Moxy - Ridin' High in 2001 Page 3
by Martin Popoff

Max Maxim is a great addition to the team, having gone through the same Toronto circuit battles, crowned with the same traditional rock influences. "It's interesting because I had gotten a lot of different impessions. There's one song called TNT and people say it sounds like Motley Crue, and other guys said he reminds them of Uriah Heep. But one thing we eventually found out is that Max is a killer blues singer. He's really got a bite to his voice, a strong voice, great range."

Bill Wade says of Max that "he did backups for Moxy when Moxy was on tour, and he would kind of be behind the scenes. He comes from a band in the '70s, the same time we had Moxy going, called Stumbling Blind, and he still plays in that band and they still do the local, Toronto, we call it the chicken wing circuit, because these are little clubs that serve chicken wings (laughs)."

It's been quite the career, with fond (and of course tragic) memories for all, each member in the band of course moving on to careers, kids, real lives. I asked Earl to recount one of his fondest tour memories. "I remember to this day, we were playing a club in Dallas with AC/DC, and I remember removing Bon Scott from my bed, throwing him over my shoulder, carrying him down the hall and putting him in his own room. And I don't think that I even talked to the guy (laughs). Texas, it was like we got off the plane and had been the Beatles or something. We play Toronto all the time and the managers are all telling us to turn it down or you're going to be fired and everything and you go down there and you get off the plane and you're the Beatles. They were playing full sides of the album on radio down there, not just a song. Too bad that didn't happen in our own country."