Chuck Mead and the Stalwarts Mix Merle Haggard and Johnny Thunders on ‘Lonely Boy’

Right up there with Marty Stuart, Chuck Mead is one of the torchbearers of neo-traditional country music, that punky, jangly, and twangy sound that helped revitalize Nashville in the Nineties. Earlier this year, Mead and Stuart came together to write “Lonely Boy,” Mead’s latest single with his band the Stalwarts. A new video directed by Stacie Huckeba for the supercharged guitar-rocker, which Mead describes as “the Who on hay bales,” dropped on Friday.

“We initially envisioned it as a Johnny Horton-style song,” Mead says of “Lonely Boy” in a statement, “but when the band played it, it transformed into a Johnny Horton backed by Johnny Thunders sound, which we thought was cool.”

Mead is as much New York Dolls as he is Merle Haggard, and over his career — especially with the band BR5-49 at Robert’s Western World in Nashville — he’s been able to effortlessly blend those seemingly disparate genres.

“Growing up, I played in my family’s country band, jamming to Hank Williams, Merle Haggard, and Tammy Wynette alongside classic rock & roll like Elvis, Carl Perkins, and Chuck Berry,” Mead says. “But then I discovered my own era of rock & roll with the Ramones, Eddie and the Hot Rods, the Jam, Generation X, and the Clash, and it all blended together in my heart. I went from country to punk rock and back to country again.” 

Mead and the Stalwarts — bassist Mark Andrew Miller and drummer Marty Lynds — are perpetually on the road and will perform gigs in North Carolina, Tennessee, and Missouri next week. Earlier this summer, they anchored the Trucker & Country Festival in Interlaken, Switzerland, as a five-piece, with Adam “Ditch” Kurtz on pedal steel and Italian guitarist Don Diego.

Mead’s writing partner on “Lonely Boy,” Stuart and his band the Fabulous Superlatives, will open for Chris Stapleton at a pair of shows in Nashville this weekend.