John Mellencamp Community

The release of Plain Spoken will see john embark on a huge North American tour starting in late 2014 early 2015. (with a show hopefully in Vancouver, Canada)  I'm pumped to hear the new album and see John in concert again.  When will an official announcement be made?




Mike

Well, the dates have been announced but now I'm curious if John will be performing some of the hits or if he will largely be avoiding him as he did on the No Better Than This tour. Any word on that? It's a lot easier to stomach the $120 ticket price if I can enjoy not just the current album but I can also be nostalgic with the hits.

I expect John will do what he usually does and play most of his hits with a few new ones from the new album. When we say him at Rama up here in Toronto this summer he did all his older stuff and asked the audience if they wanted to hear any new stuff when the reply was no he carried on with the old stuff!

The No Better Than This tour setlist was at least 50% big hits, a few choice album cuts and then material from the last few records. John has always reinvented his hits, going all the way back to 1982 when he did a totally different version of Ain't Even Done With The Night. So the hits will be there, maybe not as exact copies of the record but easy to sing along to.

From the top of my head just about every one of these hits was played on the No Better Than This Tour:
Authority Song
Check It Out
Jack and Diane
Small Town
Rain On The Scarecrow
Paper In Fire
Crumblin' Down
ROCK In The USA
Pink Houses
Cherry Bomb

I would expect a similar distribution of material at the new tour since it is not being billed as a greatest his tour but rather a tour behind the new album.