Frank Meadows is an American songwriter and multi-instrumentalist currently based in Durham, NC. They have been active since 2010 in independent music on the east coast, primarily while based in Asheville, the Triangle area, and NYC, and as a label head at Dear Life Records.

Frank has toured and collaborated with a wide range of artists and projects including: Tomberlin, Bellows, Fust, Colamo, Wendy Eisenberg, Michael Cormier-O'Leary, Hour, Office Culture, Tashi Dorji, MAW (with Jessica Ackerley and Eli Wallace), and more.

His solo output so far has ranged from instrumental vignettes and song-a-day projects recorded at home, to live recordings of improvised double bass performance. “Dead Weight” is his first full length album of singer-songwriter material.
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The piano-led songs that populate Dead Weight, the debut LP of singer-songwriter material from Brooklyn multi-instrumentalist Frank Meadows, are full of vivid photographic details that create the impression of transience. Each track feels like a private exercise in self-inquiry, archiving a passing epiphany or mode of being. Samples and snippets of field recordings string the songs together, investing the album with a constant sense of kinetic motion, connecting moments years or subway stops apart.

Despite its conceptual flourishes, Dead Weight is at its heart a songs-first country album, dominated by Meadows’ florid keyboard counterpoint and plaintive, richly embellished vocal lines. The rotating backing band is an extensive team drawn from Meadows’ vast network of musicians across the country. Aside from the typical Grand Ol’ Opry lexicon, the reference points here include Neil Young in ivory-tickling mode, the Southern-fried piano rave-ups of Leon Russell and Lambchop’s hairpin turns between the specific and cryptic.

Across 14 years of musical activity, Meadows has sought ways to expand their own sonic approach, and sense of musical community. Though Meadows has been a Brooklynite since 2017 and spends a good portion of the year on tour, Dead Weight is colored by his formative years as a jack-of-all-trades in the North Carolina music community, and a passion for Southern popular music that has bloomed as life has carried him further away from home.

In these ways and more, Dead Weight reflects Meadows’ progress as both a musician and person. Rather than provide a definitive statement on the past, Dead Weight attempts to embody the ongoing acquisition and editing process that defines a healthy emotional and musical life. There is a celebratory character throughout the record, allowing room for even the most painful steps on the path forward to be necessary stepping stones.