For blues artist Maxwell, it's still all about the music

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Bursting onto the music scene with "Maxwell's Urban Hang Suite" in 1996, the musician known simply as Maxwell brought some old-school R&B to the forefront. Babyface and other musicians were part of the revival, but Maxwell hit it hard.However, he hasn't released an album since 2001's "Now," and he hasn't done a full tour in nearly eight years. Suddenly, he's back, with an upcoming triple-disc project, "Black Summer's Night," to be released in phases in the coming months. He's released part of a new song, "Pretty Wings," on his MySpace.com page, which sounds like very old-school R&B-that is, classic Maxwell.An interview in Q&A format:Q: What have you been up to?A: I'm just sort of writing and having a life that infuses the work as opposed to it going the other way around -- just working on songs and your life is basically the work instead of the work reflecting what you live. I want a more authentic start on the next phase of this musical thing. I do my everyday in New York, traveling here and there, taking in as much as I can to create something that sounds like a real person went through it and wrote it, know what I mean? As opposed to "This is some guy trying to capitalize on his first album that he really lived a bunch of things to get to." I was trying to re-create some of the energy that set up the first record -- and that's living, really.Q: Were you tapped out creatively?A: Yeah, for many reasons -- creatively, the business that surrounded me at the time. The industry was so different many years ago, just the way the Internet works and how the Internet changed the entire recording industry's paradigm. It completely shifted it. ... The world was in transition, I felt like I was in transition. I figured it's better to get to where you're transitioning to instead of trying to write from that transition.Q: How did that work out?A: I don't want to put records out because I'm trying to pay my mortgage or buy that car. I like to put records out because something happened to me that made me want to do it and record it. When you get into the business you fall prey to that beast. You just want to maintain your lifestyle, you want to maintain your profile. You want to be as famous everywhere as you were before. ... I just really wanted to not care about those things and care about the things I used to care about before anything ever happened to me.Q: How will you release new music?A: The answer for me was the live show. That's just something that can't ever be duplicated. You can duplicate a recording, even a recording of a live show, but you can't ever put in a microchip -- there's no way you can repeat what it is to be in a venue with all those people and the music coming back at you. The energy of everyone at once exploding in the room.Q: What are the shows like?A: I want people to just go through everything that night. I want them to dance, cry, have fights, make up, dance again, cry again, go make love after the show. I want a wide range of experiences to go through everyone.Q: You were part of a great R&B resurgence in the '90s. R&B is now somewhat generic.A: It's a cyclical thing. There are waves and phases for everything. I'm perfectly fine knowing that there'll be time in the musical movements that have nothing to do with me. I don't need to be there. I can just sit it out, let that whole thing happen. I listen to a lot of contemporary stuff. I know there's a lot of synthesized and computerized things. I can get into it, too, but I don't necessarily need to make that music. I don't necessarily need to compete with that music. You see a trend and you just let it happen, wait for the trend to run its course, so you can step into what you do.Q: What's the new music like in "Black Summer's Night"?A: It's not as laid back as "Urban Hang Suite." We're in different times. Tempos fluctuate. There's a lot of Cuban, Latin, a lot of different kinds of flavors that are infused and joined together in these really traditional songs. Elements that mix in with gospel a little bit. ... I don't wanna give away too much. It's almost like spoiling the plot.(E-mail Mark Brown of the Rocky Mountain News in Denver at brownm(at)rockymountainnews.com.)