Interviews (249)

• April 24, 2026
• Colleen Johnson
• 41
• 0

(from left to right: Collin Walsh, Andrew Kyne, Nick Veno, Dallas Molster)

It’s only fitting that The Maine brought along Grayscale on their current North American headline run, as well as reuniting for the tour of Europe planned for this fall. Grayscale served as main support for The Maine’s sold-out show here in Boston last Saturday night. A task that isn’t always easy was taken on with grace by the longtime Philly unit.  Who are no strangers to this city, most recently being in town with Our Last Night this past September. That tour was a farewell run from one of New England’s most prized treasures and icons of the region, and The Maine is celebrating twenty years as a band this year, two very uneasy main support slots to be in.  But Grayscale handles that task with ease. Their control of the room is clear when on stage, and Saturday’s show was no different. Their DIY aesthetic shines through, be it their pop-up events, which they’ve been doing since practically day one, it feels like, curating merch like no other (besides maybe a shirt from The Maine at the show, which decried “The Maine is an anagram for I Hate Men), and most recently formed their own record label.

I sat down with frontman Collin Walsh just ten minutes or so after he and the band left the stage, where we chatted about the tour so far, running their own record label, the spotlight selection on the deluxe version of their latest, The Hart, and much more. You can find the band on the road with The Maine for the remainder of the NA run, culminating on May 2nd in Dallas. And for the UK/Europe fans out there, the duo of bands will reunite this fall for the UK/European leg of the tour, kicking off September 17th!

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New England Sounds: You obviously just finished your set, you’ve been on this tour for the whole time, how has it been going with The Maine so far? 

Collin Walsh: It’s been amazing. We love them; they’re a band we’ve always been fans of and look up to on a creative level. On an operational level. We own our own label now, similar to them, so yeah, we love those guys. The tour’s been amazing. 

NES: How has that been to kind of own your own label, after putting in all this work, this whole time? How has  that feeling, how did that come about? 

Collin: Yeah, it’s good! So we had three records on Fearless, then we made our label. And The Hart was the first record we put out on our own label, called Infield Records. And Infield, that’s the first release, and that was January 2025. And it’s been amazing. It’s a lot of work, obviously. But the way the music industry is kind of shifting around, there’s a lot of really cool autonomy that artists have. And The Maine is a prime example of that. They’ve been doing it for a long time, even before it was more normal. So, very fortunately for us, being friends with them, I was able to call Pat kind of and be like, “Hey, how the hell do I do this? How the hell we do we do this?” And he gave a lot of great guidance, so we’ve loved those guys, looked up to them in so many ways. The US with them now, UK/Europe with them in September. 

NES: Oh, nice, lots of quality time. 

Collin: A lot of quality time. 

NES: And then I spoke to Broadside earlier. I know they’re only on it for a few dates, but you’re on a tour with Nightly, who’s probably been a band for around ten years now. The Maine, twenty years. You guys have been around for around ten years now. 

Collin: I mean, we say 2011, that’s when we kind of met and started playing music as friends. It’s more like the date of our friendship inception, but I would say Grayscale, 2027, it would be ten years. I’d say it’s been 9 years since we’ve been an active touring band. 

NES: Maybe, how do you think that helps the touring environment? None of you are new to this. You’re all so used to touring. How do you think that helps the tour?

Collin: I think it’s so smooth. Especially the crew, having bands with experience, experienced members, experienced crew. The day is so dialed in, every fifteen, thirty minutes, locked in. So it helps a lot. And morale’s good, I think people know touring can be hard, physically, mentally, so everyone kind of checks in with each other. And knows how to curate the right environment, and everybody does a great job. We’re all friends, and it’s been amazing. 

NES: Perfect, then you still do pop-up shows, pop-up events. It could have been something that you easily stopped doing. How do you think that helps you as a band? 

Collin: I think it’s cool, it’s fun to do, and you know, you have off-days on tour, it’s usually like once a week, like every Monday or something. We’re just sitting around too, just like fucking around the whole day. So to do something cool, for fans, I mean, we love our VIP events and stuff, we kind of have to. There’s like venue fees associated, you kind of have to charge for a package, it’s kind of just the nature of things. We just try to make use of that, whether it’s a really cool merch thing or we do a full acoustic set. We try to make it really fun and worth it for everybody, but it’s fucking expensive right now. It’s cool to do as many pop-ups as we can. I’ve had so many people come up and thank us for it. It’s hard right now for a lot of people, and I think kind of having that free environment, bringing some of our old back in the day specialty clothing along for merch, and playing a couple of acoustic songs and meeting people, it’s been really fun and rewarding for everybody, for sure. 

NES: I can’t imagine it just keeps getting more and more expensive, especially in the post-COVID era. 

Collin: It’s nuts. 

NES: But it’s what you got to do. 

Collin: Yeah, at this point, it’s hard for people to like buy tickets. Anywhere where we can reasonably help, we try to. 

NES: Perfect, then I wanted to ask, I know it was in December, but you released the deluxe version of The Hart. You had someone new on every single song, ranging from Aaron Gillespie (Underoath) to Cassadee Pope to much newer artists. When you went into it, how was it to revisit it, and did you have certain artists in mind for certain songs? How did you approach it? 

Collin: That’s a good question. Honestly, we just reached out to friends. They’re all just people that we’re friends with. And we were like, “Yo, here’s a couple of ideas. This one, I think, would be good for you.” I feel like it takes everybody a little bit to figure out who’s doing what, but it was cool to be able to do that. And basically just make it something where all our friends are involved. It’s all people who are fans of Grayscale, so it was sick. It was a pretty fun, just friendly process, and that’s something again, owning your own label, you can kind of just do shit like that. You don’t have to go through a million people to get to it. 

NES: Then maybe is there someone for you, it sounds cheesy, that would be a dream to have on one of your songs. I know you said a lot of them are friends of yours, but anyone that hasn’t happened yet? 

Collin: I mean, I would say Stephan from Third Eye Blind or Bruce Springsteen, Robert Plant. Those are like my idols. 

NES: We could get Bruce Springsteen. 

Collin: I would love to. He pops up around Asbury Park; we’re not too far from there. Who knows? 

NES: And I’m sure you can’t talk about it much, or at all, but are you currently working on new music, or do you think that’s still a little while away for you? 

Collin: Yeah, I don’t know. We’re always writing. When we strike and when we put an album together, that’s a different story. I think truthfully, because of how well The Hart has kind of reacted with our fans and what it’s done for our band career-wise, I think in a way we’re okay living in it for a while. Not really in a rush to hurry up and get another one out, because it’s done so much for us, it’s done so much for our band. We’re very grateful for that. 

NES: And how have you been curating, you have such a catalogue of music now, I know you played some of the bigger hits like, “Painkiller Weather,” tonight obviously, but how do you plot up these sets. I’m sure you switch it up depending on who you’re playing with, but how have you been kind of planning the sets for this run?
Collin: It depends on who we play with, but also, we want to keep it Grayscale. It’s tough on a support set when you’re a band with four records. We want to show a little bit of everything and lap into some old stuff, new stuff, and everything in between. We have this kind of voting system we came up with. We vote for each song, kind of figure it out. But this one was kind of easy, I think it was just like, try to keep the energy up and have fun.