REVIEW: Joelton Mayfield: Live from Music Room at Smith's Olde Bar - ATL

The Nashville star proves he's paving the way for alt-country

Joelton Mayfield bringing his Nashville alt-country jams to ATL (Photo by Nancy Gutierrez)

On September 14th, Joelton Mayfield, made it to the 12th stop on a coast-to-coast tour set to last for 20 dates. Upon arriving in Atlanta, he played the legendary Music Room at Smith’s Olde Bar that’s seen performances from acts like John Mayer, Janelle Monae, and even David Bowie.

After getting the opportunity to see their show, it became clear how Mayfield was able to touch venues that have seen the likes of such renowned artists.

Mayfield carries a stage presence that captivates audiences from all over (Photo by Nancy Gutierrez)

A one-man show, Joelton Mayfield offers a rich story through his lyricism that tells the audience of a personalized type of void that he’s stared down the barrel of through a sound most closely recognized as alt-country, offering up a result with clear influences from Americana artists. Though vulnerable through his words, it’s not all doom and gloom for Mayfield. In his song “Turpentine (You Know The One),” Mayfield borrows from Wilco and the Mountain Goats to speak on some of the issues that plague the music industry, but that never seem to sever the innate urge for songwriters to create and for musicians to share their work time and time again. He sings to the crowd about a sh*tty band on an even worse radio station: it's “everything you hate about everything you wish you liked.” The line causes the audience to realize just how much they’re really paying attention as they erupt into quieted chuckles.

Mayfield is thoughtful, and it seems to spill out into every part of his artistry. In moments between his sets, he tells the audience of his gratitude to be able to travel with headliner, Jack Van Cleaf. "The feeling is mutual," Cleaf would share about Mayfield later in the evening. His easy-going banter with the crowd projects an image of someone filled with sincerity for his craft.

Alongside the JVC group of 4-piece formally-dressed boys, Joelton Mayfield shared a piece of himself in a night of stripped-down sounds and honest storytelling.

Nashville’s Joelton Mayfield releases his debut album, Crowd Pleaser, on October 24 via Bloodshot Records. The album “bridges early-aughts indie rock and Southern alt-country grit” (The Fire Note), documenting the widening chasm between Joelton Mayfield’s former identity as a sheltered Texas kid and his identity as a burgeoning songwriter indulging in the music, movies, relationships, books and conversations previously unknown to him. His sense of the bigotry, misogyny, and myopia he’d left behind sharpened, too. These songs are a map of an unraveling and the concomitant reformation, as he sorts through hypocrisies, doubts, and disappointments and does his best to make sense of them.

Many of Crowd Pleaser’s songs scan as steadfast alt-country, Mayfield digging into a bedrock of so-called Americana like a strata of sediment simply waiting to be discovered. As important, though, are the vivid signs here that he is part of a new generation for whom Wilco’s Yankee Hotel Foxtrot and A Ghost Is Born, Pavement’s Slanted and Enchanted, and Neil Young’s Harvest are part of the same firmament, not aberrations in its architecture. 

Crowd Pleaser is only the first full statement from a singer-songwriter invested in the future of his chosen field. If It's Too Loud calls “Turpentine (You Know the One),” the latest single from Crowd Pleaser, “thrilling ...  absolutely killer alt-country.”

Joelton Mayfield's debut album, Crowd Pleaser, on October 24 via Bloodshot Records.