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Maxim Ludwig Tears Fearlessly Into Uncharted Territory
August 6, 2009 – Los Angeles Times: Pop & Hiss Music Blog
L.A.-based singer and songwriter and the Santa Fe Seven display passion at the Hotel Café.
Photo by Stefano Paltera.
With the kind of artist who’s both fearless and immensely gifted, a musical residency can let an audience witness the very act of creation. Young L.A.-based singer and songwriter Maxim Ludwig is that kind of artist, and Wednesday’s opening night of his monthlong stint at the Hotel Café in Hollywood provided a captivating glimpse of Ludwig’s restless musical passion at work.
He and his four-piece band, the Santa Fe Seven — “None of them are from Santa Fe and there aren’t seven of them, which is why they’re called the Santa Fe Seven,” Ludwig quipped right before the show got underway — are willing experimentalists, players who derive joy from making music in the moment rather than reproducing what’s been honed to perfection.
There were certainly ragged moments, but it was apparent that this quintet, which got a high-profile opening slot last spring at the Stagecoach Country Music Festival in Indio, is deeply schooled in the art of Americana music stalwarts such as Bob Dylan, the Band, Gram Parsons-era Byrds/Flying Burrito Brothers and the twangiest leanings of the Rolling Stones.
Ludwig just turned 20 but shows a literary sophistication in his writing that would suggest someone who’s logged considerably more years than that. He often spews out lyrics like a man having a bullet pulled from his thigh without anesthesia. His eyes roll back, then close, as one who completely surrenders to the will of his muse, and the result is an electricity that can’t be faked.
A head of thick, blond hair and a bushy beard, combined with his blue denim work shirt and jeans, give him the look of a man straight from the mountain, with a satchel full of timeless-sounding rootsy rock songs clutched in his hand.
The 50-minute set included a couple of numbers from his recently released, self-produced CD “Maxim Ludwig and the Santa Fe Seven.” “To Be With Sweet Marie” invokes the legacy of Dylan, one he seems more than ready to take on.
“Paradise Cove,” inspired by the coastal trailer park community outside Malibu, where Ludwig spent some formative years, was a knockout — a haunting, blues-rock waltz meditation on life outside the gates of heaven. He punctuated it with dramatic pauses that demonstrated a savvy awareness of the power of silence amid the noise. “Big Black Train” let the group crank up a Stones-cum-White Stripes-worthy blues-raucousness, hammered home with intuitive contributions from guitarist Eli Pearl, keyboardist Evan Vidar (who is all of 18), bassist Jake Faulkner and drummer Sam Kauffman-Skloff.
Ludwig also worked in several newer compositions, which he said he writes at the rate of about two a day.
“I’m a huge fan of people like Irving Berlin and Hoagy Carmichael,” Ludwig said immediately after the set. “I wouldn’t compare myself to those people, but I was reading the biography of Hoagy Carmichael, ‘Stardust Melody,’ and he talked about getting up every day, going into his office and writing songs. That’s what I want to do: just write songs. We’re just making songs.”
The goal of the residency, which runs Wednesdays through Aug. 26, is “to see what works with this group of players I’m working with.”
He comes across as a voracious reader whose tastes are as smart and wide-ranging as his omnivorous musical preferences, from the titans of American popular song to Charles Mingus to the Monkees.
Among those in the house was producer Hal Willner, who expressed his admiration for Ludwig’s multipronged abilities as a songwriter, singer and instrumentalist. With performances like the one he delivered Wednesday, coming on the heels of the Stagecoach performance and a recent showcase at the Troubadour, it’s hard not to believe that this period in Ludwig’s career will one day be regarded with the kind of respect invoked by those who caught the Buffalo Springfield’s early gigs at the Whisky.
–Randy Lewis
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Someone Sign Maxim Ludwig by the End of the Day, Please
May 21, 2009 – Los Angeles Times: Pop & Hiss Music Blog
Photo by Douglas Kirkland.
After my second time seeing the unnervingly young L.A. singer-songwriter Maxim Ludwig and his band, the Santa Fe Seven, (once at Stagecoach and then Wednesday night at the Troubadour), I hereby put out a call to P&H’s myriad Nashville power-player readers to sign this fellow post-haste. Not only is he a virtuosic beard-grower but his live sets do so many different things right that it’s easy to imagine him crossing over into all sorts of fan bases — Dwight Yoakam alt-folk types, catharsis-craving Conor Oberst fans and maybe even some adventurous dads who think “Nebraska” is still the best Springsteen album.
His Troubadour set (opening for the Detroit Cobras) missed the doo-wop accents provided by his backup singers at Stagecoach. But even in a smaller setting, Ludwig’s stage presence borders on feral. He spends about a fifth of each set seemingly trying to separate his larynx from his body, but it’s a deep, resonant scream that sounds rooted in real desperation rather than petulance (he hits a pretty pure falsetto too and it evens things out). His band, many of whom looked dewy enough to get carded for buying cigarettes, is watertight and hit all the little stops and starts that take a good song’s moving parts and make them great. And the songs are very good indeed; the slow-burn ballads (“To Be With Sweet Marie”) prove he’s spent time with Willie, and the bangers like “Big Black Train” have all the swagger of the E Street Band, if that E Street were in 1970s Laurel Canyon and gently tweaked hippies drove it riding in stolen Cadillacs.
His self-titled album is on iTunes now and anybody who remembers when Wilco wasn’t a noise band or when Ryan Adams wasn’t rapping should go buy it. And if you happen to own a tastemaking country label, let it be known that you should hop on this train early. This kid and his beard are going to be much more famous very, very quickly.
– August Brown
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Stagecoach 2009: Maxim Ludwig Channels the Americana Masters
April 25, 2009 – Los Angeles Times: Pop & Hiss Music Blog
Just 20 years old, New York-born Maxim Ludwig channeled some impressively iconic Americana influences — predominantly Gram Parsons/Flying Burrito Brothers and the Band — during an electrifying early set here at Stagecoach today.
His band, the Santa Fe Seven, was playing what was only its fourth gig ever since Ludwig and some members migrated west to settle in L.A. while working on an album due to be posted on iTunes in May.
Ludwig, looking like the bearded offspring of the band’s drummer-vocalist Levon Helm, was a compellingly amped-up front man, moving from electric and acoustic guitars to electric piano. His singing was impassioned to the point of desperation in Ludwig’s songs, often built around characters and situations that feel, as he put it in one of them, “restless and abandoned.” The Santa Fe Seven, encompassing keyboards, guitars, upright, bass, drums, trumpet and backup singers, is a democratic and versatile group that fills in the varied colors the songs call for.
Ludwig and his compatriots, represented by the William Morris Agency but without a record deal at the moment, were all hugs and high-fives after the set, which stretched a good 10 minutes beyond the allotted time when onlookers chanted for more.
“Waiting three months for this show has been a whole other deal,” he said.
–Randy Lewis
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Stagecoach ‘09: Meet Maxim Ludwig
April 25, 2009 – Orange County Register Soundcheck Music Blog
Wow, it’s absolute sunshine gorgeousness out here, but man, is it PACKED.
People in camping chairs as far as the eye can see, stretching from the edge of the Mane Stage all the way back to the entrance. And it’s only 3 p.m. Unbelievable. Bet it’ll be some kinda chaos come nightfall, when the heavy drinkers will have trouble staggering their way back to their kinfolk.
At least they’ve got some guidance this time: VERY wisely, this year there are fire lanes drawn on to the field, with areas marked “no standing” and clear pathways to get from one end of things to the other. Brings much-needed order to this sea of tanning Go County listeners.
As expected, I strolled in at 2 on the nose, headed straight to the Palomino Stage … and was delighted to discover Maxim Ludwig and the Santa Fe Seven, a seriously kickin’ L.A. outfit that excels at bluesy, heartbroken Lost Highway country-rock of the Ryan Adams and Ryan Bingham variety. (Speaking of … why was Bingham on hand last weekend at Coachella but no here now?)
Ludwig’s slow ones, like the one in which he’s “saved by the weather” and “can’t live without you, mama,” had a touch of the Black Crowes and the Black Keys to ‘em. His faster ones, meanwhile, have the bite of “Copperhead Road”-era Steve Earle. Still a little raw around the edges, but kinda better because of that. A real find, and a great way to start the fest.
–Bob Wener