Over the course of 10 years, Arizona emo group The Maine's drummer Pat Kirch hasn’t seemed to age. There’s a goofy spark in him that any longtime Maine fan would recognize as he wheels around the bar of Crescent Ballroom with a broken leg. He broke it a while back when two amps fell on his leg, but it doesn’t seem to stop the high-energy drummer from being ecstatic about the day.

It’s not surprising he’s stoked. It’s the exact 10th anniversary of the formation of The Maine and he’s headlining a festival his band’s company is putting on. There are fans from all over the world, and Pat seems to be bubbling with excitement. “I was just talking to my brother who was our manager, and we we’re just looking around like ‘alright, we did it.’” As he speaks, Pat’s smile is contagious. “This is what we’ve been working for forever and this is the dream.”

When I point out his excitement, he’s quick to confirm it. “I mean there’s this whole thing out there, and it’s all for us…. That’s crazy. It’s insane,” he reflects getting a bit quieter as the gravity of what he and his band have been able to pull off completely sets in. “We had talked about doing a festival for a long time, and then the talks got more serious and serious and then we were like ‘Maybe we could do it on the ten year.’” After looking at the calendar and realizing that their exact 10 year bandiversary was on a Saturday, they knew they had to do it. “It’s fate, you know.”

After that, the lineup was even easier to curate. “We’ve always had like a group of friends and bands and stuff. So the community of all that has been like growing for so long, um so it was like ‘how can we get everybody in one place at one time?’” it wasn’t hard to get all their friends, old bands and new, reunited and still going to come celebrate with them.

10 years of being a band can cultivate that kind of community, but it can also teach you many lessons. “I learned very early on — and it came very naturally — but we definitely put the gas on that no one’s gonna do anything for you. You can’t rely on the music industry…” Pat goes so far as to count The Maine out of the industry at large. “I would like to think that we just do what The Maine does and that it doesn’t have anything to do with what the music industry does.” It’s a powerful statement in an industry so large, filled with so much pressure.

The Maine is definitely the odd man out, but in the most rock ’n’ roll way possible. “Do what you wanna do, don’t do what other people want you to do and don’t think that anybody’s gonna do anything for you,” Pat firmly states. His insistence comes from feeling like labels don’t care as much if individual bands fail because there’s always the next one. “For us, this is it. This is my band. I don’t potentially have five bands, like this is my band so I’ll do anything and everything for it.”

While Pat doesn't notice immediate effects of the Maine's fan-first policy, he hopes it will rub off on other artists. “We’re not that big of a band in the relative terms of bands, I don’t know who's paying attention to what we’re doing and stuff but I would like to think that like… we’re at least making people think,” he said.

He wants people to treat their fans better, to be better people. “To put the pressure on them like ‘Oh God this band is doing all these things for their fans.’” It’s his hope and his quick wit about the subject — “Maybe ripping off your fans isn’t the best idea” — that has me entranced. As a long time fan of The Maine, it’s easy to crown them as the most giving band in the current alternative rock scene.

They spend hours upon hours in signing lines, meet and greets and even just hanging outside after shows. It’s really no wonder their core fanbase just keeps coming back, and it helps them continue to create on their own terms. “We can make any kind of album we want,” he explains. “We’re not beholden to any type of audience because our audience is gonna be there for us.” They can tour with who they want, make the clothes in the styles they want and continue to give back as much as they want with no one to answer to but themselves. It’s a liberating sentiment in an over-saturated market.

The Maine's pre-festival announcement of their sixth LP Lovely Little Lonely and their newest song “Bad Behavior” sent their fans into a frenzy. “I would say it is more ambitious than American Candy,” the drummer hints. “The whole album kinda runs together, that’s the first time we’ve ever been able to accomplish that.” The band are moving forward with their music by adhering a message to the overall sound they spent the past decade cultivating. “It’s kind of this perfect mood of this in-between kind of like between happy and sad.”

Loving a band for ten years and growing beside them made hearing things like “I think it’s definitely our best record,” gave me butterflies in my stomach. Elaborating on the statement, Kirch is quick to cite their ability to take “the ambition we had on other records and kind of the catchiness that we had on American Candy and kind of just put it all in one.”

Talking with Pat is a reminder to me that out of all the band’s I listened to in my teenage years, The Maine is the one I grew up the most with. They grew in an organic way, but never changed who they were to maintain a fanbase. They did the true rock ’n’ roll thing — whatever the hell they wanted — and fostered a community that has withstood a decade. These fans flew in from all over the world to celebrate 10 years of being a part of something bigger than themselves. This connection is an influential part of their live show explains Pat, “I just want them to be able to be emerged in a culture of like-minded people.”

Like-minded people are exactly what you get amongst a crowd of The Maine fans. Whether you stood in VIP with their family & friends, at the barricade or in the back, everyone was at 8123 Fest to enjoy a decade of music and memories.