Today we’d like to introduce you to Joseph Maxwell.
Alright, so thank you so much for sharing your story and insight with our readers. To kick things off, can you tell us a bit about how you got started?
I have been writing songs since I was around eight years old, but those ones were terrible. I started taking bass lessons in fifth grade, and attempted to join & form many bands throughout middle school and high school. All the while, I continued writing bad songs until they started to turn into slightly-less-bad songs. Over this period of time, I learned to translate my feelings into music, and express my emotion earnestly through lyrics and acoustic guitar accompaniments. After college, I moved back to my hometown of Cleveland (well, not technically Cleveland, but Northeast Ohio). There, I finally started playing real shows. Thanks to my then-girlfriend (now-wife), I also became connected to the storytelling and alternative comedy community in Cleveland. I performed as a guest musician on shows like Mental Illness & Friends and This Improvised Life. This positive momentum kept growing until 2020, when it stopped. After a couple tough years, things began to pick up again – I got married, joined Hot Goss: The Improvised Musical as a guitarist, became a father, and started bartending at Imposters Theater (Cleveland’s home for improv, sketch, alternative comedy, and other nonsense). All of this led to the musical I wrote, CALLBACK: the story of an aspiring comedian who gets the opportunity of a lifetime when a streaming service holds local auditions. I wrote the musical for and about the wonderful community of people I found in Cleveland, and put as much of myself into it as I could. It is not literally my story, but it is my life’s work – the culmination of every part of my story thus far.
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
One of the biggest challenges was Covid. After building up a sense of belonging in my life, and forging a path toward real social connection, everything ground to a halt. It was hard to build back from that.
Another challenge is my mental illness – I had a psychotic break in 2021 (which I will not detail here), and coming back from that was sort of a miracle.
And, of course, there have been the creative struggles. Writing a musical is actually pretty easy. But writing a good musical (or, at least, one that I think is good) is really hard. Luckily, the show itself grapples with the trials and tribulations of creation, so you can see all that if you see the show 😮
Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your work?
I am primarily a songwriter. I specialize in deeply sincere sentiments that never fail to acknowledge the absurdity of existence. These come through my work, whether I am writing a musical, or a sketch, or a PowerPoint presentation. I am most proud of the musical I wrote called CALLBACK premiering at Imposters Theater this Labor Day Weekend (2025). I like to think that there isn’t really anything that sets me apart from others. I feel things very deeply. Maybe that’s it.
What were you like growing up?
As a child, I always wanted to tell stories and create things. I used to pace around my carpet, regaling my parents with endless made-up tales. I also loved writing comic books, and I would try to sell them by going door-to-door around my neighborhood. I wanted to write and draw and become a rock star. As I got a bit older, I became a lot more of a loser. Each year that passed brought me further away from my dreams. I was not very popular, though I wanted so desperately to be popular. I wanted to belong somewhere, to feel the love and adoration of my peers. This drove me more than any other force as I developed my creative crafts. And that’s basically the entire struggle of the protagonist in CALLBACK.
Pricing:
- Tickets: $15
Contact Info:
- Website: https://callbackmusical.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/callbackmusical
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61575756992032
