for best band-website design). Almost and Always In 2008, having spent the previous year living in Brooklyn, New York, Mead moved back to Nashville after he and his wife separated. Mead reteamed with Brad Jones and recorded the intimate collection Almost and Always in seven days, most of it live. The majority of the album was cowritten with Bill DeMain of Swan Dive; they originally conceived the project for an imaginary chanteuse. The track "Last Train Home" was an NPR Song of the Day and was featured in a 2009 episode of ABC's Private Practice. Mead and DeMain also cowrote a second, as-yet-unreleased album, "1908 Division," a conceptual suite about the denizens of an apartment building where Mead once resided. Almost and Always was first released in Japan in October 2008, then in the United States ten months later on Cheap Lullaby Records. Dudes Mead's sixth album was "funded entirely by fans, friends and lovers," according to the liner notes. He raised $20,925 from 253 donors on Kickstarter in late 2010 to cover the recording, manufacturing, and distribution of Dudes and documented the recording sessions, which took place over nine days in New York City, on his YouTube channel in January 2011. Produced by Ethan Eubanks and Mead (Adam Schlesinger is credited as executive producer), the 12-song collection deepens Mead's songwriting with strains of Randy Newman-esque wry humor ("Bocce Ball") and sharp storytelling ("The Smile of Rachael Ray," which was NPR's Song of the Day on December 14, 2011; Stephen Thompson called it "a new Christmas classic; a minor miracle worthy of the season that surrounds it"). Dudes was released in November 2011. Earlier that year Mead married yoga instructor and nutritionist Liz Workman. Cobra Pumps On January 25, 2019, Mead sent an email to every address on his website's mailing list. "When it came time to figure how to release COBRA PUMPS," he wrote, "I needed money and, out of habit, approached a few different music business people for help. After a few slightly bizarre meetings in which algorithmically-induced metrics and social media compliance were discussed with a ferocity once reserved for killer hooks and Led Zeppelin, I deduced that I simply don't fit into the industry anymore, if I ever did. It now requires very different skill sets than the ones I have spent my life attempting to master. And that is OK with me ..." Mead emailed