Bluegrass Sweethearts at Dogtown

Meet the Mayfields:

David and Valerie Mayfield don’t shy away from associating themselves with their more famous offspring.
The couple makes it a point, they told The Daily Times this week, to tell fans that they are indeed the parents of singer-songwriter Jessica Lea Mayfield and David Mayfield, bandleader of the David Mayfield Parade.
“We want them to come see us and see where (the kids) got their talent!” David said with a laugh. “Right now, we’re on tour together as a duet, and we’re calling it ‘The Kids Aren’t Holding Us Back’ tour, because we think we’re a lot better without them!”
He kids, of course — the Mayfields would be falling down on the job if they didn’t spend some of their empty nest years giving their children a hard time. But the music he and his wife make together stands wholly on its own, anchored in the musical journey they’ve been on together for 35 years.
Back then, they were both at a bluegrass festival; their love story has touched a number of fans over the years, and they’ll no doubt tell it again from the stage at Barley’s Maryville on Saturday night, but it goes something like this:
“We didn’t know each other, but we both were standing around a bonfire at this festival,” David said. “It was getting late, and I was standing on one side of the fire, and she was standing on the other, and we both sort of locked eyes. I walked over and we didn’t even introduce ourselves — we just started holding hands.”
Both were budding musicians — David on guitar and Valerie on bass with her family’s band. David started out playing with Valerie’s brother in the bluegrass band Allen Creek Coal Company, but eventually Valerie got back into music, this time on mandolin, and the two decided to start a family band called One Way Rider.
“We played country music for the line dancers all over the country,” Valerie said. “We played some bluegrass — Alison Krauss, Ricky Skaggs — but country was extremely easy for us to cover, and it was really good country music. We were raising the kids and working five or six days a week with a seven-piece country band and roadies and the whole shebang.”