Over time, his booking taste, freewheeling personality and respectful treatment towards musicians made Maxwell's and Hoboken a stop to look forward to on many bands' tours.

[4][7] By making the blue-collar mile-square city with a rough-and-tumble reputation a cultural gathering place, Maxwell's was instrumental in sparking Hoboken's first wave of early 1980s gentrification — the artists and musicians.

Abramson essentially booked the venue until its 2013 closing (except for a short period in the late 1990s after Fallon sold the club and Maxwell's was converted into a short-lived brewpub).

[4] Abramson,[14] Steve Shelley (drummer of Sonic Youth) and Dave Post of the Amazing Incredibles and Swingadelic arranged to bring Maxwell's back, and renovated and reopened it on July 26, 1998.

[4] While some longtime patrons missed the more freewheeling Steve Fallon days, Maxwell's again became as vital a part of the independent music community as it was in the 1980s and 1990s.

Early in the day, before the show, photographer Ian Tilton took several pictures of the band around Hoboken while John Robb interviewed them for a Sounds front cover feature.

[19](subscription required) In the 2005 Village Voice Best of NY poll, Maxwell's was voted "Best Reason to Leave the State for Dinner and a Show".

[25] Maxwell's reopened temporarily in August 2013, solely as a bar and restaurant, while the owners sought to sell the venue;[26] Justin Timberlake was allowed to film a commercial there.

[27] In early 2014, it reopened under new ownership (a group of investors headed by Pete Carr and Rick Sorkin), with the name changed to Maxwell's Tavern.

[28] The new group decided to refocus the tavern from music to food, converting the "venue's fabled backroom—which in the '80s and '90s had proved a launching pad for up-and-coming bands like R.E.M., Hüsker Dü, the Replacements and Nirvana"—into a dining room.

However, when Maxwell's Tavern opened as a family-friendly pizzeria in April 2014, the owners realized it was a mistake,[30] and for the next sixth months, retooled the premises to again present music.