In honor of Pleasure Month, Atwood Journal has invited artists to take part in a sequence of essays reflecting on identification, music, tradition, inclusion, and extra.

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Right this moment, LA-based singer/songwriter Mike Maimone shares his essay, “Pleasure and Privilege,” about how residing authentically is an ongoing private journey that impacts extra than simply the traveler, as part of Atwood Journal’s Pleasure Month sequence!

Mike Maimone, an LA-based artist who lately relocated to the town of angels from Nashville debuts his model new album, Mookie’s Massive Homosexual Mixtape, a multi-genre assortment of songs that totally radiates all of life’s feelings, starting from love and loss to having enjoyable with disco-centric membership bangers and jazzy rock tunes – all simply in time for Pleasure.

At all times laced with a little bit of comedy and sarcasm, Maimone’s newest music is a spattering of genres, tapping into a variety of feelings skilled by main life adjustments lately, together with the pandemic, ending one love, discovering new love, and extra. “Though it’s very totally different from my earlier albums, it seems {that a} patchwork of songs is the proper option to inform the story of the previous few chaotic years,” he says.

He’s been featured on NPR, American Songwriter, Pleasure.com, Relix, Nashville’s Lightning 100, Rock and Blues Muse and extra.

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“PRIDE AND PRIVILEGE”

by Mike Maimone

“I preferred him earlier than he acquired all political” is a criticism I’ve heard of the shift that happened in my music round 2016.

What meaning is: “I preferred him earlier than he acquired all homosexual.”

After I began my keys-based storage rock trio Mutts in 2009, the primary tune on our first EP was referred to as “Stolen Bricks,” in regards to the predatory lending practices that triggered the 2008 monetary disaster. So yeah, I’ve at all times been political.

However I wasn’t at all times out. The final monitor on that EP is a ballad referred to as Uncivilized, utilizing “she” pronouns for my love curiosity. I used to be 27, only some years faraway from my “possibly I’m bi” part, and nonetheless within the closet to everybody however my boyfriend and my band. So my followers at that time assumed I used to be straight.

Over the following 6 years, Mutts launched 4 albums and 4 extra EPs, and averaged over 100 tour dates/12 months. With our quirky mix of piano and heavy distortion, we have been filling dive bars with rowdy crowds starting from punk rockers to theatre youngsters.  I used to be getting extra assured being a homosexual man, navigating probably the most private journey of popping out – to the opposite bands we toured with, to my pals, then to my household. The followers who listened intently to my lyrics adopted alongside… In 2013 our double album Separation Anxiousness / Object Permanence was influenced by my trepidation about popping out. However the lyrics have been nonetheless veiled.

Life as an impartial musician isn’t simple. However between 2014 and 2016, issues acquired fairly rattling exhausting. The person I had been with for six years lastly acquired uninterested in me chasing my dream, and I needed to transfer out. The bar I used to be gigging at weekly closed. Our tour van died. Our drummer left the band. Psychological sickness in my household started to escalate rigidity again dwelling. Trump acquired elected.

At that time I made a decision to carry the veil. Issues have been too heavy to be oblique anymore. I needed to make music that was loud and proud. I began writing Mutts songs like “I’ll Be Round,” about being there for individuals like me, who wanted a bit assist to dwell our genuine lives. I revived my solo mission with the mission of creating funky and enjoyable music that was up entrance about my sexuality. My first EP has a tune referred to as “Clear Black Night time” about hitting on a straight man. It occurs. Why not write a tune about it and normalize it? My most private of journeys continued – from being out, to creating certain individuals knew I used to be out.

That is the place I began to lose some OG followers. From 2016 to 2019 sure acquainted faces grew to become absent from Mutts exhibits. And though most Mutts followers appreciated my new solo units, others didn’t. This wasn’t an in a single day prevalence; it was a gradual reveal of sure individuals’s true colours. I might hearth again when somebody would say one thing to the impact of, “The gays on the parade floats do extra to harm your trigger than assist it.” And folks don’t go to rock exhibits to get put of their place.

I think about these unlucky interactions to be the turning level in not simply my profession however my life. My private journey grew to become about greater than myself. I noticed that it’s truly individuals like me – the cis-gender, straight-passing white males – who have been hurting the trigger by not being on extra parade floats. Metaphorically talking, in fact. It might be a boring Pleasure parade if it have been stuffed with grubby-looking band dudes in black tee shirts. However that was a part of the transformation, too. I changed my closet stuffed with black band tees with a rainbow of colourful fits and shirts (incrementally, in fact; I didn’t have a Queer Eye price range). The wardrobe was simply the outer packaging of celebrating my gayness and checking my privilege. I resolved to do my half to extend visibility and consciousness for everybody in our numerous queer group.

Then in 2022 I fell in love with a champion of our tradition, and realized how a lot additional I may go.

Howard Bragman was by no means within the closet in his skilled profession, starting in 1978 in Chicago, IL. At the moment, particularly within the Midwest, it was an act of defiance merely to be out within the company world. However he took it a lot additional. He moved to LA and began his personal PR agency in 1989 with the mission of supporting queer causes professional bono. His mentors warned that this is able to scare off the mainstream purchasers wanted to maintain the payments paid, and he’d go underneath rapidly. However he achieved his imaginative and prescient; he constructed the most important leisure PR agency on the earth whereas serving the LGBTQ+ group, incomes awards from GLAAD and AIDS Mission Los Angeles for his efforts.

When Howard and I met final 12 months, I had simply recorded Style U and was getting ready to launch the music video. However I used to be hesitant. Touching myself in mattress, evaluating a communion wafer to the forbidden fruit of Genesis? My new path of enjoyable and brazenly homosexual music was reaching private and political territory. I felt weak. And Howard beloved it. He stated it was real, intelligent and intimate. He inspired me to lean in.

My new album, Mookie’s Massive Homosexual Mixtape, is the fruits of leaning in. It’s the most undeniably out album that I’ve launched but, and it feels unimaginable. The duvet artwork is a drawing of me bare, using a large bear named Howard into a brand new stage of authenticity. Louder, prouder – one other step on my most private of journeys. – Mike Maimone

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