FILE – In this file film publicity image released by The Weinstein Company, Colin Firth portrays King George VI in “The King’s Speech.”If you go’ What: Nightfall concert series featuring David Mayfield Parade.’ When: 8 p.m. Friday, Aug. 7; John Lathim opens at 7 p.m.’ Where: Miller Plaza, 850 Market St.’ Admission: Free.’ Phone: 423-265-0771.’ Venue website: www.nightfallchattanooga.com.’ Artist website: www.davidmayfieldparade.net.
Discography2014: “Strangers” (as David Mayfield)2013: “Good Man Down”2010: “The David Mayfield Parade”
The openerJohn Lathim is a local folk/Celtic singer/songwriter whose vocals have drawn comparison to Canadian master troubadour Gordon Lightfoot. For more information, visit www.facebook.com/john.lathim.
To many musicians, a successful performing career is exemplified by a state of constant acceleration and an upward trajectory. Bigger shows. Longer tours. More album sales.
In the five years since David Mayfield stepped out on his own following the dissolution of the bluegrass band, Cadillac Sky, the Americana singer/songwriter’s musical path has been in lockstep with this ideal.
There have been tours alongside The Avett Brothers and Mumford & Sons and write-ups from American Songwriter and National Public Radio. In 2014, he was signed to vaunted Music City label Compass Records.
This year, however, Mayfield did the unthinkable.
He put on the brakes.
“Mostly, I’ve taken it a little easy, compared to a normal year for me,” Mayfield says during a phone interview from his home state of Ohio, where he relocated last year after many years in Nashville.
At his height, he was playing more than 180 shows a year. Right now, his calendar lists less than a dozen dates through the end of the summer, including an appearance on Friday, Aug. 7, as the headliner of the Nightfall concert series.
“I’m kinda relaxing a little bit before I put out a record next year and start hitting it hard again,” he says. “I’m definitely going to miss it when I have to go back to working hard.”
The more relaxed pace and the change of scenery have done more than reduce the breakneck pace to which Mayfield had grown accustomed. The music he’s writing lately has been just as much an exercise in roots-seeking as his return to the Buckeye State.
After three albums of indie-rock-inflected music, Mayfield’s most recent songs mark a return to the bluegrass sound he grew up with as a member of his family band alongside his sister and fellow recording artist Jessica Lea Mayfield.
“Maybe coming back to Ohio is reminding me of those days and making me think more in that vein,” he says. “I know a lot of bluegrass friends who had this sort of mentality of wanting to get out of bluegrass. But it’s sort of like, ‘There’s something fun about the bluegrass beat. There’s something fun about that structure.’ I think once I got so far away from it, I did start to miss it.”
Even though he’s been playing fewer shows lately, Mayfield says he still treats them with the same dogged, working-class mentality pounded into him by his parents.
“I’m definitely not the most important person [at a show]. I’m the hired entertainment for the evening,” he says. “Even if I have the flu or a brace on under my jeans because I blew my knee out doing a power slide the night before – whatever is going on – it’s my obligation to put on a great and a consistent show.
“[Music is] actually a great form of therapy. But in the end, it doesn’t matter if I’m happy, so long as they are, because they bought the tickets.”
Contact Casey Phillips at cphillips@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6205. Follow him on Twitter at @PhillipsCTFP.