The Luxury of Time Mead moved to New York City in 1997 and signed a major-label deal with
RCA Records the following year. Mead and other artists were subsequently dropped from RCA's roster. He moved back to Nashville in late 2002 and, in between road gigs, started an EP with Nashville producer David Henry (
Matthew Ryan,
Guster); it soon turned into the full-length
Indiana, released in May 2004 by
Nettwerk America. Featuring "Nashville" and "Beauty".
Wherever You Are Mead's third album for RCA,
Wherever You Are, recorded in 2002 in Woodstock, New York, and Bath, England, finally emerged as a six-song EP in June 2005 via
Eleven Thirty Records. Mead says.
PopMatters says that
Wherever You Are contains "mature songs that express genuine warmth and
emotional intelligence."
Tangerine In 2005, Mead married artist Natalie Cox and began work on his fourth LP. Produced by Brad Jones (
Jill Sobule,
Butterfly Boucher,
Josh Rouse),
Tangerine was released in May 2006 courtesy of Mead's own Tallulah! Media (his contract with Nettwerk wasn't renewed after
Indiana). and it was nominated in the category of Best Pop/Rock Album at the sixth annual Independent Music Awards in 2007 (Mead's website was nominated for Best Band-Website Design).
Almost and Always In 2008, having spent the previous year living in
Brooklyn, New York, Mead moved back to Nashville after he and his wife separated. Mead reunited with Brad Jones and recorded the intimate collection
Almost and Always in seven days, most of it live. The majority of the album was co-written with Bill DeMain of
Swan Dive; they originally conceived the project for an imaginary chanteuse. The track "Last Train Home" was an NPR Song of the Day and was featured in a 2009 episode of ABC's
Private Practice. Mead and DeMain also co-wrote a second, as-yet-unreleased album, "1908 Division," a conceptual suite about the denizens of an apartment building where Mead once resided.
Almost and Always was first released in Japan in October 2008, then in the United States ten months later on Cheap Lullaby Records.
Dudes Mead's sixth album was "funded entirely by fans, friends and lovers". He raised $20,925 from 253 donors on
Kickstarter in late 2010 to cover the recording, manufacturing, and distribution of
Dudes and documented the recording sessions, which took place over nine days in New York City, on his YouTube channel in January 2011. Produced by Ethan Eubanks and Mead (
Adam Schlesinger is credited as executive producer), the 12-song collection has strains of
Randy Newman's humor ("Bocce Ball") and sharp storytelling ("The Smile of Rachael Ray," which was NPR's Song of the Day on December 14, 2011; Stephen Thompson called it "a new Christmas classic; a minor miracle worthy of the season that surrounds it").
Dudes was released in November 2011. Earlier that year, Mead married yoga instructor and nutritionist Liz Workman.
Cobra Pumps On January 25, 2019, Mead sent an email to every address on his website's mailing list. "When it came time to figure [out] how to release COBRA PUMPS," he wrote, Mead emailed links to the album's ten tracks, as well as demos and other content, over the next ten days.
Cobra Pumps became available for purchase on iTunes on January 29 and on CD and vinyl at Mead's website several days later. To promote the album, Mead created a tongue-in-cheek
LinkedIn page that listed various jobs and phases of his career.
January, San Fernando Mead made his ninth studio album available for purchase on Bandcamp.com on April 24, 2025, and stated on Facebook that it "will be available to stream in its entirety in September." == Influences ==