Oklahoma City-based alt-rock godfather and Chainsaw Kittens frontman Tyson Meade releases today his new record “Robbing The Nuclear Family” via Shaking Shanghai.

The creative zeal that established Meade as an iconic leader of the alternative-rock movement is inescapable throughout the album, and the 10 tracks that make up “Robbing The Nuclear Family” draw widely from his signature mix of punk energy, vivid arrangements and politically charged lyrics, according to a news release. The album is currently available for purchase HERE.

Meade has a couple of local appearances coming up: He is due to perform with Ada native and Nashville-based songwriter Zac Maloy during the fourth annual Oklahoma Songwriters Festival April 12-13, and he’s on the lineup for the Norman Music Festival, set for April 25-27 in downtown Norman.

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This article was featured on Pop Matters.

Tyson Meade, former lead singer of Oklahoma City’s Chainsaw Kittens and Defenestration, hailed by many as an “alt-rock godfather”, returns with his new album, Robbing the Nuclear Family on March 22.

After Chainsaw Kittens disbanded in the early 2000s, Meade traveled to China where he taught English for a number of years. Returning to Oklahoma, he made a 2018 bid for Congress as a Democrat in the state’s fifth district. Though he lost in the primary, he still considers the experience an overall positive one.

A new single, “P.S. Nuclear Forest Dance Boogie” reminds us of Meade‘s ability to weave the unusual into the familiar and create musical settings that are as forward-looking now as they were when he began his recording career in the 1980s. Sounding positively youthful in the song, Meade was joined by a cast that includes violinist Haffijy (from Beijing rock band PK 14), Matt Duckworth (Flaming Lips), and Grammy-award winning drummer Rob Martin, as well as multi-instrumentalist David “Immy” Immerglück (Counting Crows, Camper Van Beethoven, and the Monks of Doom). Additionally, former Chainsaw Kittens Trent Bell recorded the drums on the record.

Discussing the new single from his home in Oklahoma City, Meade waxes enthusiastic about the single. “‘P.S. Nuclear Forest Dance Boogie’ was written in China,” he says. “It was me, looking at them, this really simple, pretty wonderful Chinese life and how they’ve progressed on way through civilization and we’ve progressed another way. Those ways have sort of merged now, which is beautiful. I just felt so energized and recharged after all of that, a time when I didn’t know if I’d be making records again. Being in China was like being on another planet. It was like I was in a dream world. I thought, ‘What would Bowie and Iggy do in Berlin?'”

Throughout a lengthy conversation, Meade discussed his teaching and political careers as well as the drive to make a new album.

When did you decide you were going to make this record?

I look at my last record, Tomorrow in Progress, (2014) and Robbing the Nuclear Family as being Chinese-inspired records. I stopped making music for a time, went to China. I loved it but I felt like I was marking time. It was like The Karate Kid and I was just washing cars, getting ready to put out the most creative records I’ve ever done. When I finished Tomorrow in Progress, I kept writing songs. In the past, I’d finish a record and think, “It’s done. I’m not going to write for a while.” This record has songs that were written on the tail of that album. When I moved back, I had new songs that are a call-and-response in a way.

Do you feel like there are lyrical threads across these songs?

I didn’t really realize it until I had finished the album. A reoccurring theme is home and finding home. “Piece of Candy” is about fitting into a family when you’re [an] other. “Grandsons of the Empire” is one I wrote in China. I didn’t know where home was and if I found it I wondered what it would be like. It’s like in the original Planet of the Apes. They come back to earth and it’s not home. “Moonbeams” is about the acceptance of your situation and embracing it, having joy.

I think the album takes you on a ride of happy moments, melancholy. “Motorcycle Boy #3″ takes you on a journey. I went to Thailand for one month at one point. It’s about the boys there wanting to leave and go somewhere else. They meet someone and then that person has to leave. They know the other person is going to leave. Home, coming, going, accepting life. Trying to navigate through the modern world.

I’m curious about your Chinese experience. I saw an article sometime last year about how the American Dream is alive and well and living in China.

I’ve told young bands, “Go teach English. Have a band in China and travel around there. Make Asia your hub.” The only reason I really came back was because I wanted to make records. I had a fan base here. But if I was 19, 20, 21, I would go to China and launch a music career from there. You get ahead so much faster there. I started teaching and by the time I left I was running a boarding school.

I’m curious about the album title.

You know how Ringo Starr was credited with these phrases like A Hard Day’s Night? I was telling a friend about who I might connect with on a physical level. He said, “You’re not robbing the cradle! You’re robbing the nuclear family!” [Laughs.] I said, “That’s the title of my record.” Then I wrote “He’s the Candy”. If you look at it from the larger perspective, we are changing from the nuclear family of mom and dad, two kids, to mom and mom, two kids, single moms and two kids, two dads, two kids. For the people who don’t want change it’s the worst thing because they feel like they’ve been robbed of something.

Not to get political but I feel like I’m in the middle of so many things, but I talk to conservative people and discover I’m far left. When I talk to really liberal people, I think, “Wow. I guess I lean toward the right.” I don’t even know where I am in my leanings!

I feel like some of that is generational. I’m probably a liberal on many counts but I talk to people 20 years younger than me, and they are much more radical.

Exactly! And that’s what they’re used to. I do hang out with people in their late 20s or early 30s and they are much more radical. But they’re also more about common sense. “What’s the big deal about that?” There is no big deal. The older generations are just stuck in their way.

You said you weren’t going to get into politics but you now have had a political career.

[Laughs.] I guess I did! Literally. I was really struck by what was going on in Oklahoma with the 2018 teachers’ strike. I figured, “Maybe I have a louder voice than some people because people know who I am. I’m just going to do this.” I didn’t think about winning or losing. I just wanted to make the conversation louder. I feel like I did that.

I do have to ask about Chainsaw Kittens. Do you feel like the band is still finding an audience all these years later?

History has been very kind to us. I know this kid who just turned 18 and helped me on my campaign. He saw me out somewhere and said, “Hey! I just registered to vote just because I want to vote for you because I love your band!” I’ve experienced that a lot. I get letters from Brazil, the Czech Republic. It’s really been cool.

I never imagined what happened with alternative rock where it became this thing where there were platinum artists. I loved Sonic Youth, Dinosaur Jr., and Cheap Trick. But I never though what we were doing was going to sell. But bands like Smashing Pumpkins and Nirvana came along and proved me wrong.

Because I didn’t get on the treadmill where I did album-tour-album-tour I got to have this other adventure where I got to China and Saudi Arabia and New York. For me, getting that was much more important.

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Host Rich Reardin talks with singer/songwriter and ‘Godfather of Alternative Rock’, Tyson Meade.

Often cited as The Godfather of Alternative Rock, Meade was the vocalist for Norman, OK based rock band Chainsaw Kittens, along with Defenestration. Meade was cited by Kurt Cobain as an influence, friends The Flaming Lips covered Tyson’s song ‘She’s Gone Mad,’ and Billy Corgan of the Smashing Pumpkins credits the Chainsaw Kittens as one of his favorite bands, writing Meade during the recording of the SP album ‘Gish’ to express his appreciation. Meade released his debut solo album, ‘Kitchens and Bathrooms,’ in 2005, following with the albums ‘Motorcycle Childhood’ and ‘Tomorrow In Progress,’ with the latter being recorded and produced during Meade’s extended stay in Shanghai, where a young violinist named Haffijy reignited Meade’s passion for music. Meade was eager to explore a further musical collaboration with Haffijy. “I became very curious as to how he might score a song still in development, one that I had no preconceived notions about, one that I had just written — though I had not written any songs in some years at that point,” Meade says. “I was now driven to write a song.” The result was “Stay Alone” which became the catalyst for the entire China project.  Meade played the song for some of his Western music friends, including fellow Norman-based, alt-rockers the Flaming Lips (who covered the Chainsaw Kittens’ “She’s Gone Mad”), Jimmy Chamberlain of Smashing Pumpkins, Maria McKee, and Other Lives (Meade has previously collaborated with Other Lives’ Jesse Tabish and the Flaming Lips’ Derek Brown on a project called Winter Boys).  After hearing “Stay Alone,” these friends became interested in being a part of this unique, cross-cultural project and have agreed to contribute to this record as well. Meade will return to Shanghai this July and begin work with various high schools and universities both there and in the United States for the project. His goal is to write and record at least a dozen tracks, which he will release as an album next year. A series of live performances is also in the works. “I lived in China for five years and every Chinese person that I ever encountered is wonderful,” says Meade. “They love America and Americans and I would love for America to love them back. I want the people who hear this project to hear their jubilation for living and for mankind in general.” Tyson Meade is an American musician, painter, writer, and teacher from Bartlesville, Oklahoma. Meade has recorded more than a dozen critically acclaimed records for major and indie labels since 1984 with his bands Defenestration and the Chainsaw Kittens, whose 1991 debut SPIN magazine described as “The Smiths meets the New York Dolls meets the devil.” He’s also released records as a solo artist and has contributed songs to the soundtracks for “Hellraiser III,” “Clerks” and “Bug.” The new album, ‘Robbing The Nuclear Family,’ is out early 2017 on Jett Plastic.

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Alt-rock godfather and Chainsaw Kittens frontman Tyson Meade has shared a new track, “P.S. Nuclear Forest Dance Boogie”. The song premiered on Popmatters who writes that the track “reminds us of Meade’s ability to weave the unusual into the familiar and create musical settings that are as forward-looking now as they were when he began his recording career in the 1980s.” The track is the second single from his upcoming album Robbing The Nuclear Family, which will be released on March 22nd on Shaking Shanghai.

Listen – Tyson Meade: “P.S. Nuclear Forest Dance Boogie”

Like his critically-acclaimed 2014 solo release Tomorrow in Progress, which included fantastic contributions from Smashing Pumpkins’ Jimmy Chamberlin, Other Lives’ Jesse Tabish, and The Flaming Lips’ Derek Brown, Robbing The Nuclear Family features contributions from elder statesmen of the Beijing rock scene PK 14, Shanghai violinist Haffijy, The Flaming Lips’ Matt Duckworth, and Grammy-award winning drummer Rob Martin. Drums were recorded by Grammy award-winning mixer Trent Bell at Bell Labs Recording. Robbing also has the heavy imprint of multi-instrumentalist David “Immy” Immerglück of alternative rock greats Counting Crows, Camper Van Beethoven, and the Monks of Doom.

Meade recently released the exquisitely subversive and frenetic video for “He’s The Candy”: http://youtu.be/XStqtTXFVcg

Through the years, Meade-and his legendary three-octave voice-has toured with Iggy Pop, Smashing Pumpkins, Jane’s Addiction, the Meat Puppets, and many others. Brooklyn Vegan wrote in 2014 that “Tyson Meade has fronted not one but two influential bands. In the ’80s he fronted cult band Defenestration (Kurt Cobain counted them as an influence on Nirvana), and got more attention in the ’90s with the glammy Chainsaw Kittens (Iggy Pop and Smashing Pumpkins were fans).” The group predated and outlasted the other 1990s alternative rock acts with its energetic blend of glam-damaged energy, theatrical extremity, and punk rock basics. As Popmatters previously observed, “But whereas in Defenestration it was all tempered with a vaguely mainstream rock sensibility… the Chainsaw Kittens dove enthusiastically off the deep end, into the extreme waters of glam-pop-punk, full-on transvestitism, and for the first time, openly gay lyrics.”

The creative zeal that established Meade as an iconic leader of the alternative rock movement is apparent throughout Robbing The Nuclear Family, and the album’s 10 tracks draw widely from his signature mix of punk energy, vivid arrangements, and politically charged lyrics.

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