As a New York transplant, songwriter Chris Maxwell, was certain he had moved on from his hometown in Arkansas in every aspect. Turns out it became the most viable influence over his music. Maxwell looked back to his humble beginnings in a small-town in Arkansas, a place where he grew up immersed in music from the seventies and listening to stories from his grandfather, which he incorporated into his debut record.
Videos by American Songwriter
“My first record, Arkansas Summer, began in an Airstream at my house in Woodstock, New York. Near the end of making that album, I built a studio where the Airstream had been parked, right next to the Saw Kill River,” said Maxwell. “The first record had been a deep dive into the people and places where I grew up in Arkansas. I thought I was done with that, but without realizing it, songs started to surface; stories that, over the years, have transformed into what feel more like myths at this point.”
“The title track, “New Store No. 2,” is probably the best example,” he said. “The facts about my grandfather emigrating from Beirut were distorted and exaggerated, but I grew up repeating them my whole life, like how he would let Pretty Boy Floyd sleep in his barn and they’d get drunk together, or how he could go into a trance, chanting in Arabic while lifting a heavy object with two fingers.”
The title song is an indie-folk jam packed with these same narratives. The music video for “New Store No. 2” hands the song over on a platter, looking to interesting animation graphics and historical images to illustrate the storytelling. The lyrics and graphics reveal ideas that came from watching a small town evolve over many years and generations. Leaning heavily on his grandfather’s stories, the video injects images relating to the Korean War, newspaper clippings and even price tags from an earlier time.
“For “New Store No. 2”, I wanted to stray from the classic 70’s records I grew up with, the sound that guided me through the making of Arkansas Summer,” Maxwell explained. “To some degree I was successful, but these kinds of autobiographical songs thrive in that context. The way those productions twist something dark into something hummable, melancholy made catchy…”
A song that does adopt the seventies style music that Maxwell grew up with is “Walking Through the Water.” The song leans to an R&B style with textures of soft rock and jazz. The smooth guitar riffs stand well above the deep bass lines, adding complimenting solos that reinforce classic guitar tones heard in seventies rock songs.
Though Maxwell was influenced partially by music form the seventies, each song from his debut has its own appeal and the record overall is varied, making for an interesting album from start to finish, with each track gifting the listener with something new.
