Cadillac Sky soars into bluegrass-based adventurers

Cadillac Sky

Cadillac Sky

Cadillac Sky guitarist-songwriter David Mayfield did his time playing country music before joining the bluegrass-based Cadillac Sky. He was in the touring group of country singer Andy Griggs and (Mayfield's sister) Jessica Lea Mayfield.

"Playing the country gig, I started to hate music," says Mayfield. "It was so corporate feeling. You had to play it exactly the way it was on the record every night. It just felt like a job."

Cadillac Sky first came together in the Dallas/Fort Worth area in 2002 when singer-songwriter-mandolinist Bryan Simpson joined forces with banjo player Matt Menefee and fiddler Ross Holmes with the intention of forming a bluegrass act. Andy "Panda" Moritz and Mike Jump replaced the original members before the group signed with Ricky Skaggs' Skaggs Family Records. The group's debut album "Blind Man Walking" was released in 2007, followed by "Gravity's Our Enemy" one year later. Jump jumped ship not long after that release and Mayfield was recruited for the job.

Bluegrass was already in Mayfield's blood.

"I grew up in a family bluegrass band with my mom and my dad and two sisters, so I've been playing about as long as I could think," says Mayfield.

However, Cadillac Sky was tired of sticking so close to tradition: "I got the call from Brian and we talked about his vision for the new Cadillac Sky and the way it would change it was really exciting to me to be part of something that seemed to be forging its own path."

Mayfield says that the band began with the rule that the group could play funky rhythms, but all the songs would remain basically bluegrass.

"That pretty much went out the window when they left Skaggs Family Records and went with (producer) Dan Auerbach," says Mayfield. "There's no rules."

Auerbach is best known as half of the group The Black Keys, but he has been producing a number of albums, including a disc by Jessica Lea Mayfield. David Mayfield says the band's attitude now is that if a song seems to call for electric instruments or drums, they're added.

"Bands like the Seldom Scene, New Grass Revival, the Tony Rice Unit, they all did something way different than what Bill Monroe put out there, but Bill Monroe did something way different before him," says Mayfield. "But the spirit of bluegrass is that innovation, even though I still love traditional bluegrass."

Mayfield says that while he and Simpson are the primary songwriters in the band, the rest of the members' contribution to the songs is always sizable.

"Once the guys get their hands on them there's no telling what they'll become," he says. "The guys in this band are musical monsters. Our bass player, Andy, was classically trained and he has some of the craziest ideas. And Ross and Matt, you could play them some melody that's extremely complicated and they could play it back for you without even thinking about it."

He says the song "Human Cannonball," on the band's new album "Letters In the Deep," began as something Paul Simon might have written.

"Then Ross writes these beautiful twin fiddle lines and Matt came up with these fantastic banjo parts and interludes and things that I never would've dreamed of. It's really cool to see things transformed in that way and have it turn out really good. Sometimes an idea won't be good, but our rule is: We try everything."

© 2010 Knoxville.com. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.