Chris Maxwell’s debut album, Arkansas Summer, which John Burdick in the Almanac Weekly described as “…masterful Baroque Americana,” began in a makeshift studio in an Airstream trailer parked in Maxwell’s backyard in Woodstock, New York. The dark confessionals of his childhood are stories of tragedy, triumph, abuse, addiction and redemption, all presented with indelible guitar hooks and artfully turned lyrics. “When the drum becomes the drummer,” Maxwell sings in the jagged title track, “she beats down like an Arkansas Summer,”Chris made his name playing perhaps the furthest thing from wistful Americana — in the ’90s, he made catchy, jagged junkyard rock with the legendary New York band Skeleton Key. Before that, he was the principal songwriter and clever guitarist of Little Rock, Arkansas’ first band to be signed to a major label, the Gunbunnies, whose Southern Gothic jangle the L.A. Times characterized “…as if the Beatles met Faulkner on E Street.” Maxwell now works out of his new Goat House Studio in Woodstock, where he composes and records music for hit TV shows like Bob’s Burgers and Inside Amy Schumer, as well as producing and writing music for other artists (They Might Be Giants, Iggy Pop, Yoko Ono, the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion) as part of the celebrated production team The Elegant Too. . “A beautifully poised grown-up album in an age that still coughs one up from time to time.” Jonathan Lethem

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