Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Tony Meade. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Alright, Tony thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. When did you first know you wanted to pursue a creative/artistic path professionally?

Like most things in my life, I’m a late bloomer, and I came to becoming both a performer and creative later than most. I first discovered that I could sing in my senior year of high school when I was asked to audition for a production of the musical “Into The Woods”, and I ended up getting one of the leads. The musical director actually asked me where I’d been hiding all those years. By then, however, I was committed to going into the Army, so everything had to be put on hold for another four years.

While I was in the service, though, I met some guys who played guitar and wrote songs, and for the first time in my life, that sort of thing now seemed possible for me. I taught myself to play guitar, and by the time the end of my enlistment rolled around, I was ready to get out and pursue music.

Tony, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

I have been a singer, songwriter, and recording artist for over twenty years, and have released three solo albums, NOT MY DAY (2010), WON’T STOP SINGING (2015), and TURN IT AROUND (2020), my Christmas album WASSAIL (2020), and multiple standalone singles. I will be releasing a singles compilation album entitled ODDS AND ENDS on June 1st. I am also a recording engineer and producer who has worked on projects for many other artists.

How can we best help foster a strong, supportive environment for artists and creatives?

In many other countries, such as in Europe, there are social programs designed to help artists be helping them pay for the essentials of life while pursuing an artistic career. This is something that we need in the US, and to drop this myth of “doing it all yourself” and “just work harder” hustle culture that this literally killing us and stifling us creatively.

The most important resources that one needs as an artist is actually TIME, and when the majority of one’s life is concerned with making ends meet, the time and energy necessary to devote to creative pursuits is necessarily sacrificed. How many wonderful albums, movies, paintings, and other works have we lost to people’s day jobs?

If you look throughout history patronage was always the way that artists were able to survive, and if you read any modern success story, the one part that is always left out is who was paying the bills while the artist chased their dreams. If you dig a little bit, you always find out that it was a family member, partner, or some other benefactor funding the bottom line.

Is there something you think non-creatives will struggle to understand about your journey as a creative? Maybe you can provide some insight – you never know who might benefit from the enlightenment.

I think that creativity and ambition can be both blessings and curses. On the one hand, they are the things that prevent one from living a boring life, but at the same time, they can make normal life very hard. The pressure to both produce work and to succeed, especially in competition with others in the same field, can make one wish that they had chosen a much more mundane life in which they can be content and not constantly crippled by self-doubt.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.tonymeade.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tonymeademusic
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/tonymeademusic
• Youtube: http://youtube.com/tonymeademusic

Image Credits
Tony Meade