Urban Vigilante Liner Notes by Neil Tesser
Published on December 26th, 2011
In case you couldn’t tell from the album cover – rendered marvelously (you should pardon the pun) by Chicago artist Charley Krebs – Shawn Maxwell enjoys comic books. (Wham! Pow!) And not just comic books: Maxwell has become a minor savant of other sorts of graphic storytelling, too, such as the cartoons and television characters watched by his two young children – characters that inspired the titles for most of the tunes on this disc.
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“I feel like my kids are controlling my life right now,” the mild-mannered saxist admits, without any noticeable regret.
But there’s something more to the comic-art illustration for Urban Vigilante, the fourth album under Maxwell’s name. It turns out that Maxwell has recorded his previous discs in the guise of his secret identity (that well-known staple of the comic-book hero’s existence). But on this album, we get to hear him without the glasses, the mask, or any of the other polite disguises that we all use to fit in and get over.
“In the past, when I would go in to record,” Maxwell explains, “I had this thing where instead of just playing like ‘myself,’ I would alter things a bit. I would try to fit into some sort of box of what I thought people would want to hear. But in the last year and a half, I’ve gotten much more comfortable, and I’ve decided, I’m going to do my thing. If it works, great; if not well . . . .”
There’s no need to complete that sentence, because it indeed does work. And the noticeable new wrinkles in Maxwell’s studio persona lift his already distinctive playing to another level.
You hear this most immediately in the unusual, even striking articulation Maxwell applies to phrase after phrase of his solos on Urban Vigilante. (Bam! Ka-boom!) At first, you might think your ears are deceiving you – or possibly that Maxwell was having a rough day in the studio, causing him to insert the unexpected accents and detachments that mark his solos on this disc. But listen again, and you’ll find that these devices have purpose; they disturb the lines in small but important ways, and it makes a world of difference.
“It emphasizes things in a way you don’t usually hear them,” Maxwell explains of his approach to articulation. And when added to his timbre – with its keening bittersweet urgency and swirling overtones and nearly physical presence – these devices help mold an edgy and powerful improvisatory style. Up until now, Maxwell wasn’t entirely confident that album-buyers would find this sound appealing; but lately, he says, “I’ve started thinking that if I do certain things when I’m playing ‘live,’ why should I change it when I go in the studio? I think it represents a maturing from the fear of being myself.”
If that sounds like another staple element of the comic-book hero’s quest for identity, so be it.
Maxwell’s decision to reveal his real musical self in his solos dovetails with the more adventurous and challenging compositions he unveils on Urban Vigilante. “Composition is the other side of the same issue,” he agrees. “For this album, I got out of my usual plan for recording an album, where I would cut certain tunes because I was thinking, ‘This isn’t “acceptable” – this isn’t what people want to hear.’ But this time, I went for what I felt was right, and for what was working in the studio. It’s the first CD where I’m out of the mind-set of pleasing a certain audience.” So we get to see the writer, as well as the player, behind the mask.
For a perfect example of what Maxwell means, start at the top, with “Monster Shoes” (so named for his three-year-old daughter Ava’s reaction to seeing a pair of sandals decorated with a pair of eyes in front). “It’s really a groove line in six-four time,” he offers, “but during the melody, it goes into and out of four-four, and at one point, it’s actually in five-four – the point is that if you don’t have the chart in front of you, it can be pretty frustrating.
“If you try to count it, you might scratch your head.” He’s right; I tried, and I did. “But if you don’t count and just listen, it feels like something that grooves.” Right again.
Maxwell doesn’t write this way for academic purposes: he’s not trying to be tricky. Each of these tunes takes the shape that it does in order to best depict its extra-musical origin. Thus “Boots” (named for the pet monkey of Dora the Explorer, one of his daughter’s favorite cartoon programs) derives its structure from Maxwell’s experience with Ava’s third year on the planet. “It’s mostly in waltz time, but it has some odd parts in the middle, which is kind of how she’s been in her Terrible Twos – nice and lovely for big parts of the day, and then a middle section when she’s just a monster.”
Other tunes have comparable provenances, from “Starscream,” named for one of the main villains in the Transformer films favored by Maxwell’s stepson Jackson; “Beyond Infinity,” which references Buzz Lightyear’s catch-phrase from the Toy Story trilogy; and “Yo Gabba Blues,” inspired (if that’s the right word) by endless viewings of Yo Gabba Gabba, which Maxwell calls “this horrible, horrible kids’ show on Nickelodeon.” For those concerned about Maxwell’s preoccupation with kiddie TV, more adult references appear as well: “Big Hurt” alludes to the nickname of Frank Thomas, the retired slugger of Maxwell’s beloved Chicago White Sox, and “Charlie Work” gets its title from a phrase coined on the oddball cable comedy hit It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia.
In his alter-ego as indulgent dad, Maxwell does spend a fair amount of time imbibing pop culture, but remember – like most musicians he works at night, a reality that informs the artwork on Urban Vigilante. “I love that drawing, but I do have one concern,” he allows. “I hope I don’t seem like I’m trying to say I’m some sort of superhero, or ‘super’ among musicians. I feel that a ‘vigilante’ is a guy who’s doing the right thing, working hard, keeping at it even if it doesn’t work out for him. And I figure that if I keep playing and keep writing what I want – well, everyone might not love it; but if continue at it, eventually it will work out in the end.”
Actually, I’d call that a pretty good definition of jazz musicians in general. Shazam!
