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A musician's journey
 From Moses Mayfield to Matthew Mayfield

More information:

Matthew Mayfield will perform as part of Blue Cut Robbery on Nov. 7 at The High Note, and solo on Nov. 20 at Studio 509 in the Phoenix Building. Log on to http://abryanphoto.blogspot.com/2008/11/bryan-photo-presents-matthew-mayfield.html to purchase tickets.

Find more information and listen to tracks from The Fire EP on Mayfield’s Myspace page, myspace.com/
matthewmayfieldmusic.

The EP is available through iTunes, NoiseTrade and Amazon. Order a hard copy through pixelmuzikstore.com.
Story by Carla Jean Whitley
Photo by Cary Norton
 Last fall Birmingham’s Moses Mayfield was wrapping up a tour in support of its major label debut, The Inside (Columbia). Then came staff changes at the record label, followed by a phone call informing the band that the label no longer had a place for them. “It was going fine, and then politics got involved,” recalls Matthew Mayfield, then the five-piece rock band’s lead singer. “I knew it was coming. Major labels are kind of a mess right now.”

The band announced its dissolution shortly afterward, on Jan. 1 of this year. Although he’d been playing guitar since age 9, Mayfield wasn’t sure what he would do after the band broke up. Nearly half a year lapsed between that ending and the beginning of work on his EP, released early this fall. But he never stopped writing; “Dead to You,” from The Fire EP, is actually the first song he wrote for himself instead of the band. “Whatever you love, it’ll find you,” Mayfield says.

Going solo
The eight songs on The Fire EP were tracked, mixed and mastered in 30 hours, with Mayfield playing the majority of the instruments himself. “We left a lot of flaws in there. I think it adds to the honesty,” he says. The honesty also shows up in the songwriting, with several songs so personal that Mayfield confesses he was nervous about releasing them.

“Element,” which the 25-year-old Mayfield wrote at age 19 and recorded with Moses Mayfield, also appears on the EP. “We just kind of revamped it and did it more acoustic, way more the way it was meant to be,” he explains. The song remains a fan favorite—Mayfield says he receives more requests for it than any other song—though some folks have voiced their preference for the Moses Mayfield version. That doesn’t bother him; this is the version he prefers. “Sonically it’s a really great, cool sounding record. But this one is really closer to my heart,” Mayfield explains.

He continues to put his heart on display on stages around town. The album release party was held at Urban Standard, and he’s appeared at WorkPlay a number of times this fall.

It’s great exposure, but it’s also much more work than when he had a label behind him. Now Mayfield is his own booking agent, publicist and manager, and he teaches guitar lessons and juggles odd jobs to pay the bills. “It’s way harder than it was before … but it’s also more pay off. Your hands are dirty,” he says. When things work out, the labor makes the rewards even more satisfying.

And things do seem to be working out. Live 100.5 has three of Mayfield’s songs—“Seasons in Our Dreams,” “Element” and “Dead to You”—in rotation, and WBHM recently featured him on its Tapestry program.

Part of doing it on your own is also being open to non-traditional forms of promotion. Mayfield has taken that approach by making his album available on noisetrade.com. Through that website, fans can download the EP for free after telling five friends about it or by paying what they want to access the music. “As everybody knows, the old model is a broken wheel,” Mayfield explains. “You’ve kind of got to take what you can get when you’re doing it yourself. It’s a take-what-you-can-get world.”

Moving forward
Now, Mayfield continues to perform around Birmingham with occasional stops in other cities as he considers options for a full-length album. This month he’ll also perform with a new trio, a blues/rock group he’s formed with Stewart Vann and former Moses Mayfield band mate Wil Drake. Mayfield describes the trio, dubbed Blue Cut Robbery, as an alter ego for the musicians. “Our hearts are in our other things, singer/songwriter stuff,” he explains, “but sometimes you just want to rock your brains out.”

January Birmingham, Alabama

  

 
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