Weekly Neil: Round & Round (It Won't Be Long), With Liquid Mike
A chat with Marquette postman and new power-pop hero Mike Maple about Neil, Guided By Voices, and the minute-long firebombs on new album 'Paul Bunyan's Slingshot'
This is Weekly Neil, a newsletter about Neil Young. This week, I’m excited to share a conversation with Mike Maple, the leader of the excellent band Liquid Mike out of Marquette, Michigan. I’ve never been there; the most I know about it is courtesy of Joe Pera. But Tom Breihan paints a great scene in his Stereogum essay about Mike’s band’s album called Paul Bunyan’s Slingshot, which came out in January. It’s so great, man — an exhilarating listening experience from beginning to end, the song “Small Giants” in particular. Pure amped-up power-pop that gets in and out, no bullshit. Mike works for the Postal Service (and one song is even called “USPS”), and he says he has lots of idle time to come up with melodies and hooks while on the job. The Liquid Mike sound is not easily confused with Neil’s. But like most guitar dudes, Mike’s a fan, and he’s got his favorites.
What do most people listen to when they cook? It probably changes, but modal jazz is always a solid choice, or some out-there Philip Glass composition, or maybe even certified Big Pop jams you can sing along with. I went through a phase last spring where all I wanted to hear in the kitchen was Liquid Mike, specifically their excellent 88-second hook heaven “BLC.” It’s about wanting to settle up with someone before parting ways, and a key line finds Mike singing, “We could make this last a little longer,” in glorious harmony with himself. It’s clever but also completely earnest. And that’s what I crave, evidently while I stir some vegetables around in a pan.
Paul Bunyan’s Slingshot continues the trend of speedy Liquid Mike cuts in the vein of Mike’s heroes Guided By Voices. As I learned, he’s also into some Neil songs, as well as sorting through the old discs that lined the jukeboxes his family used to sell to bars, and tuning down his guitar for a chunkier sound. Neil’s got that in his bag of tricks, too, often dipping into drop D and even double drop D. It’s something the folk tale subject who lends Liquid Mike’s new album its title might do, too. “Paul Bunyan probably plays like a big-ass low-tuned guitar,” he says. “He probably plays in drop Z or something.”
Photo credit: Marissa Dillon
Mike Maple: The first stuff I really liked was — the Crazy Horse stuff made the most sense to me. I’ve always kind of shied away from all the solo stuff, the Harvest stuff, but given that, it’s all been clicking with me lately, like the last year or so.
Weekly Neil: Why do you think that is?
Mike: A lot of it just had to do with like, maybe acoustic music wasn't always — I just wanted to hear him rock out because he's so good at it. But I think his sense of melody is a lot stronger than, like, Dylan or Bruce. So I think that's why it's hit me before those guys have.
Weekly Neil: It makes sense that you’d go to melody first. So you started with the Crazy Horse records. Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere?
Mike: Yeah, that was the first thing for sure. All the guitar solos all over it. It reminded me of Dinosaur Jr. or something. I just find his soloing style very fun. They’re just long and winding. He’ll just rock on the note for forever. I can relate to that. Sometimes you just want to rock out on one blissed-out note forever. It’s easy to connect with that record. As the first connection I've made with him, that was easy for me.
[going through tracklist] “Down By The River,” that was just a big, long, winding one. Obviously “Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere,” yeah, that song’s so good. Oh, and “Round & Round!” That’s an enchanting song. It’s like getting hypnotized or something. It’s a waltz.
Weekly Neil: You work for the Postal Service, so that’s gotta be a lot of driving around and walking around, plenty of time to listen to music and certainly think of musical ideas of your own.
Mike: I do get bored of music and I get bored of podcasts. There’s been things I’ve said, like, “I’ll write on the road,” but I'm never usually writing a full song like that. It's kind of just throwing voice memos on and then figuring out melodic parts or maybe coming up with like a line or two while you're out driving. You see weird shit every day. Or, like, you have the same day every day, but there's always something that's a little different. Or you talk to someone that you never would normally talk to. Sometimes they'll say something weird, and that'll be enough to give you an idea for something.
[Editor’s note: We talked about Boomer rock icons here a bit, and eventually Mike asked if I had a PonoPlayer, which, regrettably, I do not.]
Mike: I don't remember what I was listening to, maybe the Zane Lowe thing [Neil] did about [World Record], his last record that he did with Rick Rubin. They had this old Studer or some Ampex tape machines, this giant two-inch machine, and [the music] was going into the machine. So it would go on to the record head, onto the tape, and then as soon as it hit the playhead, it went into a computer, so it was only on tape for, like, a millisecond. I always thought that was cool, but it's like, why even put it on tape? I do like his dedication to the the analog stuff.
Weekly Neil: What music were you really into growing up? You mentioned Dinosaur Jr. and some noisier stuff. Was that what you gravitated to first?
Mike: When I was a kid, my mom's side of the family owned this company that would lease out jukeboxes and pool tables and dartboards and shit like that — bar stuff — to bars. So at my grandma’s house, long after like the record players went out [of bars], they just kept all that stuff in her basement. I'd go through that and, you know, I'd like to say that I was listening to cool stuff. But most shit in jukeboxes is bad, you know? I'd find like 100 copies of some REO Speedwagon single or something, or maybe come across like an old Beatles single. There were a lot of CDs there, too. I got an mp3 player when I was nine, so I'd kind of just rip whatever CDs that I could find that used to be in the CD jukeboxes.
Obviously, you’d have AC/DC. That was the best shit ever when you’re 10 years old. Plus Weezer and Beck — I always gravitated toward ‘90s stuff, and the Guitar Hero games. That was a good steer-you-in-the-right-direction kind of thing. But after that, I got really into rap. And that was just my life for all of middle school. And then in high school, I just kind of dove straight into all the 120 Minutes and MTV era stuff. The Dinosaur Jr., Pavement, and the Sonic Youth of the world.
Weekly Neil: The first time I heard “Built 4 Nothing Good,” I thought, wow, this is a great Guided By Voices song.
Mike: Nice! I mean, that’s my favorite band. That’s my number one.
Weekly Neil: To that end, Liquid Mike has released a bunch of albums and EPs over the past few years. You work really quickly. Or do you have a huge backlog of songs that you keep putting out?
Mike: They’re pop songs, for one. I don't have to reinvent the wheel when I’m trying to write. That helps. Two, they’re short. I only gotta write 10 of them. I don't really throw away a lot of songs. I like to use like the whole animal, or whatever. If there's a song that's not that good — like “God Bless The World” from the self-titled record, I don't think that's a very good song. But I think where it fits in the album, it's like, that's where it fits. If you put that song first on the album, that's a terrible song. But if you put it in the middle, in between two good songs, all of a sudden you can use it and it kind of makes sense as a piece of road in the album that guides it along. Either brings the energy up or down.
Weekly Neil: I have never been to Marquette. I only really know what Joe Pera has shown me on TV, when he made it his fictional home.
Mike: I think he’s from your neck of the woods.
Weekly Neil: Yeah, he’s from Buffalo. Is his Marquette an accurate portrayal?
Mike: I like the guy. I think he's funny. I think it's cool that he chose Marquette. It's so random. I ran into I ran into once, shoveling snow at whoever's buddies he was staying at for the weekend. He comes up here pretty regularly, but still, even then, I wouldn't say like people in Marquette know about him. It's that kind of town where they're not, like, invested in — obviously, when he comes to town, there's people that are like, “Sweet. I'm gonna go try to find this guy.” But I wouldn't be surprised if 60% of the town has no idea who he is. And that show isn't really that indicative of the type of person that's here, but I don't really expect it to be, either. I think he's just kind of like a weird alien that makes me laugh. I really like him.
Weekly Neil: To go back to Neil, you mentioned “Round & Round,” which is not even super indicative of what the rest of that album, or that era of Neil sounds like. It’s a fascinating one to think about.
Mike: Even on the record, it stands out as an oddball. I love that it’s the third track. Primetime spot. That was another thing, maybe, that steered me away from it was just like, the length, but I have gotten into punk songs in the last few years. I can handle it. “Cinnamon Girl” and “Everybody Knows” kind of coaxed me into being cool with listening to a chill-ass acoustic song.
Weekly Neil: Yeah, Guided By Voices don’t really have many 10-minute jams.
Mike: Well, they have albums that feel like they're three hours long, too. They certainly don't have a perfect discography, as much as I love those guys.
Weekly Neil: What's your favorite from those guys? Are you a traditionalist for Bee Thousand and Alien Lanes?
Mike: All that shit is classic. I love Half Smiles Of The Decomposed, which was their farewell album in 2004. I think that's just as good as any of them. But from the classic stuff, I love Alien Lanes and Vampire On Titus and all that stuff. The execution of that band has always really spoken to me a lot. Just getting in and doing it and then that's it. On to the next one. That always spoke to me.
Weekly Neil: I’ve talked to other musicians who’ve said similar things about Neil and his creative process.
Mike: I think the first Neil song I went out of my way to listen to was that that T-bone steak song. I just thought it was fucking funny. I think that might have actually been my first, like, “I'm gonna go back to this.” I do like him though. Just growing on me more and more.
Liquid Mike’s new album, Paul Bunyan’s Slingshot, is out now. It’s $7 on Bandcamp.
“Round & Round (It Won’t Be Long),” written by Neil Young, from Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere (1969)
Neil Young: vocals, guitar
Danny Whitten: vocals, guitar
Robin Lane: vocals, guitar