Mellencamp's Acoustic Samaritans

MUSIC TO MY EARS

By Timothy White

"I guess the point is to share the spirit of that old song, by just 'playing real good for free,' " said John Mellencamp, making a sandwich in the kitchenette of his tour bus as it pulled away from Philadelphia's Rittenhouse Square. The song in question was Joni Mitchell's classic 1970 "Ladies Of The Canyon" track "For Free," and the bus Mellencamp stood in belongs to colleague Don Henley, but the sandwich was for John's young son Hud. The child was hungry after spending 70 minutes sitting placidly on an equipment case in the center of the park, watching and listening as his dad strummed more than a dozen familiar songs and obscure favorites for a stunned lunchtime throng of 400 fans.

Like his offspring's meal, Mellencamp's unannounced outdoor concert was a handcrafted, spur-of-the-moment repast. But contrary to Mitchell's folk/pop hymn, nobody "passed his music by." Indeed, sidewalks fringing the quaint square emptied as a ravenous crowd flocked onto the green from all directions to catch the casual performance. The site had been chosen scarcely an hour before, and Chicago violinist Merritt Lear and accordionist Mike Flynn (guesting from the Indiana band Old Pike) set up the portable amps and battery-powered P.A. system. John walked over with wife Elaine, toting his vintage acoustic guitar (emblazoned with a hand-drawn eagle and a "Fuck Fascism" slogan), and he paused under the trees to check its tuning. Moments later, Mellencamp launched into a hearty rendition of the traditional blues spiritual "In My Time Of Dying," as a nearby bicyclist hollered, "Hey, man, that's John Cougar!" while his jogging companion barked, "Huh? No way!"

The sun sprang out from behind threatening clouds as a grinning Mellencamp eased through a relaxed repertoire highlighted by the Rolling Stones' "Street Fighting Man"; "Cut Across Shorty," the Marijohn Wilkin/Wayne P. Walker raver popularized by Eddie Cochran and Rod Stewart; Donovan's 1970 hit "Riki Tiki Tavi"; Mellencamp's own "Pink Houses" and "Big Daddy Of Them All"; and choice Midwestern pop nuggets like "Captain Bobby Stout," off the 1969 LP "The Jerry Hahn Brotherhood."

"I saw the Jerry Hahn Brotherhood play that song in Indianapolis in 1971," Mellencamp later recalled as his bus sped onto the interstate en route to Massachusetts. "They opened for Frank Zappa at an old converted movie house-turned-rock palace called Middle Earth." Hahn hailed from Wichita, Kan., and his band's song immortalized a local deputy police chief who later became executive director of the Wichita Crime Commission.

Mellencamp retains fond memories of his first encounters with such "great, old hippie rock songs," and over the course of his 11-day August trek--which was actually an itinerant family camping trip with unscheduled musical pit stops--he hoped to reintroduce a menu of similar material to unsuspecting audiences. Peering out the bus window as it roared through New Jersey, John held his guitar in his lap and indicated the working set list taped to its side, whose 20-odd scrawled selections also included the Stones' "The Spider And The Fly" and "Dead Flowers," "Last Of The Rock Stars" (off Elliott Murphy's 1973 "Aquashow" album), the Animals' "Hey Gyp," plus some Woody Guthrie ("Oklahoma Hills") and Bob Dylan ("All Along The Watchtower").

The next day, Mellencamp was seated before a log fire at his self-dubbed "Mellencampsite" in Yogi Bear's Jellystone Park outside of Old Sturbridge Village, Mass., watching as Elaine and sons Hud and Speck scurried between Yogi's Petting Zoo, Boo Boo's Aqua Center swimming pool, and Pine Lake. "My family loves this place!" he said with a big grin, stirring the coals. "But I was never much of a camper or woodsman myself as a kid. I got kicked out of Cub Scouts after one week! And the one time I remember camping with my family as a kid in Bloomington, Ind., my mom got so mad at me for general mischief that she left and walked all the way home!"

The occasion for this current atypical road trip was Mellencamp's late-summer hiatus between the recent wrap of location filming in Rochester, N.Y., for "After Image," a murder mystery (in which he stars in the role of a crime-scene photographer) expected to premiere at the next Sundance Film Festival, and the completion of his next album, which he's been cutting in Key West, Fla. "We had some off-time to take our kids around to state parks and family recreation spots before they have to head back to school," he explained. "It was strictly no-stress, and I suddenly get the idea to make a little music the same way. Since my band was also on vacation, I invited Mike and his friend Merritt to come along with us to help eat the marshmellows and chase our boys, and we're just making up free gigs as we go."

The whimsical title coined for the musical side of the journey is "Live In The Streets: The Good Samaritan Tour," a notion inspired by Tony Tingle, a Kentucky buddy of Mellencamp's who once ruminated about quitting his day job, loading his tools in a truck, and heading into the sunset to spend a few months helping anyone gratis that he encountered along the roadside. "I loved that idea," said Mellencamp, "and I decided to take along my own tools as we traveled in the Northeast and Midwest, spreading cheer without looking for a paycheck."

Following a little mid-morning reconnaissance in the Boston area on Aug. 13, Mellencamp and company hopped out next to the Harvard campus and placed their milkbox-size amps in front of the fountain in J.F.K. Park. As rollerbladers and Frisbee tossers frolicked along the stretch of meadow between Memorial Drive and the River Charles, the familiar strains of "Key West Intermezzo (I Saw You First)" lofted over the bucolic corner of Cambridge, Mass., and drew 400 disbelieving spectators to the scene. By the concluding number, "Pink Houses," some onlookers were in tears. "Why is he doing this?" asked one woman with kids. "For our families, I think," replied another, pointing to Hud and Speck, who were playing tag with children in the crowd. Two days later, in downtown Pittsburgh, word-of-mouth and clues posted on Mellencamp's Web site led 3,000 people to assemble in Market Square, assuming that would be a likely site for the next "Samaritan" show. Actually no place had been picked yet, but Mellencamp hurried over to the ad hoc rallying point.

Twenty-four hours onward, Cleveland's Public Square had 4,000 people waiting on him, so he obliged. Locales in the Detroit and Chicago areas were scheduled to complete the remaining itinerary, and Mellencamp accepted that he should stop scouting for locations and just turn up where his congregated fans decided he should logically be.

"I've already learned a lot from this experience," said Mellencamp, as he settled into his Michigan "Mellencampsite" and anticipated the final stops on his pilgrimage. "This has been for the joy of the music rather than a job. It's been about pleasure rather than pressure. Once people see we've only got this tiny bit of sound equipment, they get quiet as mice. I can see why people have such an emotional response when we play like this, because they can really feel it's for all of us together. My wife, my boys, Merritt, and Mike, we all got a lot out of it. Nobody's selling anything, there's no souvenirs--except what's in everybody's heart. Think about it: Isn't that where music started? To anybody who's said thank you to me, I say, 'You're very nice, but, really, thank you.' "