Best of British Showcase #4 – Devon Mayson
Welcome to a new series on Belles and Gals where Nick Cantwell (twitter.com/nickbelles_gals) will be highlighting some of the very best acts on the UK country music scene, casting an eye over their music and chatting to the artists too. The series continues today with the wonderful Devon Mayson.
Devon Mayson is an artist I’ve been a fan of for quite some time now, ever since she released her debut album ‘Lie to Me’ in 2016, an album that came out the year Belles and Gals launched. On the back of the album we named Devon our UK newcomer of the year. However, I’d never seen Devon play live until last year, when I invited her to play a Belles and Gals show in London. The ‘Devon Mayson Trio’ were just brilliant and to say I was blown away is an understatement, and immediately afterwards I said she ‘has to have’ a headline gig for us which we booked this very week! (read more about that below!).
I caught up with Devon for a chat this week, where we talked about that show, her latest single and hopes and plans for 2019!
Hi Devon, I was lucky enough to see you play live for the first time in 2018, when you performed at the Green Note for Belles and Gals. You put on an amazing show! Tell me how the ‘Devon Mayson trio’ formed?
Thank you so much- we had an incredible time! I’ve always been very lucky to be surrounded by incredible musicians and I love working with them. Working in a group I feel really brings the best out of me, so it was just a case of choosing people who I respect enormously as musicians and love as friends. Did turned up to one of my solo gigs in Cheltenham a few years back and ended up performing a few spontaneous songs on stage with me that night! We’ve been great friends ever since. Juliette actually jumped in to perform in a full band line up I had for our BBC Introducing slot at Lakefest, a few years ago now when I was let down at the last minute. She got in touch responding to an emergency post I put out and came to our rescue. She was so brilliant, and such a wonderful person, I knew it would be incredible to have her on board.
Throughout December you featured live music every day on your social media – it was just brilliant! That must have been some undertaking?
That was one of the most challenging tasks I’ve ever set myself! It seemed like such a straightforward thing to do at the time, but 25 is a lot of songs! I absolutely loved going to visit so many artists and loved putting arrangements together with them. It’s given me a lot of people to co-write with this coming year and broken down a barrier I’ve always had about posting live and imperfect content online. There’s so much pressure to only put out polished videos and images, but also having to put out content constantly. With so little time, it forced me to be much more confident about what we were putting out.
Tell me about your involvement with the Royal British Legion and the fantastic single ‘Silent Night’?
It was an honour to work with the British Legion again. I’ve been volunteering for them since I was at Uni, so I knew I wanted to release a charity single for them at some point. It all tied together so perfectly. I asked my Dad for advice about a storyline for a video and before we knew it, we’d both gotten so carried away. Our cast and crew were all incredible and seeing it shown in two cinemas was surreal. I hope it’s helped raise more awareness of the work the Legion do all year round, and not just in November. It was an incredible project to be a part of.
Devon Mayson – Silent Night
To finish, what can we expect from Devon Mayson in 2019?
Lots I hope! I’ve got so many exciting co-writes in the pipeline, as well as recording and the constant building of my music agency, Apatura. It’s so rewarding to be able to give back to other artists through the agency, and I’m so proud of how far it’s come in such a short space of time. I’ve got so much new music written now, so we’re putting together a tour as a trio to road test what we’ve got and we shall see where we go from there!
Devon Mayson – You Only Love Me When You’re Drunk
This week we announced Devon Mayson’s headline gig, and now we can officially announce the whole line up for the evening! Devon will be joined by the wonderful Roisin O’Hagan and Abby Inez at the Slaughtered Lamb on Wednesday May 1st!
Tickets here – http://www.wegottickets.com/event/463187
