A Conversation with Alan Adelson & Kate Taverna

BY CORY FRYE

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‘Some people have blues or jazz for their roots’, musician Robert Meade says. ‘Beatles music is roots music to me’.

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His education began in the late 1990s, as a boy in Santa Cruz, California.  Like most anyone born after 1964, he was familiar with the name but not of the band’s reputation. The Beatles cast a long shadow.  He asked his parents for a record.  Neither owned one, so they bought him a collection for his 16th birthday: ‘The Beatles / 1962-1966’ (TCPCSP 717), the essential teeth-cutting primer — otherwise known as the Red Album — that tracks the Fabs from their initial brush with fame through the ‘Revolver’ LP (ST 2576).  Perfect for neophytes desperate for thar first taste.

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Luckily, Meade had an insatiable appetite.  ‘It gave me hope and an idea of what the world was like at a young age’, he says. ‘It let me see that the possibilities were endless’

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The Beatles informed his taste in melodies and inspired him to become a musician.  In fact, we speak the day his latest track drops: ‘Chicoma Mt. Blues’, a soothing stroll across a delightfully warm delivery through a crisp, sun-dappled autumn.  He describes his music as ‘Northwest Americana’, and that’s a rather accurate summation.  Aside from The Beatles, his inspirations include Bob Dylan, Neil Young, Tom Petty, The Shins, and Radiohead’s Thom Yorke.  But we’re getting ahead of our story.

 

As a youth, Meade picked up the guitar and began writing his own material, recording originals at home.  At 21, he moved to New York City, then hopped back to the West Coast for stints in Seattle and a 15-year residence in Eugene before finding his way to the Oregon City area this past summer.  He brought with him his affection for The Beatles, inaugurating a popular ‘Beatles Unplugged’ series in different cities.  He rattles them off: Eugene, Roseburg, Salem, Tigard, Dallas — ‘anywhere I can play,’ he quips.

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Around a year-and-a-half ago (minus the pandemic, which largely quashed his 2020 calendar), he brought it to the Calapooia Brewing Co. in Albany, where it became an immediate favorite.  The show is refreshingly simple: Meade alone with an acoustic guitar and vocal effects pedals to replicate the distinctive Liverpudlian harmonies.  Audience members submit requests and away he goes, his brain jam-packed with the band’s considerable discography.

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It’s not always an easy task, considering The Beatles’ propensity for studio wizardry, and their absence from live performance after 21 August 1966, with some 3 years and 6 LPs remaining on their clock.  But their poppy acumen is evident even in spare instrumentation.  ‘That’s one way of knowing if a song’s good’, Meade says, ‘if you can strip it down and do it solo. It also gives people a chance to remember the recordings. Because you listen to something and know what the guitar sounds like or when the trumpet comes in.  Stripping it down also allows people to become more involved with it. Before COVID, it was a sing-along, and right now I can’t do that’.

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But he’ll be back at the ’Pooia (Liverpoolia?) this weekend, for two glorious hours beginning at 7 p.m.  Saturday, 14 November.  The series relaunched last month with the usual pandemic safeguards in place.  Meade performs under a face shield with his tip jar a respectable 10 feet away.  The audience maintains a similar distance.

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‘I missed it,’ Meade says.  ‘Originally, Calapooia was my best place to play.  The people of Albany — we all get along and have fun for a couple of hours.  It all goes by so quick.  They’re excited.  They send me their requests beforehand so I have a chance to learn something new if I have to.  It’s a great time and I always look forward to playing there’.

 

So has anyone thrown him something strange, like ‘You Know My Name (Look Up the Number)’, the freakazoid, lounge-y, acid-trip dirge from the penultimate ‘Let It Be’ single?  Oh, yeah.  ‘I tried that one out, but I haven’t mastered it yet’, he says with a laugh.  ‘It’s repetitive, with a lot of stuff going on, like (the Rolling Stones’) Brian Jones on trumpet in the background.  If I can get everyone involved, we can pull it off together.’

 

And very few musical acts unite disparate souls like The Beatles, even more than a half-century after they ravaged the Cavern Club in Liverpool, opened minds, somehow conquered the world, and manage to reverberate even a generation or two after Meade’s initial discovery.

 

‘They’re still relevant.  Their message is still relevant’, he says. ‘Timeless music, timeless melodies.  And their fan base is still growing.  You can be 6 years old and want to hear "Yellow Submarine". This is why I do it, my main reason and drive: It brings back memories. It brings something positive to a negative world’.