up on early 2000s pop punk, watching Vasoli on that stage was the kind of moment you text people about on the way home.
"Black Butterflies and Déjà Vu" and "Another Night on Mars" sent everyone out into the Philadelphia night still singing, and we just know none of us are going to have voices for a while.
The Maine have always known how to throw a show. Eighteen years in and they are still proving it, every single night. Philly chose them back, loud and without hesitation.
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