My name is Mike Maple and I’ve been a letter carrier in Marquette, MI, for three years.
Working for the Postal Service is a good fit for me. It has good pay, reliable hours and I have nights off. It fits my lifestyle because off the clock, I’m in a band called Liquid Mike.
We play punk, but not like spiky hair punk. Our music is loud, guitar-driven and has a lot of melody.
Liquid Mike started in 2021 as a songwriting project — I write all the songs.
The band has put out five albums and eight singles so far. Our latest album is “Paul Bunyan’s Slingshot.” Our music is on streaming platforms and iTunes.
Rolling Stone, Spin, Paste and other publications have written about us. A local TV news station has also featured us.
Finding time to write music is easy. Sometimes I get ideas just walking around on my route. You see different things every day, even if you are on the same route. You also see different people. I keep a notes app open on my phone and write stuff down when it comes to me.
All of our songs are short. We can play 13 songs in 25 minutes. It is not as fun for me to repeat a chorus three times. I feel like a chorus sticks out harder if you do it once or twice and then the song is gone. I like my songs to be like a flash. We want to leave people thinking, “What the hell was that?”
We’ve been touring and it is exciting. We’re planning to tour all month in October. We’ll also do some festivals this year.
Liquid Mike has been a learning experience, but so far, so good.
“Off the Clock,” a column on Postal Service employees and their after-hours pursuits, appears regularly in Link.
