Wednesday, May 16th, Matthew Mayfield and David Ramirez rolled into Nashville for a night of intimate music. For the second straight night I found myself at 12th and Porter, where the two singer/songwriters played a day after Gregory Alan Isakov.
Playing first out of the two was Matthew Mayfield. Originally, I found both of these artists through their serialbox sessions. Mayfield, from Birmingham, Alabama, caught my eye because of an acoustic cover of the Foo Fighter’s song Best of You. Ever since taking a listen, I have been a big fan. At the show, Mayfield opened with a lot of new songs from his new album. After finishing his first one of the night, Mayfield thanked everyone for showing up on a Wednesday and proceeded to explain to everyone that for the whole tour [8 days to this point] he and David Ramirez had been drunk every night. This would be a great start to the humor that Mayfield shared for the rest of his set. After playing more new songs, Mayfield took a break from originals and explained that he was about to play a song from an 80’s album that had a naked baby with a tiny penis on it; much to the crowd’s pleasure, the song Smells like Team Spirit by Nirvana shortly followed. Mayfield finished off his set with some older material and crowd favorites like Fire Escape and Element
David Ramirez.
The guy is unbelievable. It was my second time seeing him live [the first of which was at an empty New Brookland] and he continues to amaze me. His set on Wednesday mostly consisted of new music from his soon to be released
album, which only raised my excitement for the release. Then came his most famous songs, Fires and Shoeboxes. Besides Ramirez, the only sound in the bar was the bartender, who was promptly shushed by the sound guy, to which she said, “wow, that has never happened before.” Accompanying Ramirez on those songs was an attractive girl with an even more attractive voice. The duo’s harmonies were flawless. To finish out the captivating set, Ramirez played some of his older songs like Dancing with Vodka and God Bless, a couple of fan favorites.
 A solid 250 showed up to see the duo play. If you don’t know who either of these guys are, take some time and check them out.
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Last time I saw David Ramirez, him and Brandon Kinder had their shirts off sitting on the back patio. Huge fan.