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TThe Maine in San Diego
The tour is called I Love You But I Chose The Maine, and Friday night at The Observatory North Park, a sold-out crowd of several hundred people made clear they would choose them again without a second thought. This was the first headlining run from the Tempe, Arizona five-piece in two years, and the first major live push behind Joy Next Door — their tenth studio album, released two weeks later on April 10.
Frankie Jonas and the Byzantines Start the Night with Style
The evening started at 5:30 PM with doors barely open and Franklin Jonas & The Byzantines already on stage, which turned out to be a better deal than it sounds. Franklin Jonas — the youngest of the Jonas siblings, known in internet parlance as “the bonus Jonas” — has built something genuinely distinct from anything his brothers have done. His new project, named for the idea that life can be rebuilt after collapse, the same way the Roman Empire lived on in Byzantium for a millennium after its supposed fall, plays out on stage as rootsy, reflective indie rock with a storytelling instinct that feels earned rather than inherited. “Village Liquors” and “Road Soda” — his first two singles under the new moniker — scanned beautifully in a half-full room of early arrivals who had no idea what they were walking into. By the time he wrapped up, a good chunk of them were on their phones looking him up.
Grayscale Keeps the Party Going
Grayscale followed with a set that’s been road-tested through enough nights on this tour to feel locked in from the first downbeat. The Philadelphia band opened with “Through The Landslide” and moved through “Kept Me Alive,” “Dirty Bombs,” and a cover of “Twist and Shout” that worked better than it had any right to, before settling into the back half of their set with “Some Kind of Magic,” “Painkiller Weather,” and a slot they’ve been rotating nightly between “Echoes (Carry On)” and “Let It Rain” — San Diego got “Echoes,” per fan reports. They closed with “Fever Dream” and “Not Afraid To Die,” and by the time they walked off, the room was full and hot and ready. Grayscale are a band that rewards not arriving late — they’re not background noise for people finishing their drinks, they’re a proper opening act that earns the crowd’s attention and keeps it.
The Maine Bring the Love and Melodies to San Diego
Then The Maine came out and opened with “Another Night on Mars,” which detonated the room immediately. John O’Callaghan was in full command from the first line, and the rest of the band — Kennedy Brock and Jared Monaco on guitars, Garrett Nickelsen on bass, Pat Kirch behind the kit — locked in with the kind of tightness that only comes from twenty years of playing rooms together. They moved through “I Think About You All the Time” and the Joy Next Doorlead single “Die To Fall” before the set settled into a groove that toggled between deep catalog cuts and new material, each transition feeling intentional rather than obligatory. “Sticky,” “Like We Did (Windows Down),” “Taxi,” “Touch,” and the devastating “Kennedy Curse” had the crowd singing back every word. During “Quiet Part Loud” — a tradition on this tour — O’Callaghan invited a fan up on stage to dance alongside the band, a moment that broke the room in the best possible way and had people craning their necks from the back to see who got picked. “Right Girl,” “Loved You A Little,” “Palms,” and “We All Roll Along” carried the set through its emotional center before the back half swung hard: “Bad Behavior,” “Slip the Noose,” “My Heroine,” “Blame.” Then came the San Diego-specific moment that nobody saw coming.
At the end of the main set, O’Callaghan stepped back up to the mic and introduced a special guest — Mikey Way, bassist of My Chemical Romance, was in the building, and he came out to join the band for “English Girls” and, to close the night, “Black Butterflies and Déjà Vu.” The reaction from the crowd was somewhere between disbelief and euphoria. It’s the kind of thing that separates one night of a tour from every other night, the story that travels down the hallway at work on Monday: “You’re not going to believe what happened at The Observatory on Friday.” Way played it perfectly, not grandstanding, just adding his presence to a room that was already operating at maximum capacity emotionally. The band brought the show home on “Black Butterflies and Déjà Vu” with three people on stage instead of five, and the singalong that filled the venue in that last chorus was one of those moments a venue like The Observatory was built for.
Drummer Pat Kirch described Joy Next Door as “the pure representation of five people in a room in 2026” — not a nostalgia play, not a reinvention, just The Maine at 35, playing what they’ve got, doing what they do. Friday at The Observatory was all of that. The green t-shirts in the crowd, the early arrivals for Franklin Jonas, the Grayscale fans who already knew every word, the person standing dead center in the pit singing “Another Night on Mars” with their eyes closed from the first note — this is what nineteen years of being The Maine has built. They told the crowd at the top of the night: long live 8123. San Diego answered accordingly.
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