Riff Sessions: Austin Meade Interview with Meltdown
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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.