Wed 12/15 @ 8PM
Kent’s Jessica Lea Mayfield just turned 32 this summer, but her musical career goes back nearly 25 years. She began playing in her parent’s bluegrass band when she was just 8, along with her equally talented brother David Mayfield, started playing solo under the name Chittlin in her mid teens, and released her first official album, With Blasphemy So Heartfelt, when she was barely 19, produced by Black Keys’ Dan Auerbach.
Since then she’s incorporated a lot of influences into her pensive indie rock and weathered a lot of storms, including an abusive marriage to a band member, which fueled her fourth album, 2017’s Sorry Is Gone.
She’s currently releasing her fifth album in two-song increments on 7” vinyl.
“Quarantine gave me a unique opportunity that I’ve always wanted, which was to do everything myself, from playing all the instruments, to engineering and producing,” she says in a press release. “This album is 100% my weird little baby. I’m still writing about tough topics and using songwriting as a way to purge my feelings. My last album was my first words with my head above the water, singing about who I wanted to be and what I deserved. This new project documents acting out those hopes for myself, my healing process, gaining strength and wisdom through recent tragedies, and the grieving process of breaking things off with toxic family members and living out the childhood I missed out on now as an adult.”
Mayfield returns to the Beachland Ballroom for a primarily seated show Wednesday December 15. Akron’s Angie Haze Project, fronted by colorful, eclectic “gypsy rocker
Haze will open. Tickets are $20-$25.
Beachland/Jessica Lea Mayfield