Free State Serenade

A wild ride of hillbilly blues and honky-tonk, Chuck Mead (best known for his work as front man for BR549) wrote his new album based on the stories and legends, crimes and the 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 1Neosho Valley Sue , where BR549 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 Broad¬way show, Million Dollar Quartet, currently touring through¬out North America to rave reviews. Mead has released two solo albums, Journeyman s Wager , and Back At The Quon¬set Hut , with his band The Grassy Knoll Boys. Free State Serenade was co-produced with Joe Pisapia (kd Lang, Ben Folds Five) and features BR5-49 s Don Herron and Old Crow Medicine Show s Critter Fuqua.