Jessica Lea Mayfield / Charlotte Rose Benjamin
Jessica Lea Mayfield will be performing to celebrate 15 years since her first album With Blasphemy So Heartfelt was released. She'll be playing her entire first album acoustically and in order. At these shows a special edition WBSH anniversary vinyl will be available.
The very first sound you hear is a doubled, drifting vocal calling out the name of early aughts teen movie star Hayden Panettiere. A garage trio slams in, and from the first minute of Charlotte Rose Benjamin’s debut album, Dreamtina, onward, we are on a journey somewhere between desperate and audacious, yet sunny as a Beach Boys record.
The execution of the record was just as natural. Benjamin and the band produced the album themselves in drummer/engineer Matti Dunietz’s basement studio in Ridgewood, Brooklyn and at her musician father’s ramshackle home studio on Martha’s Vineyard where she grew up. “My life changed and my music got so much better when I met Matti Dunietz and Nardo Ochoa. We made the album completely on our own with my lifelong best friend/bassist, Zoe Zeeman. I felt so free.”
Benjamin’s debut EP, Party City (2020), was released with Moshi Moshi/Neon Gold records. It received airplay on BBC 6 Music and BBC Radio 1 with Jack Saunders making the title track his "Next Wave." Party City also received praise from Clash Magazine and Blackbook Magazine, and was featured on Spotify’s Global New Music Friday playlist. The same year, Benjamin performed background vocals on Gus Dapperton’s 2020 album, ORCA, and starred in videos for his breakout hits “I’m Just Snacking” and “Post Humorous.” In 2019, she played as tour support for Houndmouth and was later set to share the stage with Nasty Cherry and Role Model at SXSW before the festival was cancelled due to the Covid19 pandemic. Benjamin also counts The Flaming Lips’ Wayne Coyne as a fan and frequent social media supporter. Her latest releases, “deep cut” and “Cumbie’s Parking Lot” received praise from YouTube critic David Dean Burkheart and were both featured on Spotify’s Fresh Finds: Indie playlist for more than ten weeks.