rockabilly and honky-tonk
Nashville, Tennessee
Photo: @MIKEDUNNUSA for @SXMLIVELOUD
For over three decades, singer and guitarist Chuck Mead has been serving up his own irresistible blend of rockabilly, honky-tonk, traditional country, and rock & roll to audiences worldwide. Best known as co-founder of the Grammy-nominated, neo-traditional country group BR5-49, Chuck’s career as a bandleader and solo artist boasts over 170 appearances on the Grand Ole Opry. With a sound equal parts classic and contemporary, he draws inspiration from the golden age of honky-tonk and rockabilly while making the music indisputably all his own.
Honky-tonk and rockabilly emerged at different moments in the mid-20th century out of a shared musical lineage in the South, combining blues, gospel, western swing, and traditional country into more hard-driving, antiestablishment, and danceable sounds. Honky-tonk thrived in disreputable watering holes, and its driving beats and embrace of amplification kept the music audible on Saturday nights at roadside nightspots and urban bars alike. Songs of love and loss spoke directly to working-class Americans following jobs from the country to the city in the 1930s, ’40s, and ’50s. Rockabilly was more suggestive and audacious, with the lyrics to match. Its aggressive guitar leads and wild boogie piano runs changed American music, with Sun Records peers Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis, Johnny Cash, and Carl Perkins leading the way. Both honky-tonk and rockabilly continue to appeal to new generations, who find inspiration in their rebellious yet playful sounds, styles, and attitudes.
A love for classic country sounds runs deep in Chuck’s family. His maternal grandfather grew up in the Ozarks steeped in country music. He often attended the National Barn Dance, an early country music radio program and precursor of the Grand Ole Opry, while passing through Chicago for work. An avid banjo player, he started a family band with his wife and their kids (Chuck’s mother and uncles). The group regularly performed a mix of cowboy, country, and gospel on the local radio station. After moving to Lawrence, Kansas, they revived the group as a dance band, enlisting young Chuck on drums in the early 1970s. Eventually switching to guitar, Chuck was deep into discovery of the Beatles and rockabilly icons while absorbing the blues, punk, and rock bands that passed through Lawrence. He formed a handful of bands before moving to Nashville, where he started gigging on the then-infamous “Lower Broad” strip. He soon co-founded BR5-49, which made a name for itself by playing little-known honky-tonk classics during marathon sets at Robert’s Western World. The band would earn three Grammy nominations, a Country Music Association award, and the support of their musical heroes. “We were being honest,” Chuck remembers. “We were playing our own songs in an older style, but they weren't carbon copies. The old-timers recognized what we were doing.”
In the early 2000s, Chuck began arranging and directing the music for Broadway’s Million Dollar Quartet, a Tony Award-winning musical about the historic Sun Records recording of Cash, Elvis, Lewis, and Perkins. He launched his solo career in 2009 with the record Journeyman’s Wager, followed by Back at the Quonset Hut, Free State Serenade, and most recently, Close to Home, where Chuck’s rockabilly influences come to the fore.
Appearing at the Richmond Folk Festival with longtime bassist Mark Andrews Miller and drummer Martin Lynds, Chuck promises to debut a few brand new, unrecorded songs along with 30 years of classics guaranteed to pack the dance floor.