Riff Sessions: Austin Meade Interview with Meltdown

Beasley Digital

Transcript

00:00Well, down here at Stingers in Wixom for a special riff session with Austin Mead.

00:04Welcome to the Motor City. You've been here before, right?

00:07I have been here a handful of times, yes.

00:09Okay.

00:10But never here in this current seat at this current venue.

00:13It's funny because we posted a picture of you earlier today,

00:16and I had more than one person say,

00:18that looks like a young Bob Seger.

00:20Do you have any Bob Seger in your veins?

00:23I probably do through my grandfather and my father.

00:25I get a lot of classic rock references.

00:30Yeah, a lot of Cliff Burton.

00:31I get a lot of that.

00:34And some people bring up some of the guys from the Eagles, I guess because of the mustache.

00:41I was going to say the James Hetfield mustache, circa like 1987 or something.

00:44That's coming back, yeah.

00:47So tell us about yourself, man.

00:49What's Austin Mead all about?

00:52I've been just road-dogging for about 10 years, man.

00:56You're not an overnight success, no.

00:58You've been doing this for a while.

00:58No, I'd eventually like to call myself a success,

01:01but I think we're still on the staircase to be in there.

01:05I'm just a good old boy, just a Texan that's just been touring for a while

01:09and really started stretching our legs in the northeast.

01:13And I guess, is this the northeast or the Midwest?

01:17This is the Midwest.

01:17Okay, yeah.

01:18So the Midwest, we've reached almost up to you guys a couple times.

01:22I mean, we've been to Royal Oak before and done that.

01:25But really, just starting to stretch our legs really the last probably three years.

01:30But as far as we go, man, I love songwriting.

01:34I love honest and painful lyrics that I want to hurt people's feelings in the least amount of words possible.

01:41It's mostly my own feelings.

01:44Are you writing for Taylor Swift?

01:45That's the question, I suppose, right?

01:46I wish, no.

01:48Have you written for anybody else?

01:50We have had multiple co-writes with some folks,

01:53but usually if a song's really good, I turn selfish and I try to record it

01:57and just make it a really big rock and roll song.

02:00But, yeah, I love classic rock.

02:03I love big guitars.

02:06And my dad had me going to concerts when I was little,

02:09so I just love getting blown away by the experience of big speakers and just real music.

02:18You know, none of what I would consider fake bullshit.

02:21But everybody's got their own opinion, and we just do our own thing.

02:26Yeah, if somebody throws something at you on stage and you throw the microphone

02:28and the words keep coming out of your mouth, that's kind of crazy, too.

02:31I have not done that yet.

02:33You know what I'm talking about?

02:34Yeah, I saw that, yeah.

02:36Well, I'm sure you wouldn't have done that yet.

02:38No, we played a couple festivals where we're one of the only bands that doesn't do the whole track thing.

02:43And, you know, I love special effects, and I love using that low end

02:48because I feel like that is part of the 80s, right?

02:51In the 80s, they used some of those effects, especially on drums and stuff.

02:55And I do love that.

02:56But when you get that far away from the actual performance, I mean, you're selling somebody a fake turd.

03:01So, you kind of...

03:02Yeah, we don't want none of that right here in the Motor City, that's for sure.

03:05I swear, here tonight, we're only doing two actual lines of vocals and two lines of guitars, and that's it.

03:11Yeah, bare bones, no question about it.

03:13Are you comfortable doing this kind of stuff, or do you like to be behind a wall of sound?

03:17No, I started...

03:19Man, I started playing dives and Mexican food joints down in Texas probably for my first, like, three or four years

03:27where I'd have to bring my own speakers and set up a PA and play for, like, three hours.

03:32And, you know, sometimes that meant an hour and a half of load in,

03:36and then after I was drunk after the show, an hour and a half of load out by myself.

03:40So, I'm used to it.

03:41It definitely brings me back to my roots, and I think playing some acoustic shows

03:45really brings you back to the songwriting aspect, because that's usually how most of my songs end up,

03:50and it's cool to reconnect with that, like, raw, original image of where the song started.

03:55Now, you're obviously right here in Detroit, you know, in the Motor City, as they say,

03:59and there's been a ton of music that's come out of this, you know, part of the world

04:02for the past several decades.

04:04But you're from Austin, and that's a music mecca of its own, right, isn't it?

04:09Yeah, I'm from just south of there.

04:11My name is Austin, but no, I'm not named after Austin, Texas.

04:13Oh, I thought that you were, yeah.

04:14So, you're from around that area.

04:16Right, I am, yeah, yeah.

04:17But there's a lot of music there, but I would say over the last, I don't know,

04:24five or so years, we haven't spent a lot of time playing in the local area,

04:28because we've been trying to get the fuck out, basically.

04:32Right, right.

04:32You ever go to South by Southwest down there?

04:34Have you seen that?

04:35I did years and years ago.

04:37I've done that.

04:38It's a real clusterfuck, if I say so myself.

04:41But I kind of like to get in and get out and enjoy my time in the middle of nowhere,

04:46you know, which is why I love the Midwest area,

04:49is because you kind of, you get that green grass, those beautiful trees,

04:52and that breath of fresh air.

04:54Big cities scare me, dude.

04:56I'm with you.

04:57And now we've got, you know, bikini motorcycle washes here.

05:00I'm not complaining about that.

05:02I'd like to see more of that in my hometown, yes.

05:04So, what do you got going on the rest of 2023?

05:08My wife's about to pop out our first kid.

05:11Oh, congratulations.

05:12Yeah, so I'll be a dad in two weeks or less.

05:15I'm hoping two weeks.

05:17So, honey, don't go into labor until I get home tomorrow, please.

05:21And then we have a really big tour we're going to be announcing next week.

05:25We'll actually be back in Detroit.

05:26We're coming back here along with pretty much every major city from coast to coast,

05:33from here to, I mean, southern Florida, and then back up to Ontario.

05:38Wow, that's cool.

05:39So you're going to be hopping on a major tour, eh?

05:41Yeah.

05:42A bunch of that going on.

05:44It's going to be a beautiful thing.

05:45It's going to be a beautiful thing.

05:46Well, congratulations on everything, and congratulations on your firstborn.

05:51Do you know if it's a boy or a girl?

05:53Yeah, it's a boy.

05:54I'm going to name him Jet, so hopefully he's fast as hell.

05:57We'll see.

05:58Yeah, you can't have a sloth like Jet, can you?

06:00I'm trying to encourage him before he even knows it.

06:03Be fast, be efficient, be good.

06:05There you go.

06:06So Austin Meade here from 101 WRIF.

06:08Thank you so much for your time.

06:09Appreciate you.

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