`Round Indie Music

A Mayfield Affair

Category: Songwriter Stories

A Mayfield AffairAt first listen, A Mayfield Affair's upbeat, banjo driven, almost country-ish song "Kansas" might conjure up sweet thoughts of the Wizard of Oz, with its many references to the Oz story, but the truth has a slightly sharper edge than you may think.

I wrote it as a reply to an argument in a recent romantic entanglement. I rarely talk about it, but once, in another universe, I was engaged to a woman who I thought was the one for me. She became close to my family (who all live in Kansas) and when things went south, the engagement ended. Yet she would still talk of wanting to go out to Kansas to visit them. It was her dream to sit on our front porch, drink sweet tea, and relax in my family's company. I sat down to write out my thoughts about this and a song was created. I was trying to make a point without turning the song into an "I Hate You" moment, and I wanted to explain that my family was a perk of being with me and that she couldn't get her dream of Kansas family moments without me, so if she still wanted that, then she needed to come to her senses, and come back to me.

Funnily enough, when she first heard the song, all she focused on was that it appeared that I was calling her a witch with the "You'll never get there riding brooms" line. With the writing of this song, it paved the way for me to write more metaphorically, in order to try and spare some feelings, as my writing style up to that point was always very literal. Those involved in situations I would choose to write about would have no trouble figuring out what I was talking about. Learning this has saved me a lot of trouble, and made the music I've been a part of creating much better.

Apryl Evans

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