Daniel Meade & Lloyd Reid. If You Don’t Mind

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An old buddy of Blabber’n’Smoke, Duke Dali, was released for a while recently and having glommed on this release amidst a pile of albums awaiting review, decided to wax on it.

Glasgow’s dynamic duo, Meade and Reid, have been joined together at the musical hip for nigh on 14 years, playing as a duo and in the bands The Flying Mules and The Meatmen, in most of Glasgow’s dives and in some of our more salubrious saloons and venues. In addition, they have an international profile having built up an impressive rolodex of influential chums (including Old Crow Medicine Show and Sturgill Simpson) and have graced stages far and wide with their infectious mix of country, rockabilly and good ole’ fashioned rock’n’roll. Daniel Meade may be the more familiar name having released a slew of solo albums alongside his band projects but those in the know, know that when Lloyd Reid is in the mix then the pair really work their magic.

If You Don’t Mind is the first release (bar an earlier single) to have both their monikers on the sleeve and it’s the culmination of a germ on an idea hatched on a tour bus some years back but only realised in lockdown isolation. Reid’s guitar has been a vital part of Meade’s sound over the years but he has been expanding his vistas adding steel guitar to his well regarded fluid Hofner guitar licks and here he provides an incredibly impressive array of sounds to Meade’s well honed songs. The closing song here, Why You Been Gone So Long, features his trademark runs which owe as much to jazz guitarists as it does to country slickers as he lifts an already excellent song into the ether (not to mention Meade’s fantastic piano solo which is just sublime).

Why You Been Gone So Long is a fine example of Meade’s ability to produce an immediate classic, sounding as it does as if Woody Guthrie could have penned it and throughout the album he hits the mark time and time again. The anguished If You Don’t Mind kicks off proceedings as the pair sound like The Rolling Stones playing in a puddle of beer amidst broken glasses in an old time saloon. Hard To Be A Man These Days belies the remote recording involved in lockdown as the pair sound as if they were hunkered down in Sun studios in Memphis. Meanwhile, the very brief Give This World A Shake could have easily been inserted into a 1960’s soul revue.

Over the course of the album, Meade digs into hard luck and hardscrabble times. Choking On The Ashes has Reid adding weeping pedal steel and Mexicana guitar to Meade’s mournful words while Good Heart Gone Astray is a good old god dam country weep with honky tonk piano and keening pedal steel. Sleeping On The Streets Of Nashville is a grand tale of crashed dreams as a would be country superstar hits the skids but Meade and Reid do hit the highlights on the superbly performed Old Rope And Razor. Here, Meade writes a song which bears comparison with sixties luminaries such as Fred Neil or Tim Buckley while Reid’s guitar lights up the song like a Greenwich Village cafe neon sign. It’s perhaps the best number Meade has offered us over the years and with Reid’s nimble playing it’s quite sublime.

https://danielmeade.bandcamp.com/album/if-you-dont-mind

Daniel Meade and The Flying Mules. Let Me Off At The Bottom album release show. The Rum Shack, Glasgow, Saturday 29th May.

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Lady Luck’s been smiling on Glaswegian Daniel Meade, either that or several years of hard graft is paying off as his song writing skills and musicianship are making waves well beyond his hometown. Following rave reviews for his independently released and Nashville recorded album, Keep Right Away, at the beginning of 2015 and support slots with artists such as Sturgill Simpson, Pokey LaFarge, Diana Jones and Old Crow Medicine Show Meade was signed to the well respected UK label At The Helm Records (joining an illustrious roster that includes Brent Best, John Moreland, Austin Lucas and Good Luck Mountain) earlier this year. The first fruit of this union, Let Me Off At The Bottom was released last week with some very positive press reviews in the run up to the day and the weekend saw Meade and his band The Flying Mules launch the album in fine style in Glasgow’s South Side.

Let Me Off At The Bottom is Meade’s third official release and the first to feature the band. Recorded in Glasgow (with mixing done by Morgan Jahnig in Tennessee) it’s a fine capture of the raucous hillbilly rock’n’roll and honky tonk country that Meade and The Mules (Lloyd Reid – guitar, Mark Ferrie – double bass, Thomas Sutherland – drums) excel in. Meade’s songs drink from the well of Hank Williams and Jerry Lee Lewis (among others) and The Mules (who have notched up several hundred gigs over the past two years) are a well oiled music machine (not in the sense of well drunk). Their recent stint at The Kilkenny Roots festival in Ireland (five gigs in four days) is a contender for the festival highlight.

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Anyway, a capacity crowd turned up for the album launch. A good number were aware of the band but the audience was swelled by the show’s inclusion in Glasgow’s South Side Fringe Festival. This allowed the opportunity to see several folk, who before the band came on ask what sort of music they played,  pretty soon get up and join the party. And a party is what is was, the band in great form, the music infectious and impossible not to sit still for. There’s a great deal of nuance in Meade’s songs but live it’s much more primal as they cram sixty years of folk, blues, country and rock’n’roll into the set. With a batch of songs from the new album and some favourites from his back catalogue Mead and the band certainly ripped the joint.

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The band ripped into the opening trio of songs, Back To Hell, Not My Heart Again and There’s a Headstone Where Her Heart Used To Be creating an instant buzz before Meade sang the plaintive He Should Have Been Mine, a switch in mood but one which had the audience captivated. As far as I recall this was the only ballad of the night, the remainder being full blown rockabilly rock although the occasional country lope hove into view. With no  piano to hand Meade stuck to guitar for the night, showing some fine picking skills on Lock Up Your Daughters, a song which also included fine breaks from guitarist Lloyd Reid and bassist Mark Ferrie. Please Louise is a definite crowd pleaser, the bawdy lyrics going down a bomb, the girls at the front checking that it wasn’t their big behind Meade was singing about. If It’s Not Your Fault (I Guess It’s Mine) showed off the band dynamics starting off as a skifflish railroad beat before picking up steam. By the end there were dancers at the front and the back of the crowd (more space there to jitterbug I presume) and there was a definite (and justifiable) swagger about the band as they launched into Long Gone Wrong, a song that just about sums them up with its Sun Records rhythm and harmonies along with Meade’s lyrics that nail the travelling musician’s life. The set ended they offered one more song, a fine rendition of Sonny Terry’s Hooray, Hooray, a fine end to the night.

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There was an opening set for the evening from Sorbet, a guitar/bass/drum trio who ventured into the avant-garde as they responded to a backdrop of films which included the first two parts of Jean Cocteau’s Le Sang d’un Poète. They were followed by guitar/drums duo The Rivers who describe themselves as “country grunge”.  An exciting pair with jangled guitar and frantic percussion there was a Buzzcocks like rush to a song that I think was called your Love Is On My Side while their new single, Nine Miles High is worth checking out.

Daniel Meade and The Flying Mules. Let Me Off At The Bottom. At The Helm Records

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Time then for Daniel Meade, Glasgow’s own hillbilly hell raiser, to raise the bar with his third official release and the first album to feature his wingmen, The Flying Mules. The Mules (Meade – guitar and piano, Lloyd Reid – guitar, Mark Ferrie – double bass, Thomas Sutherland – drums) are well kent faces locally with several regular slots in city bars and are veterans of tours with Pokey LaFarge and Sturgill Simpson. Indeed, they appeared as Simpson’s band on his latest Glasgow date, the US chart topper unsure about appearing before a Glasgow audience on his lonesome at the cavernous O2ABC. Meade himself has recently toured supporting and then playing alongside Diana Jones with several of the songs here making their first appearance. Now, hot on the heels of five packed shows in four days at the Kilkenny Roots Festival in Ireland last weekend, The Mules are set to unleash Let Me Off At The Bottom on the world.

Equally at home with Jerry Lee Lewis styled rockers and George Jones like laments Meade has the ability to take country music clichés and turn them into rockabilly poetry, the honky tonk hell raisers and beer stained weepers delivered with a Glaswegian gallusness. There are some fine examples in the rollicking There’s a Headstone Where Her heart Used To Be with Meade explaining, “Well I met lots of women on this rocky road, I love them whether long short or tall. Some for a weekend some twice as long but I still love them all.”  Of course he’s derailed by a femme fatale, a merry widow whose lips taste of candy, laughing with his friends as he looks on from beyond. It’s delivered with a vengeance, Meade’s honky tonk piano driving the song with an excellent guitar solo from Reid that’s half Les Paul, half Chet Atkins.

There are several hi-octane belters here, The Mules firing on all cylinders, the rhythm section tight as the proverbial duck, bass supple and slapping while the traps are expertly deployed. Back To Hell opens the album with a locomotive energy, Meade introducing one of the album’s themes, the demon drink, from the beginning. It’s a breathless dash from start to finish, again Reid throws in one of his seemingly  effortless solos, the notes curling from his guitar sweet as honey. Ghosts and Crocodiles has a jug band like infectiousness to it while Please Louise is a guaranteed crowd pleaser as Meade tries to back pedal from a shotgun marriage, his lyrics delivered expertly over the barrelhouse keyboards and fretboard wizardry, a Jordonaires type chorus the icing on the cake. He hasn’t learned his lesson on the avaricious rocker Lock Up You Daughter and it’s back to the drink for the closing The Bottle Called For Me, a saloon bar knockabout that ends with a good old rabble rousing chorus.

As infectious as these songs are (and a good indication of how superb the band are live) The Mules have other strings to their bow. As evidenced on his last album Meade can turn his hand to old time country songs and waltzes (as on his duet with Diana Jones on Help Me Tonight) and there’s a brace of these sadder tear stained moments on the album. Meade has an acute grasp on the topics that engaged George Jones and Hank Williams (heartbreak mostly), while his voice can convey the hurt just as well as the good times. He Should Have Been Mine laments with a fine plaintive piano and Poison Dart lopes along with some sweet guitar curls and a lonesome prairie feel. Best of all is the powerful confessional of Leave Me To Bleed, Meade, superbly accompanied by Siobhan Wilson on harmonies, reaching into the darker recesses of country music, his bride dead before the wedding, guilt and faith confused, the music a back porch funereal.

Midway twixt the light and dark there’s an excellent country ramble on Count The Roses which delves into George Jones territory with some style while the title song recalls the Everly Brothers with its harmonies. Like Pokey Lafarge, Meade has the ability to write songs that seem to have been around forever and here he’s forged a set of songs that cover a panoply of half a century of rockabilly and country music. The album’s a whirligig of rabble rousing honky tonk and forlorn laments all delivered with some panache.

Let Me Off At The Bottom is released on May 27th on At The Helm Records. There’s an album launch in Glasgow at The Rum Shack on the Southside on the 28th May.

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