One constant in New Braunfels-based singer-songwriter Austin Meade’s music is evolution.
The son of a Baptist preacher, Meade started playing guitar in church and eventually released the 2014 album Chief of the Sinners, which showcased an Americana-based sound. Over subsequent releases, he’s added crunchy classic hard rock to the mix (2021’s Black Sheep) and simultaneously dabbled in pop and more edgy flavors (2022’s Abstract Art of an Unstable Mind).
Tours opening for big-drawing rock acts including ZZ Top and Godsmack followed, as did an audience that includes fans of both red dirt country and heavy guitar riffs.
Meade’s latest album Almost Famous is due out this fall, and the lead single — also the title track — shows him with one foot in rootsy twang and the other in blue-collar rock. In the song’s self-deprecating lyrics, he calls himself out as a “white-trash dive-bar local favorite” and “front porch rockstar” before deciding he’s “alright with being almost famous.”
Meade and his band will open for Treaty Oak Revival, another band straddling Texas country and harder sounds, at New Braunfels’ Whitewater Amphitheater on Thursday, Aug. 21, and Friday, Aug. 22. The two-night run suggests his days of being almost famous may be on the wane.
We caught up with Meade via phone to talk about his New Braunfels homecoming and the art of creating songs that play well with both rockers and fans of real-deal Texas country.
How does it feel to be playing two nights at Whitewater?
I’m glad to be home. We’ve been touring the country pretty relentlessly for a couple of years, so it’s nice to have a couple of days where we’re five minutes from my house.
Your music has evolved over the years, running the gamut from Texas country to more of a hard rock sound. How did that transformation come about?
Whenever I was growing up — I went to high school in Brenham, Texas, over there where they make Blue Bell ice cream — we did a lot of going out to buddies’ pastures and house parties and things like that, and everybody was either listening to rap or pop-punk or red dirt country. And a lot of red dirt artists would come play in the small towns where we were at. … So, when I first started, I was just really into the songwriting from the red dirt sound, but I also hadn’t had a lot of experience with guitars, so I didn’t know how to make them sound as big as we’ve figured out how to do lately. And I had a different group of musicians around me that had a different thumbprint on the sound.
But I guess to start it off, I was just really into the songwriting, but I always felt like I was more Tom Petty than Pat Green. …
I would also say right around the Black Sheep record … one of my best friends, who’s been in the band for a while now, came from LA to Austin with a metal band to try to make it. That didn’t work out for them, but it ended up being, honestly, a huge blessing for me. We started diving more and more into a rock sound when we were writing that Black Sheep record. So, the sound started to change. I guess, I started to have more fun with pushing the limits of what I could do.
There’s no shortage of bands playing heavy music, but they’re not always the best at having hooks and melody. It seems like there’s a real attention in your music not just to having riffs but crafting a song.
Right. Pretty much every song that we’ve put out, especially from the Black Sheep record forward, almost all of that starts with either a line I’ve gotten written down on my phone that I felt like was just stuck in my head for days on end. It could just be words that I paired together that I thought were interesting that I’d never heard together, or a play on words, or sometimes it’s simply like a vocal melody that I just can’t stop thinking about in my head. After multiple days of traveling and sound checks and hearing our own other songs at all these shows that we’re playing, you have so much information in your head, and a lot of times the ones that stick throughout all that, I’m guessing, are going to do the same with other people’s brains too.
What’s more important to you at this point, being able to make a living with music or putting out art that’s a truthful expression?
It’s definitely always the art. Life changes as you get a little older. I’ve got a family now, I’ve got a wife and kids. So I’ve learned to say no to some things that I used to say yes to all the time, as far as leaving the house for six months to do a tour that I’m not going to really come out on top on. Those are things that I’ve had to learn over the last couple of years, but I’ve never once thought about sacrificing any kind of music that I’m going to put out under my name for that. If you start doing that, I just feel like your brand and just your impact on people really becomes cheap, really quick, and folks sniff that out, man.
$65-$128, 8 p.m. Thursday, Aug. 21, and Friday, Aug. 22 (sold out), Whitewater Amphitheater, 11860 FM-306, New Braunfels, (830) 964-3800, whitewaterrocks.com.
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This article appears in Aug 7-20, 2025.