Hell, yeah

Yes, rumors of his death have been greatly exaggerated. After leaving the North Carolina swing band Squirrel Nut Zippers, Tom Maxwell did not descend into the fiery pits of the place he once wrote a Top 20 song about. Instead, things are looking up for Maxwell. He's currently touring a new solo album, titled Samsara. The word choice is reflective of Maxwell's career state of mind — his website says Samsara is the Buddhist term that "describes the endless cycle of desire and dissatisfaction. Every song on this record represents some aspect of this condition."

Maxwell's yin-yang is complete with a personal moment — still pending — in his life: His wife, Melanie, is seven months pregnant with the couple's first child. "Knowing you're about to have a child really puts things in perspective in a big way," says Maxwell.

Yes, things are just fine with Maxwell.

"I've got a kid on the way, my record is finally out, I'm no longer held to a label contract, I've got a killer band," says Maxwell from a tour stop in Columbia, Missouri. "This is much fine."

Maxwell has been a fixture in the Chapel Hill, N.C., music scene for years. He skipped between rock bands before joining Squirrel Nut Zippers in 1994. The band cooked up a Southern stew of hot jazz and soon found itself with a zoot-suited and Betty Boop "swing revival" following.

Things took off with the 1996 release of Hot, which contained the martini-crowd Calypso hit "Hell," pushing SNZ to mainstream radio and platinum album sales. It was fine living, but Maxwell was growing beyond the boundaries of the band he helped make famous. "A lot of the stuff I was writing was not really for Zippers," he says. "You know, the pipe organ or gospel-inspired quartet singing was not something the Zippers were capable of."

As the band took a break following release of 1998's Perennial Favorites and Christmas Caravan, Maxwell headed to New Orleans for 14 days in March of '99. With help from a cast of musicians that included SNZ bandmates Ken Mosher, Chris Phillips and Stu Cole, he laid down the tracks to Samsara at Kingsway Studios, where SNZ had recorded "Hot." By summer, Maxwell decided the time was right to leave the SNZ umbrella.

"I couldn't enumerate all the reasons," he says. "There was every reason to go and no reason to stay. And I don't mean that in a bad way. That was a phenomenal run. It made me what I am. But it was like high school had ended and like it or not you have to graduate, despite any kind of reservations or fears you might have for the future."

Maxwell's steps into his future have been bold. He avoided a new label, instead putting the record out himself through artist-friendly Redeye Distribution. "It's a big change from the way it was in the Zippers," he says. "I'm making about 40 times more money per unit."

He's also writing without boundaries. Samsara features a mix of jazz, jive, country, Indian and Asian influences. The title track includes a telling lyric that perhaps offers insight to Maxwell's current station: "If our fondest wish comes true/We only wish for something new."

Vocalist Holly Harding Badour, formerly of the N.C. band Faustina (which also featured Maxwell's wife Melanie), enlightens Samsara on the ballad "If I Had You" and the traditional hymn "Some Born Singing." There are also two songs featuring the vocal quartet Remember (they'll be on hand for Maxwell's Atlanta show, though Badour will not) and a duet of the George Jones/Bernard Spurlock song "Flame in My Heart," harmonized by Maxwell and Melanie.

Maxwell says his band, the Minor Drag, has been playing for small audiences, but the fans are getting their money's worth. "We're rocking 'em," he says. "It's stupid. We're throwing down balls of fire and flames and explosions everywhere. Unbelievable. We're pulling down what I call pretty tombstone press. Everybody is saying such nice things that I'm going to have a really beautiful tombstone."

But first and foremost on the musician's mind is the upcoming new edition to the Maxwell house. He'll stop touring for the event. "I'm trying to reconcile how I'm going back out on the road, maybe in the fall, with a month-old infant," he says. "It's wild. How do you wrap your head around fatherhood? I don't think you do."

Tom Maxwell and the Minor Drag play the Brandyhouse on Thurs., July 20. For more information, call 404-252-7784.