Ireland calling

On its release in 1999 David Mead’s debut, Luxury of Time, was hailed in many quarters as a power-pop classic.

But for whatever reason, it just didn’t happen for him and he parted company with his label BMG, moving from New York to Nashville where he’d grown up.
Clearly undeterred by the lack of commercial success, his third album Indiana, out on an indie label, is arguably his best yet. The country-ish title track is one of his most gorgeously realised songs to date, while impeccably crafted numbers such as ‘Nashville’, ‘Queensboro Bridge’ and ‘New Mexico’ reflect his experiences of life on the road.
“It’s about songs rather than the sound because that’s where they started,” he says. “I feel kinship with people who are trying to re-invent the American songbook. There’s such a rich songwriting heritage out there but there aren’t a lot of artists my age who’ve made the choice to further it, apart from people like Rufus Wainwright or Erin McKeown.”
Having performed here on several occasions in the past Mead returns to Ireland for a short tour in October including dates in Cork, Limerick, Galway, Dundalk and Dublin.
“Ireland has supplied the world with a lot of singer-songwriters over the last six or seven years” he says. “There’s an audience here that doesn’t exist in the States, where you get relegated to the folk world, which has an older audience. Being a singer-songwriter seems to be much more validated here.”

Indiana is out now on Nettwerk Records (distributed by EMI). David Meade tours Ireland in October, playing Whelans on 7 October.