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closeTuesday, Oct. 13, 2009
Maxwell’s fans sticks with him to the end
Maxwell keeps a loyal audience swooning and swaying at American Airlines Center.
By DAWN BURKES
Special to dfw.com
Maxwell knows his audience. And his fans know him, as they proved by singing and sighing at nearly every note during his show Monday night at American Airlines Center.
Fans came to their feet as soon as they caught a glimpse of the singer, dressed in a dark three-piece suit with dark glasses that came off halfway through the horn-driven Get to Know Ya, from 2001’s Now. Then the chorus of Lifetime, setting the tone, became a singalong. Maxwell played to his sexy image ("To all the fellas that are sitting there, I’m just setting you up") with every action, changing the lyrics to Al Green’s Simply Beautiful to something simply unprintable.
A reported cold kept him from trying the highest notes of his trademark falsetto too often. But he gave the crowd what it wanted: his cover of Kate Bush’s This Woman’s Work. He turned the refrain of "make it all go away" into a plea to "stop AIDS in Africa" and "stop war in Iraq." His gravelly speaking voice made you think that he wouldn’t be able to even hit the notes just below, but he did, which seemed good enough. He made up for any problems with theatrics — a high kick here, a scream there — as he danced and sang his way down a runway.
Maxwell stretched ’Til the Cops Come Knockin’ (from the classic Maxwell’s Urban Hang Suite) as if he were waiting for them to do just that. The crowd of 8,500 noticeably thinned as the song went on, but he nevertheless ended on a high note with Pretty Wings. The first single off his first CD in eight years, BLACKsummers’night, concluded as confetti floated from the ceiling.
"Is that the last song?" one fan asked just as Maxwell returned to the stage to sing Ascension, also from UrbanHang Suite. His magnificent band, which included jazz great Kirk Whalum’s nephew Kenneth Whalum III on sax, joined in. But that was after an understanding crowd, still standing with slow-dancing couples dotted throughout, had given its stamp of approval by gamely singing along.
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