A founding member of the underrated BR549 (a band that convinced Nashville locals they were seeing the future of honky tonk), Chuck Mead applies the same musical integrity to his solo work; he insists on honoring the classic country lineage of Hank Williams, Marty Robbins, Eddy Arnold, Hank Snow, Tom T. Hall, and Bobby Bare while crafting narratives worthy of a novelist. These 12 songs (in sometimes subtle, sometimes obvious ways) sing to the stories and legends he grew up hearing during his Kansas childhood. With his longtime band The Grassy Knoll Boys giving the tracks a vintage country sound, songs like “Neosho Valley Sue” (with BR549’s Don Herron adding fiddle), “Sittin’ on Top of the Bottom," and “The Devil by Their Side” (about William Quantril’s bloody 1863 Civil War raid on Lawrence, Kan.) feel as if they’d always been here and Mead simply discovered them. Anyone seeking a true historical country sound should feel blessed by this discovery.