Culture
Mountain Stage host David Mayfield talks programming ahead of Marietta taping
By: Julia Weber
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MARIETTA, Ohio (WOUB) – West Virginia Public Broadcasting’s Mountain Stage series returns to Marietta with a live taping at People’s Bank Theatre (222 Putnam St) Sunday. Since 1983, Mountain Stage has hosted live tapings of musical performances spanning a wide array of genres and sounds, and the resulting two-hour episodes are aired on stations across the country each week.
WOUB’s Julia Weber spoke with Mountain Stage guest host David Mayfield ahead of the upcoming taping at People’s Bank Theatre. Find a transcript of their conversation, edited for length and clarity, below.
Julia Weber:For those planning to attend—or still on the fence—what can they look forward to at the upcoming Mountain Stage?
David Mayfield: The thing I love the most about Mountain Stage is even if you are familiar with an artist, you come and you’re a fan of one of the artists, you’re bound to be turned on to some new music. That’s the nature of the show. There are five different acts on this show, and there’s a bit of a theme. Hannah Cohen, Lera Lynn, and Amy Millan all have these dreamy, timeless voices, but they write and perform in completely different styles.
Then there’s a band called Boulevards, which is like high-voltage funk, troubadour, vintage-soul kind of grooves. Then there’s a band called Oyo, which is Americana-bluegrass with intimate songwriting. It’s really kind of all over the place, but you never know what you’re going to get on Mountain Stage. That’s the exciting thing about it; it’s not just a bunch of bluegrass bands or a bunch of folk packs, it runs the gamut.
As you just mentioned, Mountain Stage is perhaps best known for highlighting bluegrass and folk, but it really brings a much wider array of genres to the stage. I think of all of these experiences of bringing people together across genres through shared musical experiences. How have you seen that in your own time involved with Mountain Stage?
Mayfield: When I’m hosting, we always do what I say is the most carefully pronounced part of Mountain Stage: the ‘cluster pluck.’ I don’t know if they like it when I say that, but we do the grand finale at the end, and we invite all of the guests out, and we do a song together. That’s always the hardest part and the most fun part because, like I said, sometimes there will be a bluegrass act and then a funk band. We had a band a while back called From China to Appalachia, which features Chinese folk music mixed with American folk music. To be like ‘Okay, now everybody come out. We’re all going to do the same song together.’ That’s just so exciting to hear a Chinese hammer dulcimer solo on a Grateful Dead song, and then to hear how the bluegrass people tackle a Crosby, Stills, and Nash song. Sometimes we’ll have a rock-and-roller on there singing a bluegrass song, and it shows how universal the language of music is, that everybody can — even if their style is completely different — still find a way to work into the collaboration and then bring what they bring to it. That’s probably my favorite part of Mountain Stage.
From my research, you’ve performed both on the artist side and on the host side of Mountain Stage. Tell me a little bit about the experience in both capacities. Do you find it to be similar? Different? What brings you back time and time again?
Mayfield: I’ve been a fan of Mountain Stage since I was a kid; I used to listen to it with my parents. I grew up in a family band, so music was our whole life. I loved the flow of different artists in one show, not just ‘Here’s an hour of one person,’ which is great, but it’s exciting to have the ups and downs and the dips. I tried to do the math on this: I think I’ve been on about 20 episodes of Mountain Stage and hosted maybe eight or nine times. I was on (the show) early on with different bands. I used to be in a bluegrass band called Cadillac Sky, and that was the first time I was on Mountain Stage. Then I was on again with my sister, Jessica Lea Mayfield. Then, just with other bands, and then when I started my solo project, The David Mayfield Parade, we were on a few times.
They take such good care of the artists at Mountain Stage. That’s what they’re known for, being very hospitable, very nurturing of the artist lifestyle, and what it takes to be in a good place to perform. Hosting is a whole other world. It’s lots of preparation, lots of discovering these artists and what I can say about them, and how I can introduce them to a new audience, perhaps. Hosting is very satisfying and rewarding, and terrifying at the same time.
I know you mentioned you grew up surrounded by music and that you’ve played on Mountain Stage in a few different iterations; tell me about that journey for you.
Mayfield: I grew up in a family bluegrass band with my mom, dad, and my two sisters. For several years, we lived on a bus and just traveled the country. It was like a literal Partridge family. In my 20s, I moved to Nashville and was a session sideman. I played with some country stars and played on the Grand Ole Opry a few times, but my heart was always with bluegrass music, so I joined a band called Cadillac Sky and did that until that band disbanded. At that time, my sister, who is a very talented artist — doing more of an indie rock, grunge thing now, but she was doing Americana stuff back then — she had a big tour with The Avett Brothers. I decided I wasn’t feeling very fulfilled playing pop-country music as a sideman, so I quit my well-paying country music gig to go out in a van and follow The Avett Brothers around for a couple of years, playing bass with my sister. It was Seth Avett who actually talked me into doing my own music, because I would play a couple of my original songs after a show, backstage, hanging out. He was like, ‘Why don’t you just start your own band?’ and ‘Well, that sounds like a lot of work.’ I was right —it was a lot of work, but it’s really paid off. Since then, I’ve toured all over the world and gotten to host Mountain Stage.
Mountain Stage has been around since 1983 and airs on hundreds of stations worldwide. Tell me about what you see the role of Mountain Stage as being in our current culture and in the world of music.
Mayfield: I’m guilty of this, too, but we tend to get into our comfort zone with music. Especially now, with streaming services, I go and play what I want to hear, and I often go back to the same things. What’s nice about Mountain Stage is you might be a huge Chuck Prophet fan and hear he’s on Mountain Stage and tune in, and then you hear four other bands that you never would have heard or even thought of, and that broadens your scope. I think that’s the cool thing about Mountain Stage: it can put these other styles of music, other genres, other artists in your face and put them on your radar.
If there’s one key thing that you really want to express to audiences about Mountain Stage — its programming, what it means right now — what would that be?
Mayfield: It is such an important show because it nurtures the arts. It’s one of the few — it might be the longest-running — live performance radio shows that aren’t interview-based. It really is just about the music. Whenever I’m getting nervous about having to host the show, I remind myself: I’m just the guy who talks in between the music. The music is the show.