live @ Metro Cafe 6.6.2000
Tom Maxwell began his set at the Metro Cafe Tuesday night with “Hell” by the Squirell Nut Zippers. It wasn’t a cover version, though, since Maxwell wrote the song. The multi-instrumentalist split with his Zippers last year and has been stepping out on his own ever since, and the cozy confines of the Metro were a perfect setting to catch Maxwell digging into his new role as bandleader, both on solo material and some tunes he authored in his former band.
Despite the eclectic nature of his solo debut recording, Samsara, Maxwell stuck with a very Zippers-like groove for most of the evening, wisely eschewing the album’s world-music dabblings for stomping hot jazz and lush balladry. With five musicians wedged around him--including Ben Folds Five bassist Robert Sledge on upright and Zipper Chris Phillips on drums--Maxwell clearly was in his element as the combo (dubbed The Minor Drag) swung hard into “Sixes and Sevens To Me”, “The Uptown Stomp” and a rocked-up “Can’t Sleep”. Perennial SNZ favorites “Soon”, “Pallin’ With Al” and “The Kraken” all were treated with suitable alacrity, and when vocalist Holly Harding Baddour took the stage for “If I Had You” and the haunting “Samsara”, the players proved adept at providing sensitive underpinnings. Maxwell certainly didn’t appear apprehensive about “starting over” as a solo artist. Instead, he displayed a lighthearted humor, dedicating T-Bone Walker’s “Don’t Give Me the Runaround” to “my old record company” and turning “Nobody Likes You” into a self-pitying weeper. The title of the song Maxwell chose to finish the evening with was fitting, since it summed up just what this kind of rollicking and entertaining performance will hopefully lead to: “Plenty More”.
Washington Post, June 2000
