Todd’s story lives at the meeting place of Appalachian roots and Lowcountry tides—music and memoir, faith and questions, survival and service.
A guitarist, singer-songwriter, author, and founder, Todd has spent a lifetime turning what he has lived into songs that make room for other people. This is the whole story—not a collection of separate projects, but one life shaped by mercy, community, and the courage to keep becoming.
Charleston, South Carolina✦Brackish Honky Tonk✦Love · Mercy · Grace
The music
Songs that told the story first.
Classic country bones, Southern soul, power-pop color, and a baritone shaped by every mile between the mountains and the marsh.
Before the trauma, before the prison years, before faith became tangled with fear, there was a boy who knew he was loved.
In The Altar of My Mind, Todd Mayson traces a life shaped by a fundamentalist upbringing, family loss, incarceration, the struggle to live honestly, and the language of music. With unguarded honesty, he recounts not only what wounded him, but what helped him find his way home: community, the Eucharist, and a faith spacious enough to hold the person he had always been.
This is not a story of returning to who he was. It is the story of becoming whole—of discovering that love endured, mercy remained, and grace had been waiting all along.
“Honest, compelling, beautiful, heart-breaking, joy-giving, and hope-inspiring. I would not change a word. I love it.”—The Rev. Dow Sanderson
About the author
Todd Mayson is a Charleston-based musician, songwriter, performer, and first-time memoirist whose life and work explore trauma, incarceration, grief, music, recovery, and sacramental faith.
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Planning a conversation, reading, interview, or Story & Song event?
Before Todd fully understood what his story meant, the song had already given language to the space between surviving and truly being well. In The Altar of My Mind, it becomes a lens through which the adult can finally understand the child he once was.
Songs, memories, and the life behind them meet in Todd’s new spoken-story series.
August 19, 20268 min 45 secRelated song · Festival of Time
Before Todd had a diagnosis or understood much about trauma, a song recognized something he could not yet name. Episode One asks what might change if, before reducing someone to their behavior, we became curious about what that behavior may be carrying.
“Sometimes the behavior people judge is the language of a wound no one has learned to hear.”
Listen here, or take the story with you.
Faith & becoming
“I stopped romanticizing eventual death and started romanticizing living life now.”
Todd’s spiritual life is rooted in the Eucharist, the rhythm of liturgy, and a belief that the Kingdom of God is practiced in the way we love the person in the room with us.
His journey from fundamentalism into the Episcopal tradition is not a rejection of faith, but an ongoing discovery of a faith spacious enough for questions, healing, community, and his full identity.
B.M.J. FOUNDATION
Love made practical
Dignity begins with being seen.
The Barry Mayson Jr. Foundation for the Unsheltered honors Todd’s late brother by meeting immediate, human needs: shoes that fit, clean socks and underwear, hygiene essentials, and the simple dignity of being treated as a neighbor.
Serving people across the Lowcountry and East Tennessee, the foundation turns remembrance into care—one person, one practical act of mercy at a time.
The song behind the mission
Cardboard Crown
Written in memory of Barry Jr. and for every person whose humanity is too easily reduced to the word “homeless,” the song gives voice to the dignity at the heart of this work.
Seeking a legal partner who believes dignity matters.
The Barry Mayson Jr. Foundation is currently an emerging charitable initiative, not yet an incorporated nonprofit or tax-exempt organization. Todd is seeking an attorney or legal professional who connects with the mission and may be willing to offer pro bono or reduced-fee guidance through formation, governance, and the path toward responsible nonprofit status.
This is an invitation to help build the foundation well from the beginning—so its compassion is matched by accountability, transparency, and lasting structure.
Todd is available for intimate song-and-story programs and conversations, as well as live musical performances shaped for the room.
Song & story
Conversation with a soundtrack
Intimate programs for churches, book clubs, community gatherings, podcasts, television segments, and other spaces where story, music, faith, and healing can meet.
Live music
Music made for the room
Solo, duo, trio, or full-band performances for venues, private events, festivals, and listening rooms—from classic country favorites to Todd’s original songs.
Tell Todd what you have in mind, and begin the conversation.
