Reunions — seems like they’re the thing to do these days for bands launched in the ‘90s. You can often smell the money-making, nostalgia-fueled agenda a mile away — especially when it’s obvious nothing short of a big payday could get the feuding band members onstage together once again. But BR549 is an entirely different animal. After more than a decade apart, the original lineup of Lower Broad’s legendary, party-starting honky-tonk band is reconvening just for the warm-hearted fun of it. They’ll be opening for a band that earned its first Opry slot the very same year BR’s original five guys played their final one together, that band being Old Crow Medicine Show. Chuck Mead — BR’s class act of a co-front man — called from his tour van somewhere in Kentucky to talk about how reunions, and rumors of reunions, get started, and to spread his excitement about Saturday’s show at the Woods at Fontanel. Be forewarned — it’s catching.
Nashville Cream: How did this come about?
Chuck Mead: I guess it’s just kind of in the air, you know? The Mavericks are getting back together, Old Crow kind of reassembled.
NC: Is that the life cycle of a band — that’d you want to revisit the heady days a decade or more later?
CM: There was a certain chemistry that went along with those five guys, irreplaceable for any of us. Once you have that kind of chemistry and have big things happen to you … I’m not trying to recreate it, anyway. I can’t speak for the other guys, but I don’t think they are either. Because you can’t. All the things that, I guess, made us part ways in the first place, [it’s] like the Bob Wills song says, time changes everything. We never ever thought it would happen, but it looks like it’s happening. And it all happened so quickly, too. It was like this rumor and then all the sudden Donnie [Herron] and I are talking on Skype. To be honest with you, I’m really not sure how it happened. But we’re all in a good spot for it. We’re all really looking forward to it. We’re actually gonna rehearse, which is something. It’ll be the first time in almost 11 years that all five of us have been in the same room together.
