The bottom one works for me, but the top one doesn't.

[Notes]

Here was John's setlist for Farm Aid tonight in Milwaukee:

Full Band:
Pink Houses
Paper in Fire
Check it Out

Acoustic:
Save Some Time to Dream
Cherry Bomb (a Capella)
Don't Need This Body
Small Town/Old Rugged Cross

Full Band:
Rain on the Scarecrow
If I Die Sudden
Crumblin' Down

Notes: During "Small Town," John sang "married an LA doll" instead of "my wife was 13 years old when I wrote this song" for the first time since what, the Dance Naked tour? I wonder if it just came out that way or if it was planned to go back to the original lyric......During "Crumblin' Down," John did the cell phone bit where he has everyone take out their cell phones, takes one from a fan and talks on somebody's phone on stage. He usually does this during "Jack and Diane"....... During "Don't Need This Body," Andy played guitar, Mirium was on violin and Jon E. Gee was on standup bass. Mike, Dane and Troye sang backgroud vocals and clapped along during the final verse.

Thoughts: The performance was outstanding as usual, make no mistake about that, but let's hope this was the final time we see this tired old setlist and format. John has been playing this format of show now since Oct. 2007, in which he opens with "Pink Houses" and then plays two or three other songs with the band ("Paper in Fire" and "Check it Out" are always among them) before doing some solo acoustic songs (again, always the same songs) and then bringing the band back to play the same six songs to close out the show. There's nothing wrong with it at all, and in 2007, it was fresh; here in 2010, its gone stale. This is the third straight year that the Farm Aid setlist has followed this format. It's time for a change, and by all accounts we're going to get it on the No Better Than This tour later this month. Let's hope to God he doesn't change his mind and drop the three separate sets idea to play this format again on the fall tour.  In addition, it's time to bag the tired old cell phone bit and the "Cherry Bomb" skit where he asks if everyone wants a new song or an old song, knows what the answer will be, fakes like he's trying to figure out which old song to do, and then sings the first verse and chorus of "Cherry Bomb." It was cool when he did it last year for the first time, now it just seems like a cheesy rehearsed bit.

John remains the best live act in rock 'n roll, and I can't wait for the fall tour, but a setlist overhaul is long overdue. Like I said, I think we're going to get it this fall, and that really excites me.

Grammy Award winners Hilary Hahn, Emmylou Harris, Lyle Lovett, John Mellencamp, Keb' Mo' and Stevie Wonder will perform as part of "A Celebration of Paul Newman's Hole in the Wall Camps," at New York's Avery Fisher Hall in Lincoln Center, on October 21. Tony Award winner James Naughton will direct the benefit event, which will also include appearances from Bill Cosby and Renee Zellweger.

The Hole in the Wall Camps serve children with serious medical conditions. The camps are fully inclusive with accessible tree houses, adaptive equestrian programs, high and low ropes courses and all the traditional "camp" activities like swimming, boating, arts and crafts and campfires. The October 21 event will also feature performances from some of the campers themselves.

Show-only tickets begin at $50 and can be purchased by calling 212-721-6500. Benefit tickets including an after party can be purchased by calling 212-627-0678.

For more information about the Hole in the Wall Camps, visit www.holeinthewallcamps.org.

http://www.theatermania.com/new-york/news/10-2010/bill-cosby-john-mellencamp-james-naughton-stevie-w_30983.html

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xj5L9mwAxC4

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1JvYG0_5HK4

http://www.amazon.com/Lonesome-Jubilee-John-Mellencamp/dp/B000001FMJ

Lonesome Jubilee: August 24, 1987

Awesome -- thanks for letting us know. Is John playing his songs or cover songs at these two shows? Kinda doubt he would let a house band play his songs knowing how particular he is, but I could be wrong.  

[Larry Crane heads to Indiana with album, Mellencamp band news]

Larry Crane heads to Indiana with album, Mellencamp band news

by Rob Nichols
June 14, 2010

Not only does Larry Crane bring a new solo record back to Indiana this week, the former John Mellencamp guitar player may soon be prepping a return to the studio with John and the band.

Saturday night’s show at Bloomington’s Buskirk-Chumley Theater promotes the Florida-living Crane’s new album Tropical Depression, and is a chance for reconnection for those who might have lost track of Crane, either when he left Mellencamp, or eventually, the state.

"The show will be a storyteller's-type vibe,” Larry says. "I will have my guitar player Tony Burton, with me. And then I'll throw in a few surprises towards the end.”

Back with Mellencamp

As he talks from his Sarasota home, Crane also says the old Mellencamp band may take a stab at creating music as a unit again, 20 years after they ceased making together — other than the subdued Big Daddy record - shortly after the 1987 Lonesome Jubilee tour ended.

If not the creator or co-creator, Crane is at the very least the man who helped form Mellencamp's snarling, rootsy, aggressive guitar attack, on record and on stage.

"When we did Uh-Huh (in 1983), we did it really quickly," Larry says. "John is thinking about going back to that vibe."

At the core of the band was Larry, Mike Wanchic, Kenny Aronoff and Toby Myers. They ripped, rocked and toured with John through his transformation from John Cougar to Mellencamp, playing the songs of American Fool, Uh-Huh, Scarecrow, and Lonesome Jubilee, the four career-defining records of Mellencamp's catalog.

"I had mixed emotions about it when they first asked me", Larry says about getting back together. "But I got to thinking about it, and thought 'Wow. You know what? It might be time'".


Going into the Studio for Uh-Huh

What probably won’t happen is a creation of a copy of the studio setup they used to make the in-your-face, rootsy rock of Uh-Huh.

“We did it in a temporary studio. We brought this mobile sound track from Miami, took all the stuff out of it, put it in a house, recorded the album, then put all the stuff back in the truck and it went back to Miami,” Crane laughs. "It was pretty much a nightmare for (producer) Don Gehman.

"We started talking at the beginning of this year, and John's been busy so it's a matter of getting it slotted in,” Crane says of talks to get everyone back into a studio. “Kenny keeps a pretty busy schedule. The easiest guys to corral would be Mike and Toby. They both still live right there in Bloomington. And Kenny lives in Bloomington but he's all over the place all the time.”

If you listen back to those records cut with these guys, especially on Uh-Huh, it's a Stones screw-ya attitude, and just plain ol' baddass snarling guitars and cracking, slamming drums. Could magic remain for a group - other than bandleader Wanchic - that went different directions as the 90's dawned?

"Right around the time between American Fool and the Uh-Huh album, me and Kenny really sort of started clicking as a pair, because I'm mainly a rhythm guitar player - obviously not one of these acrobatic soloist guys,” Crane admits. “That was a great time, because that's when the band really started the gel.

Using a Legend to Make Sure their Shit Works

Just before the band recorded Uh-Huh, Larry remembers they did a record with Mitch Ryder with the same studio setup, for his Never Kick A Sleeping Dog album.

It was a record that benefited from Mellecamp (and the band's) status at the time, if not helping it sell albums (which it didn’t much), at least aiding in getting a 60's rock legend to make a rock and roll record in Indiana.

"When we set up that studio, we did two albums. We started to use (Mitch) to see if the studio worked,” Larry chuckles. “We have Mitch Ryder and all these wonderful musicians coming in and out of this house that's just outside of Brownstown.

"His bass player is on it. And his keyboard player came. We'd go down to Brock's Diner, this little place where everybody has breakfast and lunch. “

Recording Tropical Depression

Crane's new album contains bouts of solid roots rock - similar to the sounds and songs Crane released in the '90s. "What Billy Wants" is one of the album's best, an Americana anthem that dates back to older live shows, while the opening cut "Once You Love" was a song Crane originally wrote with Steve Earle.

Crane flew back to Indiana to record the new album, a Telecaster-driven, Middle America slice of rock, a sound he’s mined since his Eye for an Eye debut 20 years ago.

His two most recent records, Wire and Wood and the Tropical Depression, have been built with an addition of acoustic and country influences.

"Everything that I've ever recorded solo has been done at what used to be called TRC Studios, with Alan Johnson. Now it's called Static Shack, owned by (Bob & Tom's) Tom Griswold.

"I did pretty much all the guitars - it was a quick album. We knocked it out in like ten days. Turns out it was the ten coldest days in January in Indiana,” Crane says. “I said, ‘Hey guys, you didn't have to do this for my benefit. I remember what winter feels like.’ But it was a fun record to make - we had a great time."

Living in the Sunshine

Crane, who started going to Florida with his current wife, has settled into his southern life and neighborhood.

"I'm very interested in boats and fishing and I was coming down here quite a bit,” he says of Florida. “We wanted to move down here while I'm still young enough to enjoy it - get out fish and all that.

“We're just in a ‘Leave it to Beaver’ sort of neighborhood,” Larry says. “I like the peace and quiet - ‘Oh, we got a rock and roll guitar player moved in next door’ they might say. Well, I'm like the quietest neighbor you could ever have."

After initially moving a decade ago, Crane was still commuting back to Indiana on a monthly basis. He’d put together two weeks of band gigs and fly home, leaving a complete set of gear in Indiana so he didn't have to fly any equipment back and forth.

“Over time, I started meeting musicians down here,” Larry says. “There was a club called the 5 O'Clock Club here in town and they have an open mic - kind of a blues jam every Monday night. Guys were stopping by: Brian Johnson from AC/DC. There was a guy who was Freddie King's guitar player. And Dickie Betts.

It’s led to Crane booking solo shows in Florida, including regular trips to the Florida Keys.

Beyond any Mellencamp band reformation travels, Crane will be also coming back to Indiana this fall for shows booked at the Monroe County Fall Festival and Hope Festival.

How A (Punk) Band Returned

We start talking about Southside Johnny and the Asbury Jukes’ new album Pills and Ammo, and then the virtues of an old punk band that came back around with a recent album.

"The New York Dolls had a really good album a year or so ago," Larry says. "It's a little slicker than the old stuff, but I've always been a big fan of David Johansen and all those guys,” he says. “They were some of my idols when I was growing up - Johnny Thunders and all that.

"I got to see them play in New York where we first started with John, and were going to New York quite a bit. And I'd always go down to the CBGB's or Max's Kansas City and check those guys out, because that's whose licks I grew up playing.”

Larry likes a new album by an old punk band? You hope that feeling melds into what could be (nothing’s ever official until the press release is issued, right?) a new album from one, long-lost Indiana rock band. Do years apart lead to a sense of poignancy - and desire to reconnect - with what once was, even as everyone has successfully moved on? And can it lead to vibrant music?

"Me and John had a punk band when I was still in high school and John was just out of college," Crane remembers. "“Those were the days - I was like 16 and John was five years older than me. We rented this big farmhouse outside of Seymour and I got there after school and we'd practice. I played a lot of old New York Dolls stuff.

“It's a wonder I can still hear at all."

http://besttopmusic.com/larry-crane-heads-to-indiana-with-album-mellencamp-band-news/

July 27, 1984

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NuaEQZ1hwYI

[No Better Than This is garnering the best reviews of your career. Surely that’s a point of pride?]

Honesty still drives John Mellencamp's brand of music
Published by Peter Cooper
on September 6, 2010

Twenty-three years ago, amid radio directives to “walk like an Egyptian” and “wang chung tonight,” suddenly there arose a sprightly interplay of accordions and fiddles.

The instigator was John Mellencamp, the musical pugilist once known as Johnny Cougar. He was using his pop star status as a bully pulpit, proclaiming the validity of tradition-based American roots music and proving the commercial worth of what has come to be known as Americana.

On Thursday, Mellencamp will receive a lifetime achievement award for songwriting from the Americana Music Association. It’ll be the first formal acknowledgment of his impact on a music movement whose practitioners tend to rhapsodize about doomed “Cosmic American Music” enthusiast Gram Parsons, doomed song-poet Townes Van Zandt and other shadowy masters of jagged song.

Mellencamp’s name went unmentioned at past AMA awards shows, and yet the impact of 1980s albums such as Scarecrow and The Lonesome Jubilee is hard to dispute. With those works, he tweaked the ears of millions of listeners, helping make palatable a rootsy blend of largely acoustic instrumentation.

He did not invent the kind of music now made by Lucinda Williams, Buddy Miller, Jim Lauderdale and others, but he furthered its popular cause. And this year he has issued a nearly universally praised album called No Better Than This, which dwells in country and blues terrains and was recorded at three Americana Meccas: Sun Records in Memphis, the Gunter Hotel in San Antonio, where Robert Johnson first recorded, and the First African Baptist Church in Savannah, Ga., a former Underground Railroad hideout.

No Better Than This, which features contributions from Nashville bass man Dave Roe and from former Jason and the Scorchers guitarist Andy York, was produced by tastemaker T Bone Burnett. The musicians gathered around one RCA microphone and played and sang. Mellencamp’s 1980s hits weren’t recorded so simply, but neither were they exercises in artifice. They were Americana songs that happened upon unlikely popularity, and they impacted audiences and artists alike.

Mellencamp recently spoke with The Tennessean about his life and career, and about his dealings with one notable Music City pool shark.

No Better Than This is garnering the best reviews of your career. Surely that’s a point of pride?

Well, it’s interesting to me. I don’t live my life by reviews. If I did, I would have quit a long time ago. But I’m very happy that people are discovering this record in a very natural way.

It’s a different kind of album. And so was Lonesome Jubilee, back in 1987.

Yes, I was acutely aware of how different Lonesome Jubilee was, simply because the guy I was making records with (Don Gehman) spent the entire record fighting with me, saying, “Why are you doing this? You just made Scarecrow, and now why are we changing?” I said, “We’re not changing, just moving a little bit further. We’re progressing.”

Did the record company go along with that progression?

In the early ’80s, I made a record called American Fool, and the record company absolutely hated everything about it. They hated the songs, hated the production and hated me. But, much to their chagrin, or good fortune, it had two songs on it (“Hurts So Good” and “Jack & Diane”) that were both No. 1 records. That album turned out to be the largest-selling album of the year in 1982.

After something like that happens, it became “Well, we already told him we hated this record, so our advice to him is worthless.” I never had interference after that. Which is good. I really hate to be told what to do. I wrote “The Authority Song,” and it may be juvenile in its lyrical content, but I still feel the same way today.

Do you consider your songs to be Americana works?

After I learned to write songs, I had Woody Guthrie in one hand, Hank Williams and Smokey Robison in the other. Combining with Hank and Woody and all of a sudden putting the melodies — my strongest suit — with this type of folk music. I’ve always considered myself a folk singer. I read a review the other day that said, “John Mellencamp’s new record is like a lost Woody Guthrie record,” and I liked that.

In the new century, T Bone Burnett has introduced more people to roots music than anyone else, through his work on movie soundtracks and through his productions with Alison Krauss and Robert Plant, Jakob Dylan and others. What did he bring to this project for you?

I think the reason T Bone is so successful, and the reason I work with him, is (that) his sense of honesty toward the music is unparalleled. He’s my conscience in the studio.

When I started with T Bone, he’d go, “Why are you (cluttering) up this song with all this stuff you don’t need? Just put a bass and drums on it and let’s call it made.” It takes courage to expose a song so nakedly, and that’s one of the things people are responding to.

Of course, you’ve got to have the right bass and drums.

Yeah, and we did. Dave Roe on bass was absolutely fantastic. I couldn’t ask for a better guy to come play on it. He was spectacular. These guys had not heard any of those songs until I would go, “Okay, here’s the next song.” I’d play it on acoustic and we’d launch into it. No arrangements, and they all jumped right in.

You didn’t record any of this album in Nashville, but Nashville isn’t new to you.

I’ve been there a lot. One time, in probably 1985, I came to play at the arena, and I walked into the Hermitage Hotel, where I was staying. Turned out (billiards legend) Minnesota Fats was living there.

I was shooting around at the pool table, and this guy comes up and says, “You want to shoot for some money?” After he hustled me, he gave me a card that said, “You’ve just been hustled by Minnesota Fats.”

He also gave me one of my favorite lines. He was telling me how handsome he used to be. He said women used to follow him around with mattresses on their backs.

Isn’t that lucky, to have a story like that? I’m the luckiest guy in the music business. No matter who you are, nobody’s had more fun than me. I’ve had so much good fortune, it’s ridiculous. I’ve fought with many, but people love me just the same.

http://blogs.tennessean.com/tunein/2010/09/06/honesty-still-drives-john-mellencamps-brand-of-music/

There are more dates for the tour still to be announced. He will hit all areas of the country on the No Better Than This tour, including, I would assume, Florida. As for why John doesn't come down there all that much? Well, it might have something to do with the fact that the last few times he's played down there he's struggled to sell tickets, so he avoids those markets, or the promoters avoid him, either way.

Click the link below to hear all of John's concert on 8-19-10 in Ontario, CA (just two weeks ago). The sound quality is outstanding. I've included the setlist below the link.

http://tela.sugarmegs.org/_asxtela/JohnMellencamp2010-08-19TheArenaAtOntarioCA.asx


01-Arena ambiance (crowd)
02-Pink Houses
03-Paper In Fire
04-No Better Than This
05-Check It Out
06-Save Some Time To Dream (Acoustic Solo)
07-Cherry Bomb (A Capella)
08-Don't Need This Body (Acoustic)
09-Small Town
10-Rain On The Scarecrow
11-Troubled Land
12-If I Die Sudden
13-Crumbling Down
14-Band Introductions
15-Authority Song

Very interesting. Thanks for the update. Do you have a rough estimate as to how long the movie is going to be?

Lisa Germano's Dark Magic

An artist best known for her classic work for 4AD returns with a lush new record

By John Payne

Like her music, Lisa Germano is different. Neither she nor her sounds seem capable of selling themselves; they need a nudge. One of the distinct charms of her new album, in fact, is this fine-tuned ineffability. It creates an essence of pricelessness, a quality as rare as Ms. Germano's charisma. Lyrically sophisticated and texturally daring, Magic Neighbor, the L.A.-based singer-songwriter-violinist's 11th proper album, is a darkly magical and sweetly moving thing. And while hyping her considerable gifts is low on her list of priorities, she's got a lot to proclaim.

An accomplished player first spotlighted as a member of John Mellencamp's touring band in the late '80s and early '90s, Germano has recorded and toured with loads of big shots, including Indigo Girls, Simple Minds, David Bowie and Neil Finn. Yet these days she's better known to a large-ish worldwide fan cult for a series of almost savagely honest and musically intrepid solo albums that commenced in the early '90s for the 4AD label, including the melancholy Happiness in 1994 and the sexual-warfare-running-amok Geek the Girl, also from '94.

A series of follow-up records found her exploring with widening musical palettes some of the farther reaches of the scary rock-as-catharsis world, but tides and trends shifted, and caused her to lose label support, at least until Michael Gira's visionary Young God label, best known around these parts for Devendra Banhart's early recordings, wisely came to the rescue.

Magic Neighbor is so different that I wanted to meet Germano to talk about it, which we did at a Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf on Beverly, not far from the Whole Foods in Hollywood, where Germano works off and on. She's dressed casually in halter shirt and jeans, sipping some bizarre herbal tea concoction and enjoying the sun on her face. These days, she's taking great enjoyment in making music for its own sake, too.

"Yeah, I've done music when I felt like it," she says. "It was more like I always told myself that when I turned 50, if I can't make a living at music, it doesn't mean I have to quit playing it, but I'd better start thinking about something else to do. It's not like you have to be bitter about music or anything, but I don't really think it's right that this is the only thing that you can do."

This idea that an artist has decided to make music primarily because she wants to do it is way appealing to the pure-expressionists among us. It can, possibly, also change the way she hears music; Germano took her time making Magic Neighbor because the songs needed to be nurtured.

"I never decide to do an album until I've got enough material, and all of a sudden it starts to make sense that it might be a record," she says. "On this one it was hard because I only had three songs; I really liked them, kinda, [laughs] but I thought, 'I can't make a whole record, I don't have the music,' except for a lot of instrumentals that I would play on the piano, or stuff that's old that I hadn't recorded."

Getting out of the house to record at producer/engineer Jamie Candalero's studio helped Germano begin to conceive of an album project. "This was different, because I always just record at home. I just said, okay, I'll just go in and start recording and see if this turns into something, and it slowly and surely became something I thought I should finish."

Each piece is so subtly shaded with the unexpected — seemingly the kind of thing that couldn't possibly be contrived in a formal writing process.

"Some of the versions, they were accidents that I liked," she says. "You play around and you end up doing the same things over and over. And sometimes you just sit down and you do make a pretty huge mistake. And you're, like, 'Whoa, I'll never do that again if I don't record that right now, I'll never remember what I did.' That's a tool of writing, so you go a little bit in a different direction."

But it's not as if these songs all began as totally free improvisations. "Most of these had melodies," she says, "and it was more like how I might arrange it, or how I might end it. But nothing was, like, totally, completely made up. I mean, I did have the ideas of the songs. If you make a mistake, you don't just choose it because it was different; I usually think there's a reason that I made that mistake, and then if it doesn't work, then of course you keep trying."

While Germano's Magic Neighbor songs, including a handful of evocative wordless interludes, may have arisen from her unconscious, she appears to circle the story of inside/outside the self: the story of need, of forgiveness, perhaps. She views each song as addressing one straightforward scenario as it becomes a metaphor for another. The title track concerns the true story of someone who put her two cats to sleep because she wanted to remodel her kitchen and needed a dog to go with it.

"I just felt this evilness," Germano says, "and then I thought of how that kind of consciousness grows bigger, how people in wars use people for target practice, or experiment with nuclear bombs; they don't think about people."

"Suli-Moon," with its mysterious chord shifts and shadowy electronic feel, is not about Octomom. "I used to play it on the piano as an instrumental, and I didn't have any words for it. I had this Chinese cat, his name is Suliman; he was a very snobby cat, wise, old. But Suliman died. I just wanted the song to be about feelings, I wanted it to be about something that feels good when you hear it, makes you feel better, a comfort thing." And extending the idea of musical metaphors, the song's curious chords represent Suliman's cat language.

"You don't hear any actual words," she says, "except you can kinda hear 'tuna in my bowl.' Kitties always want tuna. ... It wasn't just about a cat. Someone you loved may not be alive anymore, but you know where they are, you can feel them."

Germano seems to strive toward being direct and simple, yet she knows that's not always possible. She peppers her work with rudimentary sentiment like "It's a beautiful day" in "To the Mighty One," yet the song's instrumental grain suggests a vulnerability bordering on mild aggression. That dark/light struggle, it seeps out. You could call it a kind of irony, but she says she's not doing it on purpose. "I'm not actually smart enough to know that I'm doing that. It feels like life can be so tragic that you have to have a sense of humor about things, or see a lot of beauty.

"It's juggling the darkness and the light," she continues. "It's all about fighting with yourself, your insides. Everybody's got a demon. 'The Mighty One' is just a person who fights the demon and comes out in control, even if it's just for one day. And I'm going to have a good day today, no matter what."

http://www.laweekly.com/2010-01-21/music/lisa-germano-s-dark-magic/