Chuck Mead Makes Plowboy Records Debut With 'Free State Serenade' March 4

Nashville’s Plowboy Records has announced the signing of Chuck Mead and will release his new record ‘Free State Serenade’ on March 4. A wild ride of hillbilly blues and honky tonk, Mead, best known for his work as frontman for BR549, wrote the album based on the stories and legends, crimes and lonesome open road of his childhood and formative years in Kansas. He recorded it with his longtime band, the Grassy Knoll Boys.

‘Free State Serenade’ jumps from jaunty mountain airs like “Neosho Valley Sue,” where BR5-49’s Don Herron lends his fiddle to what Mead calls a “coming of age ditty” to “Sittin’ On Top Of The Bottom” a whip-smart ode to “Sittin’ On Top Of The World.” “The Devil By Their Side” is a dark, chugging rock n’ roll number about William Quantrill’s murderous 1863 Civil War raid of Lawrence, Kansas.

Mead co-founded three-time GRAMMY nominated alternative country band, BR549, who have released seven full-length LPs and won a Country Music Association Award since the early 1990’s. He also acts as Music Director for the hit Broadway show, Million Dollar Quartet, currently touring throughout North America to rave reviews. Mead has released two solo albums, “Journeyman’s Wager,” and “Back At The Quonset Hut,” with his band, The Grassy Knoll Boys. ‘Free State Serenade’ was co-produced with Joe Pisapia (kd Lang, Ben Folds Five) and features BR549’s Don Herron and Old Crow Medicine Show’s Critter Fuqua.

Plowboy Records’ founders are Eddy Arnold’s grandson and musician Shannon Pollard, author, professor, and music historian Don Cusic, and punk legend Cheetah Chrome. Their first two releases include ‘Darker Than Light’ by Bobby Bare, who was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame last month, and ‘You Don’t Know Me: Rediscovering Eddy Arnold,’ a tribute album to one of the most influential country musicians of all time, featuring a track performed by Mead.

‘Free State Serenade’ Tracklist:
01. Knee Deep In The Wakarusa River
02. The Devil By Their Side
03. Neosho Valley Sue
04. On A Slow Train Through Arkansas
05. Little Ivy
06. Evil Wind
07. Ten Light Years Away
08. Reno County Girl
09. A Short Goodbye
10. The Light Of Day
11. Ain’t Nothing The Love A Woman
12. Sittin’ On Top Of The Bottom

http://www.chuckmead.com/
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