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After a decade spent focusing on Sun Records, Sam Phillips and Memphis music, it’s no surprise Chuck Mead decided to make his new album, “Close to Home,” in the Bluff City.

Best known as the leader of Nashville country-revivalists BR5-49, more recently Mead has served as the musical director for both the “Million Dollar Quartet” Broadway musical and related “Sun Records” TV show, which filmed locally in 2016. 

“I got pretty tapped into Memphis just from being there so long doing the show and living with this music for so many years. It felt like a natural thing to make this record there,” says Mead, who will be back in Memphis to celebrate the release of the record, with a show at The Green Room at Crosstown Arts on Friday night. 

With BR5-49, Mead spearheaded the ’90s alt/classic country movement, reminding Music City of its hillbilly roots and helping make the Lower Broad area fashionable long before the cameras of “Nashville” started to roll. After BR5-49 split in 2005, Mead launched a solo career. Around that time, Sun Records historian Colin Escott approached him about working on “Million Dollar Quartet,” a stage musical about Sun, its founder Sam Phillips and the many iconic artists the label introduced to the world. 

After a successful run on Broadway, the rights to “Million Dollar Quartet” were eventually bought, with the Country Music Television network developing a series based on the show, retitled “Sun Records.” Mead spent a good chunk of early 2016 in Memphis working on the show’s local production.  

“I’m always willing to do anything that keeps me from having a real job,” laughs Mead. “But the ‘Sun Records’ show was the closest thing to having a real job. It was an all-consuming assignment … and really, I’d never done anything like that before. The producers really trusted me with a crucial element of the show, and hopefully I delivered.” 

Mead’s work as a musical director, and musical authenticity expert, proved the best thing about the well-liked but short-lived series, which only aired for one season.

“My goal was to make the music — and the real legacy of all those Sun guys is the music — feel right. To bring that true spirit and feeling to the show,” says Mead. 

While working in Memphis, Mead got familiar with the city’s players, specifically those working at Sam Phillips Studio.

“During the filming, we went over to Phillips to do a charity record for St. Jude. I sang an old Sun song with the cast of ‘Sun Records,'” he says. “That’s where I met a bunch of guys like Rick Steff from Lucero and John Paul Keith. I got to feel like I was a part of that cool musical community in Memphis.”

While working at Phillips, the studio’s Grammy-winning engineer/producer Matt Ross-Spang suggested Mead cut his next solo album there.

“I’d known Matt since he was the engineer over at the old Sun Studios. Subsequently, the Phillips family had brought him on at Phillips as they were starting to redo the studio. Matt told me: ‘You’re just as much Memphis as you are Nashville.’ And to a certain extent I really do feel that way. So it made all the sense in the world to make a record there,” said Mead. 

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Last summer, with Ross-Spang at the helm, and Steff and Keith among his backing musicians, Mead cut “Close to Home” at Phillips.

“Most of the records I’ve made were done here in Nashville, and Nashville has a specific way of doing things. It’s that quasi-hit factory mentality,” says Mead. “You come into a session at 10 a.m. and you’re done by 2, unless it’s a double session. And the idea is, ‘Let’s cut a hit,’ or ‘That was good — let’s go on to the next one.’ Which is a great system and it works. 

“But in Memphis there’s a little more leeway, a little more willingness to chase it around the room. I enjoyed the whole notion of Sam Phillips saying, ‘Maybe we don’t have it yet,  let’s play with it a little more.’ If you come to Phillips studio, and if you allow yourself to tap into that spirit, good things come from it.” (To that end, one of the record’s standout tracks is an ode to Phillips, titled “The Man Who Shook the World.”) 

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Like his last couple albums, Mead says “Close to Home” is “another place record for me. My previous record, ‘Free State Serenade,’ was about my home state of Kansas. The record before that was a country covers record that I cut at the old Quonset Hut on Music Row with some of the original players. So Phillips was just another magic place to work in and shape the songs.” 

Having worked in the theater for so much of the past decade, Mead says his songwriting approach has evolved.

“In a sense, working on stage or in TV, what you do there, what you learn there, it all bleeds into your own music. You learn a lot more about yourself and the process and what turns you on,” he says. 

“Nobody’s just one thing. I found that out after BR-549 disbanded. I thought, ‘What am I gonna do now?’ And then the musical came along. And then the TV show came along — OK, I’ll try all that. In the end, whatever it is — stage, or TV or making a record — it’s all music, and it’s all about trying to make good art. So in a way, this record is an an extension of all that. Can’t help but be that way.” 

When: Friday, doors open at 7:30 p.m.

Where: The Green Room at Crosstown Arts, 1350 Concourse Ave.

Tickets: $15

Details: crosstownarts.org 

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