David Worth Mead was born on September 3, 1973 in Syosset, New York, to a traveling salesman father and a schoolteacher mother. Mead's family moved often during his childhood, mostly around the southern United States, before settling in Nashville, Tennessee, in 1986.[1][5] As a child, he sang in a church choir and in school productions like The Sound of Music. When he was 13, he got his first guitar and was soon writing his own songs; three years later, he was gigging professionally. In Nashville, he played in bands such as Verdant Green, Blue Million, and Joe, Marc's Brother.[1]
After Mine and Yours, Mead delivered a follow-up for RCA, but it was made after an A&R person for the label proclaimed that, given sales of Mead's first two albums, it was a "miracle" that a third was being recorded at all.[citation needed] The album was completed but ended up being shelved after BMG, RCA's parent company, merged RCA and J Records to form the RCA Music Group in 2003 and laid off approximately 50 staffers, including ones who worked in promotions, sales, and A&R;[6] Mead and other artists were subsequently dropped from RCA's roster.[7] He moved back to Nashville in late 2002 and, in between road gigs, started an EP with Nashville producer David Henry (Matthew Ryan, Guster); it soon turned into the full-length Indiana, released in May 2004 by Nettwerk America. Featuring "Nashville" and "Beauty".
Wherever You Are
Mead's third album for RCA, Wherever You Are, recorded in 2002 in Woodstock, New York, and Bath, England, finally emerged as a six-song EP in June 2005 via Eleven Thirty Records. Mead says.
I got the album back when I left [RCA] but felt, after releasing Indiana, that the full package was confusing and not indicative of where I was going musically anymore, so I tried to frame the songs as more [of] a lost piece of time.[citation needed]
In 2005, Mead married artist Natalie Cox and began work on his fourth LP. Produced by Brad Jones (Jill Sobule, Butterfly Boucher, Josh Rouse), Tangerine was released in May 2006 courtesy of Mead's own Tallulah! Media (his contract with Nettwerk wasn't renewed after Indiana).[1]Paste magazine described it as "the sound of a singer/songwriter finding his voice,"[9] and it was nominated in the category of Best Pop/Rock Album at the sixth annual Independent Music Awards in 2007 (Mead's website was nominated for Best Band-Website Design).[10]
Almost and Always
In 2008, having spent the previous year living in Brooklyn, New York, Mead moved back to Nashville after he and his wife separated.[11] Mead reunited with Brad Jones and recorded the intimate collection Almost and Always in seven days, most of it live. The majority of the album was co-written with Bill DeMain of Swan Dive; they originally conceived the project for an imaginary chanteuse. The track "Last Train Home" was an NPR Song of the Day[12] and was featured in a 2009 episode of ABC's Private Practice. Mead and DeMain also co-wrote a second, as-yet-unreleased album, "1908 Division," a conceptual suite about the denizens of an apartment building where Mead once resided. Almost and Always was first released in Japan in October 2008, then in the United States ten months later on Cheap Lullaby Records.
Dudes
Mead's sixth album was "funded entirely by fans, friends and lovers".[13] He raised $20,925 from 253 donors on Kickstarter in late 2010 to cover the recording, manufacturing, and distribution of Dudes[14][15] and documented the recording sessions, which took place over nine days in New York City, on his YouTube channel in January 2011.[16] Produced by Ethan Eubanks and Mead (Adam Schlesinger is credited as executive producer), the 12-song collection has strains of Randy Newman's humor ("Bocce Ball") and sharp storytelling ("The Smile of Rachael Ray," which was NPR's Song of the Day on December 14, 2011; Stephen Thompson called it "a new Christmas classic; a minor miracle worthy of the season that surrounds it").[17]Dudes was released in November 2011. Earlier that year, Mead married yoga instructor and nutritionist Liz Workman.
Cobra Pumps
On January 25, 2019, Mead sent an email to every address on his website's mailing list. "When it came time to figure [out] how to release COBRA PUMPS," he wrote,[18]
I needed money and, out of habit, approached a few different music business people for help. After a few slightly bizarre meetings in which algorithmically-induced metrics and social media compliance were discussed with a ferocity once reserved for killer hooks and Led Zeppelin, I deduced that I simply don't fit into the industry anymore, if I ever did. It now requires very different skill sets than the ones I have spent my life attempting to master. And that is OK with me ...
Mead emailed links to the album's ten tracks, as well as demos and other content, over the next ten days. Cobra Pumps became available for purchase on iTunes on January 29[19] and on CD and vinyl at Mead's website several days later.[20] To promote the album, Mead created a tongue-in-cheek LinkedIn page that listed various jobs and phases of his career.[21]
Mead has been involved in two high-profile side projects. In 2009, he co-founded Elle Macho, a power trio with Aussie singer-songwriter and bassist Butterfly Boucher and drummer Lindsay Jamieson (Ben Folds, Brendan Benson). They've released two EPs, ¡Es Potencial! (2009)[22] and VoVo (2016),[23] and one full-length, Import (2013) (which includes all five tracks from ¡Es Potencial!).[24]
Mead also formed Davey Ukulele & the Gag Time Gang, a quartet that released The Adventures of Davey Ukulele & the Gag Time Gang in 2010. Jim Ridley of Nashville Scene wrote,[25]
Sounding like a cross between 'Whip It'-era Devo and the pop pastiches on Phineas and Ferb (a mighty high compliment in my household), this merry kids' band actually camouflages a genuine Nashville supergroup: the tag team of David Mead, Swan Dive's Bill DeMain, Brother Henry's David Henry and The Mavericks' Paul Deakin[.]
Several times a year, Mead travels to Key West, Florida, to perform in a cover band called Phanni Pac (with Jason White, Scotty Huff and Paul Deakin) at the Hog's Breath Saloon. He has also been a regular guest singer with Nashville's popular '80s cover band, Guilty Pleasures.[citation needed]
^Mead, David (September 9, 2011). "Shoot No One". Still Waiting for the Phone to Ring. Blogspot. Retrieved January 13, 2022. The arrival of September always brings with it the beginning of another year on earth for me. So far, 38 feels like a winner.
^Orr, Jay (October 7, 1999). "David Mead's coming home". Nashville, Tennessee: The Tennessean. Retrieved January 16, 2022. Born on Long Island, Mead has lived in Nashville since 1986, when he moved here with his family.
^Goodman, Frank (June 2004). "A Conversation with David Mead"(PDF). Puremusic.com. Retrieved January 15, 2022. ... I got signed to RCA, and did two records for them which were released, and a third one which has yet to be. That relationship came to an end in, I guess, the beginning of last year. Indiana kind of came about as a byproduct of that, because I had done this record and turned it in right as RCA merged with another huge record label. So basically, anybody who hadn't sold 500,000 records [laughs] at that point was kind of let go.
^"Past IMA Programs". Independent Music Awards. Music Resource Group LLC. Retrieved January 12, 2022.
^"NPR Shines A Light On David Mead". American Songwriter. August 17, 2009. Retrieved January 14, 2022. After spending 2007 living in Brooklyn, Mead separated from his wife and returned to his native Nashville in early 2008 ...
