Maxwell says to expect musical fireworks at Hollywood Bowl finale

It’s a little over a week until Maxwell headlines the Hollywood Bowl for all three nights of its fireworks finale and the neo-soul singer-songwriter still can’t quite believe he gets a weekend to play on that landmark stage.

“It’s unreal to me that so many years after the beginning of my career that I would be able to do something like this,” he says on a recent phone call. “All my friends and the people that work with me are like, ‘Yeah, yeah, yeah, whatever. You always say this.’

“But it truly is something that blows my mind each day,” Maxwell says. “I didn’t know that the choices I would make in my 20s and 30s and 40s would … still matter to people to such an extent that I could even pull off something like this.

“So, you know, I’m grateful that I get to do this.”

Maxwell, 50, says he’s played the Hollywood Bowl previously in a career that took off with the 1996 debut, “Urban Hang Suite.” It and the four albums he’s released since then will be featured throughout the three nights at the Hollywood Bowl that run Sept. 8-10, though he says he’ll mix things up at the Bowl from the patterns of his current tour.

“We’re working on a couple of possible things that we might want to shift,” Maxwell says. “A lot of it plays into the way we light the show and how we present the show. The Bowl is such an iconic place to play that you don’t want to take anything away from it with screens and things that you obviously can use in arenas.

“You want to use the space because it’s such a beautiful space,” he says. “So we’ve been walking through a lot of that as well. Then, of course, the fireworks and how they work out and when they happen.

“I’m just working on doing something a bit different for this particular show.”

Making a statement

“Urban Hang Suite” took its time to find its following, but today is widely acclaimed as a landmark of modern soul and R&B. For Maxwell, then in his early 20s, it announced the arrival of a precocious talent.

“When I look back at it, I think of my youth,” he says. “I think of how when you’re young, you’re bold and you have faith and there’s a sense of purpose. I feel like I was born to make the record, or to make the first impression of music through that record.”

In many ways, he got lucky. His Columbia Records A&R rep, Mitchell Cohen, gave him the kind of freedom that few debut artists receive, Maxwell says.

“He was one of those A&Rs that didn’t sort of put you in a box,” he says. “He said, ‘Just do whatever you feel is what you want to feel and do.’”

So Maxwell tracked down Leon Ware, a songwriter who found fame in the ’70s as a writer and producer for such artists as Quincy Jones, Michael Jackson, the Isley Brothers and Marvin Gaye – including the latter’s classic “I Want You.” He found musician Stuart Mathewman, who’d worked with Sade, to co-produce with him, and guitarist Melvin “Wah-Wah Watson” Ragin, one of the session musicians in Motown’s Funk Brothers.

“It was just nice to be able to be a person who’s 20 telling an A&R, ‘Hey, I want to go to L.A. and meet a guy – God rest his soul –who’s in his 50s or 60s,” Maxwell says of Ware. “Didn’t make a lot of sense to a lot of people in the industry, because they were like, ‘Why would you want to (do that) and not just look at what’s on the charts right now?’ You know, select collaborators and producers based on who’s already successful.

“I think it was very important for me to make a statement that hopefully I would be proud of years later,” he says. “I wanted to make a record that could, you know, stand the test of time, and I’m just so grateful because of the people around me who guided to me that end.”

“Urban Hang Suite” turned 25 in 2021, with the pandemic erasing any chance to celebrate it in public. Maxwell says he has few regrets given the more important health and political issues of that time.

“It was weird, being stuck in my home, watching Netflix, trying not to eat bonbons and keep my sexy on point, which is slipping as we speak,” Maxwell says, laughing. Then, more seriously: “I didn’t worry so much about the fact that I couldn’t celebrate the 25th anniversary. I was really concerned about the politics of the time. That was more upsetting.”

But he hints that a new chapter in the life of “Urban Hang Suite” might be coming via Hollywood.

“There’s so much more to this album that you’ll probably hear about,” Maxwell says. “I can’t really say much about it, because a lot of it is tied up with a particular strike that’s happening right now. But it will live on in another way in the future.”

‘NIGHT’ approaches

In July, Maxwell posted a hint on social media that the third installment in his trilogy, “blacksummers’NIGHT” might soon be finished. Always more of a patient than a prolific creator, this would wrap up the series that began with 2009’s “BLACKsummers’night,” and 2016’s “blackSUMMERS’night.”

“Yeah, um, without annoying people any more, since they’ve been so patient, I’m working towards it right now,” Maxwell says on the call. “I’m just trying to tie up some loose ends. The pandemic brought on things that I didn’t anticipate that would keep me from creating and finalizing this. Because I didn’t want to come from a space of anxiety.

“So I’m just trying to get through all those things that I personally didn’t know affected me as much as they did,” he says. “But yeah, I am always chipping away at the stone that is the NIGHT album.”

It’s fair to say that a perfectionist streak runs through Maxwell’s creativity. The control he had as a young artist in the ’90s, and the solid ground that was the record industry before the earthquake of digital music and streaming, is gone. Even something as important to him as the sequence of an album, and the confidence that a listener will start with the first track and listen to the finish, is frustrating to him.

“Look, I was a kid that was born in 1973, and my understanding of an album is buying a record and hearing that artist’s record as they intended you to listen to it from song one,” Maxwell says. “Now people listen on a playlist and the full body of work isn’t necessarily a thing that you can actually expect anyone would ever know or experience in that way.

“So it can be a little bit disenchanting,” he says. “But I’m not going to give up. I mean, I care about the work. I care about the message I’m trying to send with this upcoming record. I think the last little bit of control we have as an artist is being able to put together a record and let the listener hear your work as a full body of work.”

Maxwell sets sail

Over Valentine’s Day 2024, Maxwell will set sail with the inaugural Maxwell’s Urban Hang Suite cruise, taking fans on a four-day cruise from Miami to the Bahamas with entertainment by Maxwell and a hand-picked lineup that includes  Ledisi, Robert Glasper, Sabrina Claudio, Musiq Soulchild, Leela James, Gallant and more.

“I mean, it’s funny: I turned 50 and now I’m into cruises,” Maxwell says, laughing. “I love the idea of being able to sort of bring music into different places. I love introducing my audiences to the people that I listened to.

“The thing I remember about music, before it became something that was in your pocket all the time, was what you associated it with,” he says. “Like, you know, I associate Rakim with being a kid, listening to (the radio DJ) Red Alert on Friday, when that’s the only time you’d be able to hear hip-hop. I associated Prince during the time that I was in middle school and being sort of grown up enough to buy a record called ‘Dirty Mind.’

“So I think this cruise is just about trying to give people great memories,” Maxwell says. “Life is very traumatic, and energy can create a pleasant space, and you can associate a good time with good music.

“I don’t think you can do anything better than that, you know?”