Live from Minneapolis but hitting the airwaves in several different cities, Rock listeners are tuning in to hear Remy Maxwell crack a joke or usher them towards their next great listen from Sacramento to Rochester. Whether it’s a weekday timeslot or Maxwell’s syndicated “Dude, It’s The ‘80s Show,” folks rely on Maxwell for great tunes and even greater takes.
His beginnings in radio grew from a passion for music, most notably what was playing through the speakers his dad ran through the trees in their South Louisiana farm growing up. The setup brought the entire property alive with music.
“I never had any aspirations to be on the radio at all,” he says. “I’m a music freak, first and foremost. I grew up since I was in diapers a Zeppelin fan.”
Maxwell plays guitar and once tried his hand at being a musician. His early bands recorded some things and gigged around a bit, but never got signed. When a friend brought him into a Country station where he was doing overnights as a teenager, Maxwell grew an appreciation for the work involved with that facet of the music industry. “I wanted to play in a band. Being in radio is the next best thing to being a rockstar.”
He started his on-air journey with very little hands-on experience, leading to a sink-or-swim ultimatum. “I sank for a while but started to swim. It was a total fluke,” he says.
Maxwell moved to LA, where he worked for a while as a recording engineer for bands like Motorhead, Great White, Irene Cara, and more. He worked long hours setting up mics, calibrating the tape machine, running the board, etc. It was the grueling hours that had him setting his sights back on radio. “I’d be there for 18 hours. I’d sleep on the couch, so I got back into radio.”
Maxwell still dabbles with his arsenal of guitars but hasn’t played in a band for a while. His time is used entirely, creating great radio show material for a variety of markets, but his experiences as a musician and recording engineer have informed the way he executes his work around music.
“It has everything to do with how I talk about it, how I listen to it, and how I approach what I do on the air. I want to be part of the song. I don’t want to be too overbearing; I don’t want my voice to be above it, I don’t want to be buried obviously, I want people to be able to hear whatever nonsense I’m spewing,” he jokes.
Maxwell’s first roles in a Top 40 format allowed him to become the kind of on-air personality he wanted in a Rock radio world that hadn’t seen many like Remy Maxwell just yet. “I wanted to scream and yell and hang up on people, and Top 40 is how I got started.”
His foray into the type of music he dreamed of playing on the air was with a station he long admired, KNAC in LA. “All my favorite bands wore KNAC t-shirts,” he says. He remembers thinking, “I gotta work there.” He worked at KNAC for a stint before moving on to KLOS. “They let me be a complete nutcase… It was a blast,” he says.
Carving out a niche for himself on-air eventually led him to his current role with Audacy’s 104.1 JACK in Minneapolis. “We play Adult Hits, so we play everything – things that shouldn’t work together that do. We’ll go from ‘Paradise City’ into ‘Baby Got Back’ without even blinking twice.”
While the Adult Hits format has allowed Maxwell to play around with his vast music tastes, he has no interest in veering too far away from the Rock icons he grew up listening to as well as his signature long hair, bearded, and tattooed appearance. “The format means a lot to me. I couldn’t fake it. I don’t want to fake it. I mean, looking like this, I can’t pull off anything else but a Rock format anyway,” he jokes.
“I don’t get to choose the music I’m playing, but I’m a fan of all the music I’m playing,” he says. “I’ve got full creative control to do, say, and put anybody on the air that I want. Not a lot of people have that.”
The creativity he gets to explore in the studio aside, his career has afforded him many great opportunities, including meeting many of his idols. “I’ve gotten to interview all of my heroes. You name ‘em; I’ve had them on the air with me… Some of these are like a pinch-me moment. I’ve gotten to talk to everybody that I’ve loved growing up… so that’s been pretty amazing.”
Over the years, Maxwell has held his creative control close, noting that his ability to be himself on the air is what allows him to be one of the best at what he does. “There’s not a liner card in the studio… The people that I’ve worked with over the years have allowed me to be me.”
His approach to a great show comes from making sure he’s doing it for the right reasons. “When I go on every day, I’m just entertaining myself. I don’t know what people dig. Same as if you’re in a band or you’re writing a song; you don’t know what’s going to be a single or a hit. You have to do it for yourself, first and foremost, and if you’re making yourself laugh or you’re entertaining yourself with a song, then you’re doing it for the right reasons because everything else is a crapshoot.”
“I’ve never been a ratings guy,” he says. “I don’t care. If I walk out of here every day going, ‘That was killer. I had a blast’…then that’s my ratings right there.”
Much like his attitude about his own show, Maxwell listens to music in some of the same ways. “If you’re doing it for you, then I can feel that. That’s what I look for. Music, to me, is either gonna blow me through the wall or it’s gonna move me. I’m all about emotion.”
Years of being unapologetically himself in music radio has given Maxwell a unique perspective on broadcasting.
“I look at it as art. This is what I do… I put a lot into it. They say you’re only as good as your last break. I subscribe to that school of thought. I’m bringing something that you can’t get on an iPod. That’s why people listen to the radio. If you’re entertaining, then you’ve got something that those other things don’t.”
Listen to Maxwell’s show here.
