The Sit Down with Austin Meade
Texas artist Austin Meade has steadily forged his own path in modern Southern-infused rock over recent years and this week has returned with his latest album on Snakefarm/ Universal – Almost Famous - a raw, honest look at chasing dreams, finding your place, and figuring out what “making it” really means. Known for mixing gritty rock sounds with storytelling straight from the heart, Austin brings his sharp wit and real-life experiences to every track. We caught up with Austin earlier this week to chat about the stories behind Almost Famous.
Almost Famous is out in just a few days. How does it feel to be in this final countdown?
Yeah, I've been working on it for a while. I'm excited that the record's finally going to be out because there's always a long waiting period once you start to actually get the whole thing done. I've been listening to those songs now for like a year!
In the lead up, you've only released three of the 10 songs. Was that always your intention to make sure most of it was left until the album was released?
I would have done more singles if I had more time. I just wanted to get it out before we got too close to the holidays and stuff. I mean, I think we're already pushing the limits as I was hoping this thing would be out in the summer or October maybe, but the way everything worked out with my touring and stuff, we just decided to do November 7th. It is what it is and I'm just happy to get it out and ready for people to hear the whole rest of the story.
Your touring schedule looks like it's been pretty hectic the last couple of months, even pushing into December.
We were really busy at the beginning of the year and then I took a little bit of time off during the summer and four weeks we had a new baby. I took a little bit of time from traveling and then we hit it pretty hard again.
Has it been tough to juggle the release and touring with a baby?
My wife is really good at handling things when I'm gone, but we've got two of them. There's one running around destroying everything and then the other one's just about to crawl. So, definitely it's different. When you get home, you don't get to just sit on the couch like you used to when you got home from touring, you know, straight to work! They grew up so fast when I leave for a month or two and I come back and they look like a different human being and I'm like, oh man, I wish I was sticking around to see all that happen as it goes, but it makes it fun.
It then must make that time off the road a bit more meaningful as well for you.
Yeah, as much as much as we can. I feel like there's always so much stuff to catch up on whenever we get back between the kids and fixing stuff that broke on tour and then getting ready for the next one.
Almost Famous is out in just a few days. How does it feel to be in this final countdown?
Yeah, I've been working on it for a while. I'm excited that the record's finally going to be out because there's always a long waiting period once you start to actually get the whole thing done. I've been listening to those songs now for like a year!
In the lead up, you've only released three of the 10 songs. Was that always your intention to make sure most of it was left until the album was released?
I would have done more singles if I had more time. I just wanted to get it out before we got too close to the holidays and stuff. I mean, I think we're already pushing the limits as I was hoping this thing would be out in the summer or October maybe, but the way everything worked out with my touring and stuff, we just decided to do November 7th. It is what it is and I'm just happy to get it out and ready for people to hear the whole rest of the story.
Your touring schedule looks like it's been pretty hectic the last couple of months, even pushing into December.
We were really busy at the beginning of the year and then I took a little bit of time off during the summer and four weeks we had a new baby. I took a little bit of time from traveling and then we hit it pretty hard again.
Has it been tough to juggle the release and touring with a baby?
My wife is really good at handling things when I'm gone, but we've got two of them. There's one running around destroying everything and then the other one's just about to crawl. So, definitely it's different. When you get home, you don't get to just sit on the couch like you used to when you got home from touring, you know, straight to work! They grew up so fast when I leave for a month or two and I come back and they look like a different human being and I'm like, oh man, I wish I was sticking around to see all that happen as it goes, but it makes it fun.
It then must make that time off the road a bit more meaningful as well for you.
Yeah, as much as much as we can. I feel like there's always so much stuff to catch up on whenever we get back between the kids and fixing stuff that broke on tour and then getting ready for the next one.
With the shows you're playing a minute, you're kind of at that point where sometimes you've got a headline show yourself, sometimes it's a co-headline and sometimes the support act, how are you kind of finding that mix that can almost change night by night.
I've gotten used to it for sure. I mean, obviously the set length is different. I like to play at least an hour, so sometimes when you show up and you're the opener or support, then it just depends on the lineup for the night, but it's tough to go and only play 30 minutes. I feel like you just get warmed up! I try to shove as much music in there as I can, but, on the bigger support tours, it's almost less stress for me because I don't have to worry about all the little things that the headliners have to worry about. I just show up and do my job and then I'm usually done pretty early. I go hang out and watch the rest of the show or go hang out at the merch table, shake hands. Those are fun and are usually a good time to make new friendships in the music industry and stuff. Around my home area, like Texas and Oklahoma, I definitely like to headline when we can, but we just went to the West coast and I got to California and Arizona and stuff with another Texas artist - Pecos and the Rooftops. It was a lot of fun and it was cool to be able to go rock out and do our thing. It honestly helps us spread the word about what we're doing.
Sometimes you have those moments where it must be very cool to stand side of stage with say Blackstone Cherry, watching them each night. But at the same time, going to a new market that you might not necessarily be able to headline on your own at the minute.
Yeah, or if we've been to that market, maybe we've played a smaller club room or something, then we go with the big boys and they're playing to two or three, to five thousand people, you know? That's always a lot of fun. We have a pretty wide variety in my sound, so I can change parts of the set list if it's a more country leaning act or a more rock leaning act, then I can just come out really heavy. I try to not scare off the country crowds at the very beginning, but the more we've done the new record, the more that I've just been like, throw them your biggest punch at the beginning! It's kind of fun to shift it around. If we're doing like a month or two with another band, then after the first couple of shows, I get a feel for what most of these crowds would like, so I can shift this song here, this song there, and try to have a little bit more of a roller coaster, depending on the tour that we're on.
If you're going out in front of a whole blown country crowd, how do you think they're going to react to Bubblegum and Cigarettes?
At first, I didn't know, but I've been doing that one at all the country shows. They love it! At the very end we add like another breakdown and that's probably the heaviest moment in the set. I always tell everybody; I want to see everybody in here jumping - I want to see everybody in here moving. Then we go into it and then all of a sudden there's hundreds of cowboy hats just banging up and down and jumping. It's pretty badass!
I've gotten used to it for sure. I mean, obviously the set length is different. I like to play at least an hour, so sometimes when you show up and you're the opener or support, then it just depends on the lineup for the night, but it's tough to go and only play 30 minutes. I feel like you just get warmed up! I try to shove as much music in there as I can, but, on the bigger support tours, it's almost less stress for me because I don't have to worry about all the little things that the headliners have to worry about. I just show up and do my job and then I'm usually done pretty early. I go hang out and watch the rest of the show or go hang out at the merch table, shake hands. Those are fun and are usually a good time to make new friendships in the music industry and stuff. Around my home area, like Texas and Oklahoma, I definitely like to headline when we can, but we just went to the West coast and I got to California and Arizona and stuff with another Texas artist - Pecos and the Rooftops. It was a lot of fun and it was cool to be able to go rock out and do our thing. It honestly helps us spread the word about what we're doing.
Sometimes you have those moments where it must be very cool to stand side of stage with say Blackstone Cherry, watching them each night. But at the same time, going to a new market that you might not necessarily be able to headline on your own at the minute.
Yeah, or if we've been to that market, maybe we've played a smaller club room or something, then we go with the big boys and they're playing to two or three, to five thousand people, you know? That's always a lot of fun. We have a pretty wide variety in my sound, so I can change parts of the set list if it's a more country leaning act or a more rock leaning act, then I can just come out really heavy. I try to not scare off the country crowds at the very beginning, but the more we've done the new record, the more that I've just been like, throw them your biggest punch at the beginning! It's kind of fun to shift it around. If we're doing like a month or two with another band, then after the first couple of shows, I get a feel for what most of these crowds would like, so I can shift this song here, this song there, and try to have a little bit more of a roller coaster, depending on the tour that we're on.
If you're going out in front of a whole blown country crowd, how do you think they're going to react to Bubblegum and Cigarettes?
At first, I didn't know, but I've been doing that one at all the country shows. They love it! At the very end we add like another breakdown and that's probably the heaviest moment in the set. I always tell everybody; I want to see everybody in here jumping - I want to see everybody in here moving. Then we go into it and then all of a sudden there's hundreds of cowboy hats just banging up and down and jumping. It's pretty badass!
Almost Famous has got such that contrast between your bare root’s country music and your all out rock music. Was that always the intention when you were putting the tracks together?
I like to do that with my records and kind of show the versatility of what we can do. Some people don't like that I do that, but I love it when an artist is able to not have the entire record sound the same. I definitely pick the track listing in a very specific order - it starts heavy and then it kind of lightens up for just a second and then it has a little bit of grunge towards the end. I think on all my records, I definitely think we've gotten better at it over the last couple of years, but we've really tried to push the limit of whatever the genre is on the heavy side and whatever genre is on the light side. At first, it was probably just like country and southern rock. I feel like on this record, there's like a lot of almost clean pop and rock and roll, and then there's some really heavy grunge mixed with metal riffs.
Then you get a song of Like Father Like Son, which almost just brings it totally back down, doesn't it?
Yeah, that was that was a special one to me. That was the first song I wrote after we had our first kid and I wrote it with some other buddies who also had some boys. I really wanted it to be a time stamp of, all right, this is the first record I'm releasing after becoming a father and I've got my kids laughing in there and stuff. That's actually his on the song Bad Days at the very end - there's like a little metal scream - and that was actually my kid when he was about six months old. There was a lot of fun moments like that in this record.
Is it nice to of found a home for the track?
We wrote a bunch of songs for this record. I had quite a bit of time with most of the songs to show my friends or family and just kind of get some reactions. The ones that we ended up picking seemed to get the most response or get stuck in people's heads the most that I showed all of the songs to. I knew as soon as we wrote Like Father Like Son, I was like, yeah, this is going on the next record for sure. It was going to be hard not to put it on there and I felt like I said that about all 10 songs that are on here every day for a year straight.
I like to do that with my records and kind of show the versatility of what we can do. Some people don't like that I do that, but I love it when an artist is able to not have the entire record sound the same. I definitely pick the track listing in a very specific order - it starts heavy and then it kind of lightens up for just a second and then it has a little bit of grunge towards the end. I think on all my records, I definitely think we've gotten better at it over the last couple of years, but we've really tried to push the limit of whatever the genre is on the heavy side and whatever genre is on the light side. At first, it was probably just like country and southern rock. I feel like on this record, there's like a lot of almost clean pop and rock and roll, and then there's some really heavy grunge mixed with metal riffs.
Then you get a song of Like Father Like Son, which almost just brings it totally back down, doesn't it?
Yeah, that was that was a special one to me. That was the first song I wrote after we had our first kid and I wrote it with some other buddies who also had some boys. I really wanted it to be a time stamp of, all right, this is the first record I'm releasing after becoming a father and I've got my kids laughing in there and stuff. That's actually his on the song Bad Days at the very end - there's like a little metal scream - and that was actually my kid when he was about six months old. There was a lot of fun moments like that in this record.
Is it nice to of found a home for the track?
We wrote a bunch of songs for this record. I had quite a bit of time with most of the songs to show my friends or family and just kind of get some reactions. The ones that we ended up picking seemed to get the most response or get stuck in people's heads the most that I showed all of the songs to. I knew as soon as we wrote Like Father Like Son, I was like, yeah, this is going on the next record for sure. It was going to be hard not to put it on there and I felt like I said that about all 10 songs that are on here every day for a year straight.
With the title track, Almost Famous, I understand it almost comes from your own Tony Hawk type moments!
Yeah, I mean, there's sometimes when I go out in small towns, like where I'm from, where folks don't want to take pictures, and they'll recognize me, which is great. Then there are other times when I go to a new city and new states, and no one has any idea who we are and we're like, well, I hope somebody shows up to the show! It's just kind of about the polar opposites, the ebb and flow of that feeling like you're on top of the world and then you go out and tour somewhere new, and no one knows who you are! That’s when you're like, wow, it's a very humbling moment. It happens to us all the time, so there's just a lot of real me in that song as well, calling my grandma on the list of stuff to do back at home with the boys and everything. I was just being as honest as I possibly could for that, that song.
You teamed up with Mitchell Ferguson for Civil War. Was it good to have that collaboration on the album as the only collaboration?
Mitchell's one of my best friends. He had started writing Civil War and then I asked him if he was going to use it. I just felt like it really fit in well with the other songs that were on the album. I said, hey, dude, do you mind if we change a couple melodies here and a couple words? We changed like the key of the song; we made it way lower; we drop the guitars down super low, and it sounds extremely heavy. Mitchell happened to be in town when we were recording that, so I called him and I was like, hey, dude, you started this song, why don't you come sing on it? He popped over to the studio for like two hours and just ripped it. He has an amazing voice, and he played some of the solo on there and came up with the main theme guitar riff. It didn't make sense for me to really have anybody else on there other than somebody who also created it.
Yeah, I mean, there's sometimes when I go out in small towns, like where I'm from, where folks don't want to take pictures, and they'll recognize me, which is great. Then there are other times when I go to a new city and new states, and no one has any idea who we are and we're like, well, I hope somebody shows up to the show! It's just kind of about the polar opposites, the ebb and flow of that feeling like you're on top of the world and then you go out and tour somewhere new, and no one knows who you are! That’s when you're like, wow, it's a very humbling moment. It happens to us all the time, so there's just a lot of real me in that song as well, calling my grandma on the list of stuff to do back at home with the boys and everything. I was just being as honest as I possibly could for that, that song.
You teamed up with Mitchell Ferguson for Civil War. Was it good to have that collaboration on the album as the only collaboration?
Mitchell's one of my best friends. He had started writing Civil War and then I asked him if he was going to use it. I just felt like it really fit in well with the other songs that were on the album. I said, hey, dude, do you mind if we change a couple melodies here and a couple words? We changed like the key of the song; we made it way lower; we drop the guitars down super low, and it sounds extremely heavy. Mitchell happened to be in town when we were recording that, so I called him and I was like, hey, dude, you started this song, why don't you come sing on it? He popped over to the studio for like two hours and just ripped it. He has an amazing voice, and he played some of the solo on there and came up with the main theme guitar riff. It didn't make sense for me to really have anybody else on there other than somebody who also created it.
Going back sort of six, seven years now when it all started for you. You obviously put that first album out back in 2019, and since then Happier Alone has almost been that song that must just keep on giving for you.
Yeah, I was recording music as far back as like 2013, and we had a couple independent records, but once Happier Alone came out, I think around 19, then that's really when we started touring more nationally. That's still like streaming wise, our most popular song, even though it's literally the most simple song that I think I have of all of them! It opened a lot of doors and we play it almost every night still. It's cool to see people still loving to sing along with that song. When we just bust into the first guitar riff from Happier Alone, most of the time, the whole crowd knows what song it is. It's just kind of a moment where I can be like, all right, I haven't even sang anything yet and already know that they know the song because they're freaking out over the guitar riff. So that's cool.
Does it surprise you that that was the song that maybe got picked up by so many people to really launch you nationally?
Not really, as soon as we wrote it in the van with just an acoustic guitar and just the lyrics, I came back home and we had just moved into a new house and I made my wife sit down and listen to it. I played it like four times in a row, and this is probably the song just because the melody in it was just so catchy. Whenever people started hopping onto it, I was like, dude, I just I felt like I knew it from the beginning that it was going to be one of those songs. I do think that on this new record we've beaten it with a couple of other songs. I'm saying that hopefully, but I really feel like the melodies on the Almost Famous record are very reminiscent of those from the Black Sheep record that had Happier Alone on it. There's a lot of similar guitar riffs and stuff. We didn't necessarily do that intentionally, but my writing style kind of went back to starting with the melody and starting with the vocal and then building everything else around it, which is what I did for the Black Sheep record.
Yeah, I was recording music as far back as like 2013, and we had a couple independent records, but once Happier Alone came out, I think around 19, then that's really when we started touring more nationally. That's still like streaming wise, our most popular song, even though it's literally the most simple song that I think I have of all of them! It opened a lot of doors and we play it almost every night still. It's cool to see people still loving to sing along with that song. When we just bust into the first guitar riff from Happier Alone, most of the time, the whole crowd knows what song it is. It's just kind of a moment where I can be like, all right, I haven't even sang anything yet and already know that they know the song because they're freaking out over the guitar riff. So that's cool.
Does it surprise you that that was the song that maybe got picked up by so many people to really launch you nationally?
Not really, as soon as we wrote it in the van with just an acoustic guitar and just the lyrics, I came back home and we had just moved into a new house and I made my wife sit down and listen to it. I played it like four times in a row, and this is probably the song just because the melody in it was just so catchy. Whenever people started hopping onto it, I was like, dude, I just I felt like I knew it from the beginning that it was going to be one of those songs. I do think that on this new record we've beaten it with a couple of other songs. I'm saying that hopefully, but I really feel like the melodies on the Almost Famous record are very reminiscent of those from the Black Sheep record that had Happier Alone on it. There's a lot of similar guitar riffs and stuff. We didn't necessarily do that intentionally, but my writing style kind of went back to starting with the melody and starting with the vocal and then building everything else around it, which is what I did for the Black Sheep record.
Have you been able to play a lot of the tracks for a live audience yet to see how it comes across?
Yeah, we've been playing Honey Do Ya, Bad Days, Almost Famous. We're about to start playing Civil War too. We've been playing Bubblegum and Cigarettes for a couple of months now just because it's hilariously funny to play that heavy of a song at like a country show! I really think that one's going to catch on hard. Even Bad Days, I can see everybody singing along to that and that's currently one of the only songs where I have the ability to set down the guitar and the other guys handle it so I can run around kind of crazy and get the crowd involved! So far, every new one that we've played, from my point of view at the front of the stage, has gotten a really great response.
Do you think you're going to be able to bring the show over to the UK and Europe in 2026?
I've been asking people if I can come over there for like three years! They just haven't found the right fit yet with the right time. I think we had one offer, but it was right when I was about to have a baby, so I had to say, hey, take me back next year. I know we've been looking, so seriously, if you anybody reading this over there, if you have any suggestions of where to go or what festivals to hit, I'd love to hear from you. I check all the Instagram messages. So absolutely. Let me know! I've been over there just traveling and visiting like with my dad back when I was in grade school, but I haven't got to take the music over there yet.
Well, hopefully we can have you over soon.
Absolutely.
Well, thank you so much for your time today, Austin. Obviously, good luck with the release of Almost Famous.
I appreciate it.
Yeah, we've been playing Honey Do Ya, Bad Days, Almost Famous. We're about to start playing Civil War too. We've been playing Bubblegum and Cigarettes for a couple of months now just because it's hilariously funny to play that heavy of a song at like a country show! I really think that one's going to catch on hard. Even Bad Days, I can see everybody singing along to that and that's currently one of the only songs where I have the ability to set down the guitar and the other guys handle it so I can run around kind of crazy and get the crowd involved! So far, every new one that we've played, from my point of view at the front of the stage, has gotten a really great response.
Do you think you're going to be able to bring the show over to the UK and Europe in 2026?
I've been asking people if I can come over there for like three years! They just haven't found the right fit yet with the right time. I think we had one offer, but it was right when I was about to have a baby, so I had to say, hey, take me back next year. I know we've been looking, so seriously, if you anybody reading this over there, if you have any suggestions of where to go or what festivals to hit, I'd love to hear from you. I check all the Instagram messages. So absolutely. Let me know! I've been over there just traveling and visiting like with my dad back when I was in grade school, but I haven't got to take the music over there yet.
Well, hopefully we can have you over soon.
Absolutely.
Well, thank you so much for your time today, Austin. Obviously, good luck with the release of Almost Famous.
I appreciate it.
