A Conversation with David Mead (continued)

DM: There's another thing for which I have to thank Brad Jones. There was actually a narrative attached to this record at one point, that was kind of a half-hearted and ill-advised--a self-ill-advised attempt on my part to make the album into some kind of weird musical. So anyway, I got into that part of it and realized that I had no idea how to really pull that off. The problem was that it wasn't a narrative that really stood on its own.

The idea came to me because of the way we had this lack of traditional song structure that lent the music to being a lot more expository, and it seemed to flow more like a conversation. Whereas verse, chorus, verse, chorus, bridge, verse, chorus is less so. Anyway, I started this story that was working backwards, and trying to make the different song themes interact. There's sort of a theme about marriage throughout the record, so I thought I could kind of take that and run with it. But it wasn't really working.

PM: Well, that's very inspired then to say, "Hey, we don't really need this, do we?"

DM: Yeah, I have to give Brad credit for advising me off that before I got too deep into it. [laughs]

PM: Wow. So what does the very interesting "Scene" in the liner notes have to do with that original narrative? I think that was really cool. I mean, when I first read it I went, "Oh, that's too much for me," and I went right to the song credits. But then this morning I went back and read that, and went, "Wow, that's really cool, actually." [laughs]

DM: Yeah, well, that guy in it was one of the characters. And it was basically that three different people were going after that piece of art, but the piece of art, essentially, was the same realization that they were pursuing from three different angles--or that's what it was intended to be.

PM: Holy Grail-ish, really.

So are you reading anything good lately?

DM: In the past three months I haven't read anything but The New Yorker. I started getting into The New Yorker again.

PM: People always have such interesting answers to that question.

DM: [laughs] I mean, I'm trying to think of the last novel I read--God, where is it? What was it? I'm just trying to look around and see if it's on the shelf somewhere...

PM: But it's The New Yorker that's sustained you these last months?

DM: Well, as you know, The New Yorker is a pretty thick read, and I don't exactly have a whole lot of time, other than, really, when I go to bed, that's usually when I read. So I don't have a ton of time to read, anyway. But keeping up with my subscription is my--I haven't subscribed to anything for so long, because things would inevitably just get unread and pile up, and end up in the recycle bin. But I'm really dedicated to reading my New Yorker, so that's kind of been it. But it's a great little spread--you get a little bit of culture, you get some current events, you get some fiction in there, and you get these kind of oddball takes on someone's life. It's pretty great.

PM: Oh, it's the best. I don't think I got to ask you this last question in our previous interview: Do you consider yourself a spiritual person?

DM: I would be far from calling myself a Buddhist by any stretch of the imagination, though it's interesting to me. So I'm going to get kind of vague here, but basically what's really rocking my world at the moment is nature, and the energy of people, and the inner connectivity of the two. And I've found that that's kind of what's getting me through this in a way. I was just talking about this with my buddy, Ethan, actually, before you called--how especially if you're an only child, I think you're sort of predisposed--it kind of works both ways, like you might get a slightly inflated sense of ego out of it, because you're trained from a very early age to have a much higher perception of your place in the world than--

PM: You're automatically special, yeah.

DM: Yeah, right. You're the center of the universe.

PM: Yep.

DM: So that's a good and a bad thing in adult life, just because there's one side of it where you can kind of draw on this fortitude that you've built up your entire life, and you've spent a lot of time alone, naturally, which plays very well for my job, since I spend an extraordinary amount of time alone. [laughs] But at the same time, you're not as predisposed to be able to communicate with people as maybe someone who came up in a two or three sibling family. So my go-to thing is to probably to isolate more than it is to reach out and connect with people.

And I've found that a real natural remedy for a lot of my funks that I might get into, besides this basic diet and exercise, is to just kind of make myself do that. Like scenario one, there's always this dead time between sound check and gig time, right, when you're stuck at this club, which is not in any particularly interesting part of town, it's too far away from the hotel, or maybe you don't have a hotel. There are not a lot of options except to sit there. And my challenge now is to figure out the way to make that two or three hours interesting. So I have to communicate with people, which is not natural to me, but it's my new method. And I'm trying that out--it sounds so basic, but--

PM: Well, I think that spiritual answers are basic.

DM: Well, that's a very good point. They are, aren't they?

PM: So, yeah, I love everybody's answers to those--to a couple questions that I like to do at the end, about reading and spiritual life.

I'm very grateful for your time today. And I love the new record. I look forward to seeing how it does in the NPR world that you're focusing on. I think that it's going to do very well.

DM: Well, man, I hope you're right. And I've enjoyed it as well. I read the last piece you did on Indiana, so I'm really looking forward to this one. I appreciate the support.

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and read our previous interview with david mead here