Album Notes

A little history...
Back in 1979, Liz Curtis, a program director at Q106 in York, PA, went out on a limb to air a song by a local R&B group known as Maxwell. The group wasn’t signed and was known mostly in their home town of Columbia, PA – a small town overlooking the Susquehanna River just a few miles from the infamous Three Mile Island Nuclear Plant. When the song, aptly titled, “Radiation Funk” was aired, the station’s switchboard lit up with requests to play it, quickly pushing it to the #2 spot on area charts. Then when the flip side, “A New Star,” climbed to #5, Maxwell began getting calls to open for groups like The Temptations, Harold Melvin & the Blue Notes, The Trammps, The Spinners and other R&B heavyweights. Also – unknown at the time -- the 45 single somehow made its way across the Atlantic, where it became a cult classic. Today, collectors in England, Germany and the Netherlands will pay impressive amounts of money for a copy of the record.

So what ever happened to Maxwell and how did The Maxwell Project (TMP) come to be? Formed when most of its members were still in high school and were escorted to gigs by the guitar player’s parents, Maxwell – known for its dynamic horns, driving rhythm section and tight vocal harmonies – enjoyed a large family of devout fans in Central PA in the mid-70s and early 80s. However, the group’s 1981 album went unreleased and the group finally disbanded in 1984, only to be resurrected in 2002 with an extremely successful reunion concert that drew thousands of fans – and requests for the band’s return.

Now, more than twenty years later, Maxwell has added a few new members and reemerged as “The Maxwell Project.” The group’s-new CD, which dropped on November 5, 2005, was originally meant to be a better-late-than-never release of the band’s 1981 album, but the master tapes were lost to time, which turned out to be a stroke of luck because, with the exception of a few remakes from that long-ago LP, the new disc offers a diverse blend of fresh new music that reflects what the group was as well as what they are today. It also features a bonus track of the group's chart topper, "Radiation Funk" as well as a special guest appearance by Nippy Hawkins – Maxwell’s popular lead singer throughout the 70s and the voice on both of Maxwell’s top ten hits.