Went Looking for Something Strange: An Interview with Liquid Mike
Talking with Michigan musician Mike Maple about cover bands, Joe Pera, favorite Great Lake, and how PAUL BUNYAN'S SLINGSHOT has been years in the making.
I’ve had a soft spot for Michigan’s Upper Peninsula ever since 2017, when I first listened to the outsider folk music of Jeff Cowell, a Yooper (slang for someone from the U.P.) who recorded an amazing and strange proto-alt country album in Chicago in the mid-70s. My interest grew in 2019, when my roommate June and I took a road trip from Chicago, circling Lake Michigan. From Iron Mountain to Copper Harbor to Sault Ste. Marie and everywhere in between, the Upper Peninsula is beautiful and remote and weird, full of eccentricity and character. What’s continued to confound me is how little space it occupies culturally in the American consciousness. Name something tied to the U.P. beyond Joe Pera Talks With You. No, please, I’d love to know. So when I learned that the band Liquid Mike operates out of the Upper Peninsula’s most populous town, Marquette, I knew I had to learn more.
My introduction to Liquid Mike was their freight train-sized single, “American Caveman,” which leads off with a face-melting harmonica solo before delivering a painfully relatable late-20s gut punch over guitar quaking with power: “We got older but act the same / only traffic lights and the weather change.”
Liquid Mike’s 5th album, Paul Bunyan’s Slingshot, is a monumental release, immediately compelling and full of heavy, hooky power-pop, with riffs that can only be called massive. What’s clear listening to Bunyan is Liquid Mike’s confidence, a band truly coming into their own as a force to be reckoned with.
I interviewed lead singer/main songwriter/the titularly liquid Mike Maple (with a cameo from Liquid Mike synth player Monica Nelson!) via phone on February 8th to discuss his perspective on the folk hero Paul Bunyan, Joe Pera, favorite Great Lake, and how this album has been years in the making.
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Jonathan: So you’re living in Marquette. But you’re from Ashland, Wisconsin?
Mike: Yeah that’s where I grew up. It’s not too far different, it’s lateral, about three hours west of here.
And you went to school in Houghton, Michigan Tech. Did you like being there?
I did like it up there. It’s the real deal with snow. But it’s the most bizarre place ever. Especially once you get into Calumet territory. Calumet is weird because it’s like you stepped 100 years back in time. All the buildings are really old. It’s like ruins almost, it’s a giant place but it feels very empty.
Was there mining there?
In Calumet, yeah.
Was there mining in Ashland?
There was iron ore for sure. There was a harbor for it, ore docks. There’s a functioning ore dock in Marquette still. It’s connected to the railroad, over up by Presque Isle where you can still see the trains come. And then it dumps all the shit down the chutes and then the boats come pick it up.
How long have you been in Marquette?
About three and a half years now.
What’s kept you there?
I don’t know [laughs]. I do have awesome friends here, which is why we moved. Monica, who plays in the band and is also my girlfriend, she was living in Minneapolis before we moved here and I think we just wanted somewhere where we’d know people because we moved here a few months into lockdown.
Is Marquette one of the cooler places to move to if you’re young and living up there?
Yeah, well we played in bands in Houghton, there’s a DIY thing going on there. And there’s a lot of crosstalk between Houghton and Marquette. We knew bands from there, they knew us.
Can you tell me about the Marquette music scene?
It’s a college town so it’s up to the students a lot of the time. That’s how it was at Tech too. It’s kind of just people who have been around a while, that just morph into different new bands every few years, like most scenes do. Younger bands are popping up now which is cool to see. I see a lot of emo bands, that seems to be the flavor of the last few years, especially with younger kids. But there are rappers too, and hardcore. There’s always gonna be hardcore bands. You can’t ever really get rid of that. You share the stage with cover bands too. It’s weird. There’s nowhere to play up here really.
I don’t love playing bars. It doesn’t feel like people are ever there to watch music. It’s not all-ages, either. There’s just not a proper place to foster much of a music scene, other than cover bands.
Have you learned anything from watching and sharing the bill with cover bands? Or is that when you go to the bathroom?
I mean, there’s rarely shows that we play around here anyway, even when we had all band members here. You gotta get creative sometimes. And sometimes even the cover bands get creative. They’ll weird it up. I play in an AC/DC cover band, for when I really feel like being a people pleaser.
An AC/DC cover band would kill for sure.
But there’s been places, like my buddy R.J. lives out in the woods and he does this sand pit show every year, it’s this guerilla show where we play in a sand pit and hook everything up to a generator. And those are usually the most diverse shows, you’ll get a lot of bands who aren’t stylistically similar, which is always fun for me to see. I guess that’s something I’ve learned is that, it’s hard to do in the winter obviously, but people are putting the work in to make something happen.
So what’s your favorite song to play in that set? Is it a static set or are you moving songs in and out?
You talking AC/DC? “Let There Be Rock.” We only do Bon Scott era. I like Brian, but I sing and Bon is way easier to sing. Brian is so high and screechy. So we cover up until Highway to Hell. I think the most songs we’ve ever done in a set is six. Because you just can’t sing like that for very long. But it’s sloppy and it’s loud and it’s shreddy, it’s fun. I like those types of cover bands, they’re going for something, it’s not just random wedding band songs. I want to do an Andrew W.K. set once in my life. Those are the fun covers to do, the extreme ones.
The thing that has always intrigued me is that it doesn’t feel like the Upper Peninsula has many cultural touchstones that other Americans know about.
Mike: I’m not sure I’m the right person because I’m not a true…
Do you consider yourself a Yooper?
Kind of? I think I do. People are weird about that kind of thing. They get touchy about it, they say if you’re not born here, you’re not a yooper or whatever. I remember Houghton was always Fin heavy, like Finlanders. But I feel like Marquette is very Italian. Like generations and generations of it. I think I even read that on a census. It’s high per capita. There’s a sandwich here that’s unique to the area, not even the U.P. but just Marquette County. It’s called the “Cudighi” sandwich. It’s just a hot sausage sandwich with marinara and mushrooms and onions. I’d never heard of it in Houghton but then in Marquette it’s at every sandwich shop.
One thing I wanted to talk to you about was Joe Pera. I listened to a podcast where you said you saw him do standup in Marquette?
Yep, I’ve seen him. He was just in town the other day too. He did a set here. He’s not from here but he does like it. And someone asked me if [the television show Joe Pera Talks With You] is a good descriptor of the average person here and it’s not at all. I don’t know what that personality is indicative of, kind of freakish but yeah, he’s funny. I would say most people in Marquette don’t know who he is. People aren’t really connected to that kind of shit.
They’re not watching a show on Adult Swim necessarily.
But I have seen him. He’ll be out and about when he’s in town.
Are y’all on a hello basis?
I said hi to him once and he just said hi back and that was it. It was just in passing.
Do you have any reason to believe he’s heard Liquid Mike?
Hmm, maybe. We’ve got a mutual friend named Hunter, he works at the history museum up here. When Joe comes here he’ll hit that place up. So if he’s ever heard of it, it’s because of Hunter, who also plays in bands in town and he’s played with us too. We share a lot of members.
Hypothetically, if Joe Pera decided he’s going to do a new show set in the U.P. or somewhere in the Midwest and he asks you to contribute a song, how would you begin that process?
Maybe I’d do a song for Connor O’Malley, that would be more my speed. Something dissonant and nasty, maybe some street punk song. I don’t know if I could pull off a nice, sweet song for Joe. I could, but. I’ll do the Connor O’Malley freak-out song. But I would just record it real nasty style, I wouldn’t go to a studio, that’s for sure.
And you don’t record Liquid Mike in studio, right?
Right, I don’t. And there are studios up here and they’re good. I’m scared to do it. Maybe I don’t want it to be in high-def.
Regarding the title of the album, Paul Bunyan’s Slingshot, I saw you said that you were poking fun about how a bunch of small towns claim him. I wanted to give you a little fact, which is that in the 1950s, Disney made a Paul Bunyan movie. And the guy who pitched it to Walt Disney was from the U.P.
No way, really? That’s awesome.
He was from Ishpeming.
OK! That’s Marquette, basically.
Did you grow up with the idea of Paul Bunyan in the forefront at all?
Yeah, for sure. I remember hearing those stories on field trips. I can’t remember where exactly we used to take field trips to but it was this place in Cable, Wisconsin, and they had these lumberjack games where they’d scale these big logs or like, see how many things you could chop down in 60 seconds. And they’d give us the whole schpiel on Paul Bunyan and all this folklore. I always thought it was weird because it isn’t real. I mean it’s cool but it’s just a fairytale. Then you start seeing it the older you get, you drive places and see him all the time. Statues of him are always made of like, painted wood or scrap metal. It was all really homemade looking. He’s got this weird look.
I’ve never seen a Paul Bunyan movie, I’m surprised they haven’t re-done it. I really don’t know what his personality is besides that he likes to eat pancakes, y’know?
I didn’t know he likes pancakes.
Yeah you know, he’ll eat 10,000 pancakes before he chops down an acre of forest in one fell swoop. But the slingshot from the album title is a real thing. Or it was.
Was it a statue?
Kind of, it was a weird tourist thing. It was a sculpture some guy made. Liquid Mike bass player Zack Alworden knew about it because he grew up near it, in Gladstone. But he told me that someone cut it down. Some kid cut it down in a drunken fit, like he just got drunk and was like “I’m gonna cut down Paul Bunyan’s slingshot.” And that’s basically the vibe of the album. There’s nothing else to do but shit like that. And I thought it was funny that this guy Paul Bunyan, who’s immortal, who might as well be like George Washington, that some kid could just cut down his slingshot I thought was very funny. When Zack told me that story I immediately knew what the album was going to be called and it hasn’t changed. It was what I needed to hear.
You’re a prolific songwriter. How was your writing process changed over five Liquid Mike albums?
It’s changed a lot. That first album there’s a lot of songs where I’m really following the classic format of a song– intro, verse, chorus, verse, chorus, solo or bridge, and chorus. And then that’s it. I did that on a lot of those tracks. I mean, there’s some that are more indicative of what was to come later on. Stuntman is the first Liquid Mike album, but that’s the fourth album I wrote as a songwriter following my last band [We Should Be Laughing.] So I wanted to shake it up, I was sick of approaching every song the same. By the time [Liquid Mike’s 3rd album A Beer Can and a Bouquet] happened, it was more like verse chorus bridge, and that would be it. Every part was a bridge, basically. I have a lot more fun writing those types of songs. And I started to feel like I would come up with a melody I really liked, and it would feel stale by the time I would do it again for the second verse. So I was like “let’s just end the song, let’s do the good part once.” So that really started happening on the S/T.
I also feel like the songs have gotten better the less that I tried to make them really good. It sounds like I’m up my own ass or whatever, but just more tossed off, and you collect them and put them in the right order. Like if you have a song that’s pretty mid, you just gotta put it in the right place and it becomes a way better song. I’ve been feeling better about using the whole animal, so to speak, just using them in the right spots.
I was interested in the sequencing of Paul Bunyan. “American Caveman” is so impressive, it feels like a sonic next step for the band, so I was surprised to see it as the second to last song.
I always go thematically; I wasn’t trying to make a concept or a narrative album, but it just felt like a penultimate kind of song. That song might as well be the last song, but you can’t put your best song as the last song, I think that’s a bad move. But I feel like that is the climax of the album for sure. That song more than the other songs feels like a climax in a movie or something. So that’s why I put it there. And it’s got the weird interlude after that to guide you into the last one. But I consider that to be the second to last song. It’s kind of like a big moment before the credits roll.
The harmonica that leads off “American Caveman” is so cool. There’s not a ton of harmonica across the Liquid Mike discography, but there is some. Did you always envision harmonica being on “Caveman?”
I’m not sure how that happened, but I love the harmonica. It gets a lot of hate I feel like, among people I know. But it’s an underutilized instrument, obviously in punk rock. It’s a harsh-sounding instrument. I don’t know why more people don’t use it. It sounds very mechanical to me and not woodwind-y. It sounds metallic and harsh, which I like about it, but you can still be tuneful with it. Especially if you put it through an amp.
Is that what you did on “Caveman?” It almost sounds like guitar.
I’ve had a few people tell me they didn’t realize it was a harmonica until a couple listens in, which surprises me. It’s got the big bends and stuff. But it’s not a natural-sounding harmonica by any means.
When I heard the harmonica for the first time I was like “I’m in, immediately, 100%.”
It’s something we’ve come back to. We’ve got a bunch of songs in the cannon to be recorded. Two of them have harmonica on them. So it’s something we’re going to keep touching down on. Obviously not every song. But we have brought it live. And you know, people like it because it’s weird. They’re surprised to see it.
Looking off into the hazy distance, do you see a Liquid Mike country album ever happening?
No. I feel like that’s the mature thing to do, to make a sort of rootsy, Americana album down the line but I don’t love that kind of music. Maybe it hasn’t resonated with me quite yet. I’m pretty into just rocking out. I could see myself making a blues record before a John Prine record. But I don’t want to make a blues record either.
Going back to the album more generally, you said you did set out to make a thematic album. You’re writing about living in a small town, getting older, feeling disillusioned. I’m thinking of the line in “Mouse Trap,” “The American Dream is a Michigan hoax.” Can you talk a little bit about how you realized what this album was about?
Once I had four or five songs and saw that they were just naturally coming out like that, I just leaned in on it. And it was nice, I feel like I’ve been trying to make an album like that, not really a coming-of-age album, but a personal, “this is what I know” album. And I don’t think I was ever quite ready for that until recently. But I think that just comes with life experience. I don’t think I could have pulled it off with as much believability before? I’ve been trying to make this album though for years I think, I think I’ve always wanted to make one like this. But I think I just didn’t have the juice.
But I was scared to put it out. I think I would have made this record if the last one didn’t take off online, S/T, I think this would have been the same album I would have made. But I wouldn’t have been as nervous to put it out. I think just that there were eyes on it and it felt really personal. I was dreading it. But seeing that people understand it, it’s nice.
I wanted to ask about the song “Usps,” which was initially released on You Can Live Forever in Paradise on Earth, but you re-recorded for Paul Bunyan. Why did you decide to do that?
It just fit. That was a later decision to re-record it. It just felt tied into the rest of the songs in a nice way. I saw people knew that [I was a mailman], I knew that’s what people were gonna find out so I felt like I might as well add some context to it. I don’t think I would have re-recorded it if we did a nice, hi-fi recording of it before. Since it was such a dirty, four-track recording of it. I didn’t feel too guilty about giving it some new life sonically. I think it just fit thematically so well and it deserved to be a bit more HD.
And we always play that one live. So I think it would make sense when we’re re-introducing ourselves for the first time to a lot of people that it would be on the record.
I assume you don’t want to talk about your job as a mailman too much.
[laughs] I honestly haven’t talked about it with too many people, it’s more just that I said it the one time and it just keeps showing up.
What do you think about that?
I get it. It makes for a good story. I get nervous about my coworkers finding it, and them being like “Is that all you do is talk about us?”
Do you talk to your coworkers about your music?
Never. I mean, I really like most of my coworkers, but it’s hard to explain being in a band. If I just tell people I’m in a band, they’ll be like “You should play a song at the work party, what covers do you do?” And it’s hard to explain to them that’s not really what we do. And then, I don’t know, they might come to your show and just not get it. I haven’t told them that any of this has happened. Not that we’re a huge band or anything, but I haven’t told them that it has picked up and that there’s cool stuff happening because I don’t feel like explaining it to them. I’ll let them find it and they can ask me about it.
It’s funny that you bring up John Prine, the other musical mailman.
I’ve had Prine songs I’ve liked, I just couldn’t make an album like that. I’m trying to think if there are other musicians who were mailmen. I remember hearing Childish Gambino was a clerk at one point. It’s a career kind of job for most people.
It had me thinking of other bands in the Liquid Mike extended universe. Specifically, how Robert Pollard of Guided by Voices worked as an elementary school teacher for many years, and how there are some Fountains of Wayne songs about hating your job. Do you see some common ground between power-pop and day jobs?
I think it’s like moths to a flame. There’s something about that type of music that attracts those types of people. Like that Fountains of Wayne album, Welcome Interstate Managers, that album to me felt like slices of life of New Jersey suburbia. And that’s what I tried to do, make a slice-of-life album about up here. The story of GBV too, I don’t think we’re that similar sonically to that band. But his story resonated with me, just that you can have a day job and make all the records you want, and be happy with them. And I’d still be making them, I still will be.
Does being a mailman help you work through slice-of-life songwriting?
Yeah I mean you see weird shit like every day. You’re like, tangentially a part of these people’s lives in a weird way. You know how they vote politically, you see who’s getting divorced, you see whose dog died. And you see it all in a weird time lapse. Just for a second every day you get a glimpse of the outline of them. You don’t think about it all day, but I think subconsciously it has an effect on you.
Do you have a favorite Great Lake?
Yeah, Superior. It’s the only one I’ve been in, I think.
[Editor’s Note: At this point, Liquid Mike band member Monica Nelson enters the room and joins the conversation.]
Mike: (to Monica) Have I been in Lake Michigan?
Monica: You’ve been in Michigan, yeah.
Mike: Huh, I don’t remember it.
Monica: We went camping there.
Mike: Well that tells you everything you need to know about my relationship to Lake Michigan.
Monica, what is your favorite Great Lake?
Monica: Superior. It’s probably the most beautiful, it’s just insane and terrifying. It’s just a little more extreme. I have a spiritual relationship to it.
Being from Chicago, I’m always gonna be a Lake Michigan guy. And when I went to the Upper Peninsula, I camped out for a night in this little town called Naubinway, which is at the northern tip of Lake Michigan. It’s interesting to hear you talk about a spiritual connection, Monica, because I felt like I had a spiritual moment at Naubinway.
Mike: Like a scary one or a pleasant one?
Like a beautiful, “I’m in the right place” type thing.
Monica: I will say, I’ve also felt that from Lake Michigan. It’s definitely a close number two for me.
Mike: I wonder if people have these connections with like, Lake Erie. There’s people with tattoos of Lake Superior all over here. It’s probably the most common first tattoo that people get.
Monica: Either the shape of the Upper Peninsula or the shape of Lake Superior.
Mike: I wonder if people get Lake Erie tatted.
Favorite Teenage Fanclub song?
Mike: Ooh, that’s a tough one. I’m gonna go with my gut. “I Don’t Want Control of You,” from Songs From Northern…whatever.
Northern…Scotland?
Mike: I can’t remember. I get that one confused with the Joyce Manor album, Songs From Northern Torrance.
Monica: Northern Britain. Songs From Northern Britain.
Mike: Northern Britain! That’s my number one album from that band. I think Bandwagonesque might be my least favorite. That album has some of their best songs. “Alcoholiday” would be a number two for me. But I think Songs From Northern Britain was the first one that I was like, “I really get this band.”
When we connected over email, you mentioned that you knew about Jeff Cowell. What do you think of his music?
Mike: I think it’s pretty alien. It’s freaky. Chris, who put S/T out for us, he owns a record store in Calumet called Kitschy Spirit. He put me on. But yeah, it’s just bizarre.
Monica: Is that the Iron Mountain guy?
Mike: Yeah, he’s from Iron Mountain. I don’t know, you don’t hear about that much music from anywhere up here. I think the biggest band from the U.P. is probably Da Yoopers, if you’ve heard of them.
I haven’t.
Mike: I’m sure you can imagine. It’s like Weird Al, but all the songs are about deer camps. I actually love them, I think they’re the shit. And they’re all DIY, they’ve been producing their own records and videos for like 40 years. And they’ve been very successful at it. So I have a lot of respect for them. But it’s parody music. And they just crush. They’re definitely the most-known band in the U.P., by a lot.
Monica: Yeah they are.
Mike: And they live in Ishpeming, so if you’re ever in the area, you should go to Da Yoopers Tourist Trap, there’s a giant chainsaw outside on the highway, it’s Paul Bunyan-sized.
Monica: It’s labeled as the world’s largest working chainsaw. It makes no sense that it’s actually working because it looks like it’s made from papier-mâché.
Mike: It’s weird. I feel like [Lucky Strikes and Liquid Gold by Jeff Cowell] should have been huge. I remember thinking those first three records were all great. I don’t know what happened to him. Because I never hear of him playing, ever. I assume that he could play up here, if he wanted to. I think that’s such an interesting guy. Those records are great.
If someone was to come to Marquette for the first time, where would you take them to eat, to give them a taste of the town?
Mike: My favorite place just closed down, it was just a little Philly cheesesteak place, you couldn’t even dine in. But other than that…I’d take them to Congress Pizza in Ishpeming.
Do they do a specific style?
Mike: It’s a cracker-think crust, sauce on top. It’s just a solid thin-crust pizza.
Monica: Yeah and they’ve been there for like 100 years. What about pasties?
Mike: Pasties suck in my opinion.
Monica: I like them.
Mike: If someone had never been here I guess I’d show them what a pasty is. But Congress Pizza, that’s the one.