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This is an interview with Myles Kennedy of the Mayfield Four from the launch.com website. The Mayfield Four Although he's just twentysomething, Myles Kennedy has had to put up with more crap than most musicians --young and old. His tribulations began about 10 years ago, back when he was a 15-year-old Jimmy Page wannabe living on a farm in Spokane, Washington. With a tennis racket for a guitar, Kennedy would stand before his bedroom mirror for hours on end, playing all the classics: "Immigrant Song," "Black Dog," "Dazed And Confused," and on days when he was really on, "Communication Breakdown." Finally, one day his father suggested trading in the racket for the real thing. "To actually learn how to play was something that never occurred to me," laughs Kennedy. "It just looked too difficult. But I decided to give it a try. I really didn't have the money to buy a guitar, but my father offered to give me a dollar for every horse stall that I cleaned. So I spent the next nine months cleaning up horse manure at a buck a pop until I earned enough to buy a cheap Ibanez guitar --it was an awful instrument that got stolen two years later." Luckily, it was good enough to get him started: these days Kennedy is the guitarist and vocalist for the Mayfield Four, a quartet whose sound suggests Jeff Buckley meets Soundgarden during Zeppelin Tribute Night. Kennedy is both the band's fuel and fire, his richly textured voice and seemingly limitless range instantly giving Mayfield Four extra depth and endless possibilities. They take full advantage of this on Fallout, their Epic Records debut, a monolithic album of dynamic blues-rock that alternates between graceful flourishes ("Forfeit") and pummeling riffs ("Suckerpunch"). Looking back though, it's surprising that Kennedy's father, a small-town preacher, would encourage him to play rock 'n' roll, a.k.a. "the devil's music." Says Kennedy, "The beauty of rock 'n' roll is that it helps you to find your identity, so he knew that it was good for me in that respect. I was really small as a boy--sort of like the kid that played Webster on television. And because I didn't start growing until I was 17, I couldn't keep up with the other kids in terms of sports, so I needed another outlet. My parents understood this and were very supportive. By the time I was 16 or 17, I stopped going out with my friends and never left my room--I just constantly practiced all the time. My parents began worrying that I was getting a little too obsessed, but I convinced them I was okay and they let me keep playing. There was, however, one time that they gave me grief, back when I briefly went through my heavy metal phase. I went out and bought a copy of Judas Priest's Screaming For Vengeance, but my mom wouldn't let me bring it into the house. She said you have to draw the line somewhere." |