“My self-esteem is heatin’ up the room/You’re intimidatin’ as all hell but I ain’t scared of you.” -from Our Hearts.
Jessica Lea Mayfield‘s mellow twang should be heatin’ up the room. The little songstress from Kent, Ohio is giving out her first single from the album Tell Me, set to release February 8, 2011. You can download it for free from her website (love it when they do that, just so I get addicted.)
The album is produced by none other than Dan Auerbach of the Black Keys fame- my bearded musical crush. Naturally I’m jealous of both Mayfield’s talent and proximity to Auerbach’s beardliness. The fact that she’s three days younger than me makes it that much more crushing (if only I were a folksy-talented, darkly lyrical songwriter born to a travelling family band.)
Auerbach produced her last album in 2008, With Blasphemy So Heartfelt, which features the other track I have on repeat today, Kiss Me Again. For someone so young, she poignantly adressess feelings of loss, love and loneliness with what I can only describe as battered hope, wrapped in the memories of more years than she’s lived through. No wonder the EP she recorded at 15 piqued Auerbach’s interest. Even then her young voice crooned lyrics like, “I could care less about you/And I love the sound of you walking away/And I can see clearer and I’m getting closer/To finding out to just who I am without you in the way,” a sentiment most of us may not experience until the latter parts of our first divorces.
I can barely remember understanding the concept of homework, let alone heartache, at 15.
