Providence, RI might not be the first city that comes to mind on a national tour itinerary, but MARIS made it clear Thursday night that her fans don’t care about geography. The crowd at Fete Lounge included people who had driven in from as far as Portland, Maine, three hours each way for a Thursday night show. That’s something you don’t see with every artist.
MARIS is still building her name on a national scale, but you wouldn’t have known it from the room. Just about everyone present knew every word to every song, start to finish. It’s the kind of crowd saturation that most artists spend years trying to achieve. If anyone showed up unfamiliar with her catalog, they blended in seamlessly with the faithful.
She arrived in a full graduation gown, a nod to the “Goes to College Tour” branding, before tossing the cap into the crowd, shedding the gown, and spending the rest of the evening in a DIY set of football pads that looked exactly as chaotic and fun as it sounds. The aesthetic commitment was totally and completely in line with the energy she brought all night.
Early in the set, “Mary & I,” her unabashed love letter to weed, had the room screaming along before the first chorus finished. It’s the kind of earworm that stays stuck in your head for weeks after the show. The crowd already knew it well, and that mutual enthusiasm set the tone for everything that followed.
What stands out most about a MARIS show is how deliberately she tears down the wall between stage and floor. She’s a vocal advocate for mosh pits at pop shows and opened the floor more than once throughout the night, jumping in herself and turning the space in front of the stage into a shared experience rather than just a spectator event. At one point she ran a game of Pictionary with the crowd, awarding a medal to the winner, and handed an additional medal to a fan who had followed the tour across multiple dates and runs a prominent MARIS fan page. It’s the kind of detail that builds the kind of loyalty that gets people driving from Portland after a long week.
She also took a few moments mid-set to crank the autotune and direct a pointed rant at the tech billionaire class, name-checking Zuckerberg and Bezos before someone in the crowd yelled “Donald Trump,” prompting an eye roll and a dry “well, obviously him.” The room loved it.
The show closed on “Salt Water Taffy,” which landed as the clear emotional peak of the night thanks in part to a fan-organized project that had distributed signs to the crowd before the show, filling Fete Lounge with a sea of swinging hands for the final song. It was a closing moment that takes both planning and a fanbase willing to show up and do the work. MARIS has both.
The MARIS “Goes to College Tour” continues. Get your tickets here.
Nathan Smith is a Providence-based music photographer and journalist focusing on capturing the special moments and unfiltered magic of live performances. Whether he’s shooting established artists at sold-out TD Garden shows or documenting the rise of emerging local bands, his goal is the same: to pull viewers directly into the heart of the moment.
His writing spotlights rising artists and local scenes, with a focus on telling the stories that often get overlooked. A lifelong music fan and musician himself, Nathan approaches interviews and portraits as conversations rather than transactions, building trust with artists so their genuine personalities can shine through. Whether he’s backstage, in the photo pit, or at home in front of the keyboard, he brings the same curiosity and care to every assignment.
Outside of his press work with Juice Box Press, Nathan works regularly as a photographer with the Boston Symphony Orchestra, as well as numerous bands in the Boston and Providence area. Nathan also plays violin with a local orchestra, follows Celtics basketball almost religiously, and is an avid fantasy reader.