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Nashville’s Mike Maimone wraps deeply personal tales in painterly allegory. While confessional at the core, the music’s aching honestly speaks to the universal. Indeed, the main theme of Maimone’s new LP Broke, Not Broken is how to function in society while poor. “I was an accounting major in college” says Maimone. “Most people don’t believe that. And when I look at my bank statements, I find it hard to believe myself. But I dutifully keep track of my books, so I know exactly how much of a loss I incur every month.”
Maimone grew up in conservative rural Ohio, not coming out of the closet to his Catholic parents until age 30. He was an all-state athlete in high school, who played against LeBron James, while having a deep appreciation and love for the arts. He graduated from the University of Notre Dame business school, but quickly walked away from corporate America. Maimone explains, “Through my songwriting, I try to turn these disparate life experiences into music that relates to all different people, helping us discover commonality.”
In early 2021 Maimone released Isolation:001, which parallels the specific loneliness of quarantine with the general distance that grows between us as we age. Each song on the album has a music video with a protagonist representing a different personality trait. These videos fit together into one narrative, passing from one character to the next, with appearances from the full “cast” throughout. To create the illusion of multiple personalities, Maimone planned out not only the shot list, but also a grooming schedule. He filmed the parts for each character before trimming his hair, or shaving his beard into a mustache, and moving on to the next video. The stationary shots with multiple Mikes interacting with themselves took place weeks or months apart. The Isolation:001 film has been accepted to multiple film festivals nationally.
Now, a record whose sentiment rings true for far too many of us. Broke, Not Broken. It’s a record about how you can’t help but tie your self-worth to your net worth when your credit card gets declined on your 1st date. It’s about the stress that any unforeseen expenditure will derail your ability to buy groceries. And it’s about how every little setback seems Earth-shattering when you’re scraping the bottom of your bank account each month. Yet, fearlessly or foolishly, we persist. “Shuffling around debt with 0% introductory balance transfers has become an annual ritual” tells Maimone. “Though this isn’t a pity party. I’m broke – but I’m not broken.”
However, money wasn’t the only problem he had to go through and these different experiences are caught in videos such as the one we are pleased to premiere today for “F. M. L.” that sees Mike singing and rocking the best he can as he has to go through medical scare.
About the video, Mike comments
“I was diagnosed with pericarditis on 6/12 and sent home with meds and instructions to rest. Unfortunately resting is not easy for me, and I ended up back in the ER on 6/15. This time it was so bad they admitted me.
My new album, “Broke, Not Broken” came out at 11pm my time on June 17th. I knew I needed to focus on my health and get some rest. But I couldn’t. I just kept thinking about this album, which was 5 years in the making, finally coming out with me stuck in the hospital. And just like the theme of the record, I was stressing about the hospital bills, and there was no way I was getting to sleep.
Then the idea hit me. I’m stuck in a hospital bed when my album comes out, and I have no idea how I’m going to pay for this. I’m living the video for F.M.L. I figured if I could at least get that done, my brain would allow me some rest.
I didn’t have another playback device, so I had to use the Instagram app to film, 15 seconds at a time. Which worked out since doing a few clips knocked the wind out of me. So I’d do part of the song, rest for a few minutes, then continue.
Even with that inefficient process it only took about an hour, since it’s a really simple video. And then I was finally able to get my mind to stop stressing about the release and get some sleep.
They discharged me over the weekend, and I edited the clips together. Now I’m officially supposed to take some time off to recover.”
