Ok…. without further ado, I’m back from a LOOOOOONG time off.  And in typical tumblr fashion, it’s with a re-blog.  During my long dry spell of not posting (generally known as my first year of business school), Jessica Lea Mayfield has become one of my go-to artists.  Check it out, y’all.

tuneage:

Jessica Lea Mayfield - “Kiss Me Again”

The first song on Jessica Lea Mayfield’s debut album tells you all that you need to know… this girl has been through some stuff and she’s really good at writing songs about it.  

At the age of eight, Jessica and her brother David Mayfield were living in Nashville and playing in their family’s bluegrass band, One Way Rider. A few years later, Jessica had taken over rhythm guitar duties and started writing her own songs. Her first demos caught the ear of Dan Auerbach from the Black Keys, who lived not far from Mayfield’s hometown of Kent, Ohio. He would go on to produce her first two albums, With Blasphemy So Heartfelt and Tell Me.

If you are looking for a cute girl to sing cute, upbeat songs then this probably won’t be up your alley.  By her own admission, Mayfield can only write songs when everything is going wrong. 

When I’m happy I have a dry spell of writing songs, and when I’m depressed or [going through] a breakup or things aren’t going right in my life, then I have a million songs.

Despite that, the songs don’t come off as whiny or “emo”. They are executed with a precision that you wouldn’t expect from a 20-something