Jessica Lea Mayfield Tackles ‘Tough Topics’ on New Release

Singer-songwriter Jessica Lea Mayfield just announced her sixth album will be a series of two-song singles on 7-inch multi-color vinyl. She’s already released the first two songs, “Emotional Abandonment” and “Daddy Boyfriend.” 

She recruited New York artist Abby Jame to direct the animated video for the woozy, slightly psychedelic “Daddy Boyfriend.” 

“I’ve been a huge fan of Abby Jame and her art for a while, and had plans to film a video for this song, but when quarantine started I knew I needed a new plan/something safer, I (nervously) decided to reach out to Abby,” says Mayfield in a statement about the album’s release and the music video for “Daddy Boyfriend.” “[I] am so glad I did because she killed it, and this video is something I will sincerely treasure forever. I couldn’t imagine it being any other way!”

Mayfield says quarantine gave her a “unique opportunity.”

“[I play] all the instruments,” says Mayfield, who also handled engineering and producing. “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 first performed with her family bluegrass band One Way Rider at the age of 8. That group began touring as a family band, boarding a 1956 tour bus (once belonging to Bill Monroe, Kitty Wells, and Ernest Tubb) and headed south from Ohio to Tennessee. At age 11, Mayfield began playing guitar and writing songs.

I’m hoping that you will relate to these songs in some way, and they will be as healing for you as they were for me to write.

At age 15, Mayfield recorded her first album, White Lies, under the moniker Chittlin’, printing only a few hundred copies. One of those copies fell into the hands of another Northeast Ohio, Dan Auerbach, who agreed to producer Mayfield’s next album, With Blasphemy So Heartfelt. 

Mayfield’s previous release, 2017’s Sorry is Gone, detailed her years of “quietly enduring domestic abuse by her then-husband.”