The Mainliners Are Playing SXSW
Images by Kai Lenny.
presented by
As he makes his way through the streets of Hollywood with the spotlight of a helicopter trailing, the man searches for a place to hide out.
A sign overhead reads, “THE MAINLINERS.” Stepping over a nodded-out junkie blocking the entrance, he enters the seedy nightclub. The door swings open, revealing a dimly lit room that pulsates with the raw energy of the band on stage. The air is thick with smoke and sweat, and strobing lights cast erratic shadows that dance on the walls, mirroring the chaos of his mind.
The man ventures deeper into the club, further distancing himself from his pursuers and the adrenaline coursing through his veins. The band’s chords cut through the haze like a knife. He can still feel the echoes of his crime – the hurried breaths, the shouts that pierced the night before quickly fading. That was behind him now. He finds the bar as the bass thumps in time with his racing heart. He tries to blend in with the crowd of leather jackets and wild hair, each lost soul inhabiting its own world of rebellion.
The show is a sanctuary for the restless, but he knows better than to let his guard down; danger lurks in the spaces between the notes, and he is far from untouchable. As the band begins their encore, a gang of cops gathers outside– guns drawn –and waits for the man to emerge. He stares up at the stage as Cash Mathieu (Vocals), Colin Sick (Guitar), Adrian Morris (Bass), and Jackson Fox (Drums) wish the crowd a good night. He has heard his final song...
It’s a pretty last minute thing, you guys joining our showcase, so thanks for coming through. Someone else we had originally didn’t work out so I’m stoked to have someone cool in there.
Cash: Who was it?
Adrian: Yeah, who was it?
Nah, I’m not going to say. Where are you guys based?
Colin: I live in South Pasadena, but I grew up in Glendale. We’re based in Southern California kind of all over.
Cash: Adrian’s really the only one that’s far.
Adrian: Yeah I have to make the drive from Costa Mesa.
How did this begin as a band?
Cash: It was during Covid time, we had other people in the band at first. Colin and I had this mutual friend who had this idea for a band, so he kind of pieced us all together. We did that for a year and a half but none of the other guys were trying to make this a real thing, didn’t want to show up to practices, so those fools quit and Adrian learned to play guitar in like two months cause we had a show coming up. I’ve known Adrian since I was a baby, our parents were roommates, and he always wanted to play in a band, so. We had to find another drummer, and I think a day or two later we played with Fear and Jackson was there, so he came to the next practice and its been that way for like three years.
Drummers are a really finite resource.
Colin: I’ve known Jackson since I was like seventeen or eighteen so when he came to the show I was like man I haven’t seen you forever, and he said if we ever need a drummer, he’d be down, and I was like, man we need one.
You guys have a very strong narrative, from your songs to your bio, you are a very narrative driven band. Can you talk a bit about where that comes from?
Cash: Getting to this point has been a story, and we love stories of shit - the whole process of where we grew up and getting here was a real story, so.
Adrian: Yeah, life’s a fucking movie, bro.
Colin: I think songwise, it’s more fun to write a story in a song. A lot of music that I listen to tells stories. Visually, Cash and Adrian put things together that match the music in a really organic way. Nobody ever sat down to plan it, it’s just kind of how it happened. I guess we are lucky in that because we see so many people who don’t have that visual aspect that accompanies the music in as fulfilling a way. I think that’s why people are attracted to the band - they see the world and are into it.
Cash: And there are a lot of other bands who need help creating these visual things and bring in producers or whatever, but for us its just us.
Jackson: That and our inspiration from Cottonmouth Kings.
When people ask where you draw influence from, what do you say?
Adrian: Me and Cash grew up in a very similar setting. My dad was a tattooer and his mom was super involved with tattooing. His dad worked in music stuff and everyone in my family has been in bands - we grew up in a similar aesthetic.
Cash: All the art stuff is related to tattooing - my mom was a pinup back in the day, and my mom was Adrian’s roommate back in the day back in San Francisco. His dad’s an insane artist who does a lot of stuff for us.
How do you think that being from where you’re from has shaped you in being a band? What effect has geography had?
Colin: I think its funny, you really take a bigger vast view of what Los Angeles is or Orange County, and you see certain aspects that come together to make the sound and visuals. You have the beach and the city smashed into each other. With that comes a diverse group of people, styles, and so visually you’re seeing all of this different stuff all the time. You build this style off of what you see.
Do you think that this could have existed if you were all from somewhere else like Chicago?
Cash: We would sound like some Chicago band.
Jackson: Like Chief Keef.
I think that in the music business, the method is to make Instagram Reels and TikToks, but that feels very the opposite of the kind of music that you make. How do you cope with that?
Cash: We’ve never played that game at all, but we have been trying to get better at it. What kind of got us to pop off recently was we just posted the ‘No Mas Tequila’ video which we made like two years ago. We posted it once back then, and then we just decided to post it again this year after a couple of years and it blew up, we gained like 70k followers in a month.
Was that a bummer?
Cash: No, fuck no.
Jackson: I think that it was just a surprise for us, that’s all.
Colin: I think that people in the music industry have this formula that has worked for other people, so they say that you need to do the same shit - you need to post reels and see your face - it’s so fucking lazy. You went to college and got a marketing degree but only wanna do everything that’s been done before? Write some ideas that are fucking brand new, and do it. We’re not fucking Turnstile, we’re not making this fucking thing that’s already popular, we are doing our own thing because it’s what we like to do, so your job is to make something new for us. That’s my biggest issue with where music is today. People wanna take the easy way out because it worked for Addison Rae, and that’s great, but don’t apply that to my shit because it isn’t the same.
Adrian: Seeing the type of shit that people our age do to get their shit popping is fucking annoying. It doesn’t look cool and I don’t want that shit in my face all the time. And none of it is creative, it’s all very straight forward AI your lyrics on your iphone clip.
You’re musicians, but now all of a sudden you also have to make an actor and video editor and filmer. What is the antidote to that?
Colin: Not giving into that shit. Like Adrian said, you make a video and put your lyrics on it - do something else. Think of something else. Be creative.
Jackson: And we’re not here to do the TikTok thing, to do this thing that’s successful for a month or whatever. All of us have the mindset of doing something that will stick around a lot longer than that. We’re not unappreciative of the fact that it happened, but it’s not the goal.
I was talking to an artist called Snail Mail, and she was talking about how she puts out records every couple of years and takes her time, but the attitude in the industry is to put out music constantly, or people will forget you.
Cash: We want to put shit out as soon as possible, but only if its good.
Colin: We also love to play. We play unrecorded songs in every set. We’d love to record stuff all the time, but we can’t do that, we’re not just in our bedrooms recording music. Having a full band where you have to go into a studio does take a little more time. The every month thing is just ridiculous.
