Interview from the Virgin Website. (thanks Monica)

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Mayfield 4 Making Good Ol' Rock 'n' Roll

Singer and guitarist Myles Kennedy is 300 miles from his home, in a cab en route to a photo shoot. His band The Mayfield 4 (drummer Zia Uddin, guitarist Alessandro Cortini and bassist Marty Meisner) are about to release their sophomore album Second Skin and the Spokane, WA native is deep in PromotionLand. For all of you craving the return of old school rock 'n' roll with intelligent songwriting, phenomenal musicianship (check out the dynamite drumming on the dark track "Sick and Wrong" or the intricate guitar work on "Loose Cannon") and a rockstar lead with a vocal range that swings from a soulful Marvin Gaye to a nuclear Axl Rose, then you have found it in MF4.

The band's first single "Eden (Turn the Page)" is a power juggernaut noise, both aggressive and emotive with the guitars turned way up. Most critics will describe the sound as a charging hybrid of Creed and Led Zeppelin and in writing so may ultimately do this band a grave disfavor. The track is rock songwriting at its best certainly, yet ... the album has a much broader sound than the single suggests. Which implies that the label marketing department, who perhaps was looking to have MF4 jump on the Creed bandwagon, has influenced the choice of single. Why else choose a song that doesn't reflect their entire repertoire? Myles confirms that the choice of single came from label and management.

"It was tricky," he states honestly, "because everyone was pretty passionate about certain songs."

And the Creed pigeonholing?

"It is a concern. I'll be honest with you, I get hyper concerned about these things," he says sincerely. "Believe me I've stayed up many nights worrying about very similar things. Lyrically I think 'Eden' is pretty compelling. Musically I'm happy with it. Are there other songs that I'm probably more attached to? Yeah, but it kind of has a lot of elements. I mean, look, with a lot of people being this passionate, there's a certain level of compromise. It's difficult, but... "

This is a band that is familiar with being pigeonholed. Their last album had critics comparing the singer's vocals to that of Chris Cornell (just like critics compared Scott Stapp to Eddie Vedder). Myles was surprised at the Cornell comparison. "I thought that Soundgarden was an amazing band, but I wasn't necessarily a disciple of the whole early '90s thing, I kind of shied away from it. So it shocked me but at the same time I guess there were worse people to be compared to, it could have been Warrant or something," he says laughing. "I'll take Chris Cornell."

All comparisons aside, the band faced bigger issues between their debut Fallout and this release, including losing childhood friend and guitarist Craig Johnson from the band, and changing management. The result of which was that they locked themselves away in Myles' basement, living like hermits and working, working, working ... Myles wrote close to 100 songs, and brought 25 to the band. "It was extremely tedious because we really wanted to make a great record. All we thought about for a year straight was that we need to make the best rock record we can. And we're all kind of psychotic worrywarts so that fueled the fire to create. We are such a weird group of guys. We were going to call ourselves the Worrywart 4, but it's not real cool," he says grinning.

Mixed by Tom Lord Alge, (Rolling Stones, U2, Hole) the record has more of a live vibrant quality than the previous one with a hefty dose of meandering, soulful melancholic guitar. From "Mars Hotel" to "Flatley's Crutch," anger and resentment is demonstrated without Myles screaming his head off. Most of the songs have universal themes of emotional carnage and dig deep into Myles' personal experiences, with the wrenching love-is-not-worth-the-risk theme being most prevalent. "Believe" is a haunting track that comes from an aching broken soul who seems to be drenching his pain in ferocious hard rock rain and pummeling drumbeats. "When I wrote it I really related to the lyrics pretty heavily," says the singer. "It's kind of scary because that's really putting a lot out there. One thing I didn't want to do on this record was use a lot of metaphors and hide what I was trying to say. So that song is both very scary, but also something that I was pretty passionate about."

"I'll put things in the third person, because I don't want to come across like I'm whining for 46 minutes," says the singer of the track "Lyla" who was a person he met in Las Vegas, and as a song has more of a freeing positive vibe. "Obviously Myles has some issues to work through," he again says grinning of the rest of the tracks, "but he needs to have a little hope here and there."

Unlike most hard rock musicians, Myles has his musical epiphanies while doing household chores. "I tend to be the most prolific when I'm forced to stand at the sink and wash dishes," he admits. " It's the strangest thing."

The Seattle skyline and photo shoot loom ahead, and Myles gets pensive about MF4's past, "I have learned just to stay honest, to have integrity and maintain that. If people like it, great, if not you have to stay true to yourself as an artist, as a band. That's hard to do especially nowadays. We kind of don't really fit anywhere, we're not rap-rock, we're not Backstreet Boys, we just do what we do. Hopefully we'll find people out there who are hungry for that, just honest rock n roll."