[Times change; John Mellencamp doesn’t]

Times change; John Mellencamp doesn’t
BY WALTER TUNIS
Contributing Music Critic

In viewing the current artistic profile of John Mellencamp, one is tempted to paraphrase that recent Nobel Prize recipient Bob Dylan. The times are indeed changing, even if the temperament behind them hasn’t.

The Indiana rocker’s performance at the EKU Center for the Arts on Wednesday marks his first Central Kentucky appearance since a Rupp Arena concert in the spring of 1988 — a time when songs from his then-current album, “The Lonesome Jubilee,” were all over radio and MTV, trumpeting an earnest, blue-collar electricity many critics took to calling heartland rock. It was a vague and uninformative label at best, but it was at least an attempt to summarize the social standing of Mellencamp’s music — specifically, its rural Midwestern sensibility, working-class appeal and love of elemental rock ‘n’ roll that reflected and encouraged the very literary nature of the characters that populated his songs. Jersey had Springsteen. The Hoosier kingdom had Mellencamp.

In those days, the two artists seemed to walk in each other’s footsteps on the road. During March of 1988, both played Rupp within two weeks of each other — Springsteen behind the dour “Tunnel of Love,” his last record (and tour) before disbanding his famed E Street Band for nearly a decade, and Mellencamp behind “The Lonesome Jubilee,” arguably still his best work and certainly the most stirring and artful record with a potent band that included drummer Kenny Aronoff, violinist Lisa Germano and former Lexingtonian Mike Wanchic (the only holdover today from that unit).

Mellencamp’s activist role, one cemented on 1985’s “Scarecrow,” was also on full display at the time with the annual Farm Aid benefit he co-founded with Willie Nelson and Neil Young still in its infancy. A narrative vitality would continue to populate Mellencamp’s stronger albums through the years: “Human Wheels” (1993), a pair of T Bone Burnett-produced works, “Life, Death, Love and Freedom” (2008) and “No Better Than This” (2010), and his newest studio effort, “Plain Spoken” (2014).

The latter frames the performance portrait of the present-day Mellencamp — an artist who is obviously older and perhaps hardened by the times that surround songs like “Lawless Times” (which has served as show opener at many of his recent performances), “Troubled Man” and “Tears in Vain.” But the sense of reflection, heated as it sometimes becomes, ties these songs to the Mellencamp of the mid- and late ’80s.

There remains an upstart attitude at play. “Lawless Times” may churn to a more elemental blues and boogie grind than something like “Authority Song” from 1983 and Mellencamp may reveal a smoker’s wheeze in his singing today that is more a product of age (he turned 65 earlier this month) than sagely intent. But the mix of celebration and restlessness, of introspection and social commentary, really hasn’t changed. So there is little doubt as to how well “Lawless Times” and “Troubled Man” might sound next to hits like “Pink Houses” and “Check It Out” that defined the transition of John Cougar (the singer’s reluctant stage persona on his earliest recordings) to John Mellencamp.

His days as an arena act are behind him, though. Mellencamp plays mostly theaters and, in the case of the Richmond performance, arts centers these days — settings that certainly suit his songs. But the simple fact of the matter is the current pop market isn’t always inviting to age. Sure, Springsteen may still fill arenas, but even Boss diehards have to admit that’s more the product of a resoundingly popular back catalogue than the result of his newer work. In that regard, he and Mellencamp are essentially equals. Both tap into the social fabric of America with songs political and personal. Similarly, both can’t get a record played by Top 40 radio if their lives were at stake.

Of course, it’s also a good bet such an endorsement is of little concern to Mellencamp in 2016.

“I’m doing my favorite occupation,” he told Vanity Fair magazine in January. “I work for no one, never have worked for anyone. I haven’t had a boss since my father, so I’ve been very fortunate in the fact that I’ve been able to live for myself and live the way I have chosen to live.”

IF YOU GO
John Mellencamp

Opening: Carlene Carter

When: 7:30 p.m. Oct. 26

Where: EKU Center for the Arts, 1 Hall Drive at Eastern Kentucky University, Richmond

Tickets: $39.50-$230.50

Call: 859-622-7469

Online: Ekucenter.com, Mellencamp.com

http://www.kentucky.com/entertainment/music-news-reviews/article109633132.html#storylink=cpy

[John Mellencamp concert at Akron Civic full of warmth and beloved hits]

John Mellencamp concert at Akron Civic full of warmth and beloved hits
The 65-year-old Rock and Roll Hall of Famer fires up a full house of fans
By Dan Kane Repository entertainment editor

AKRON At the same time the presidential debate was escalating in negativity Wednesday night, I was happily singing "Ain't that America, home of the free, little pink houses for you and me" along with a packed house of John Mellencamp fans at the Akron Civic Theatre. It was a celebratory night, one that had kicked off with the Tribe winning a berth in the World Series.

Mellencamp's common-man anthem "Pink Houses" was part of an exciting run of high-energy hits — "Crumblin' Down," "The Authority Song," "Cherry Bomb" — that closed the show. Now 65, Mellencamp doesn't race around the stage as he did in his '80s heyday, and his voice has some added rasp, but he's still got some moves, and his vocal phrasing, warm spirit and humor endure. Maturity suits him well, and there was genuine eloquence to much of the evening, yet he can still sing "I fight authority, authority always wins" with convincing young-man rebellion.


The Akron concert was part of Mellencamp's ongoing Plan Spoken Tour, which offers a rich retrospective of his lengthy career. His six-piece band — which features his cohort of 40 years, guitarist Mike Wanchic — was impeccable, offering a textured, Americana-tinged sound on the quieter, more introspective songs and full-tilt rock 'n' roll when called for. Skilled fiddler Miriam Sturm was a big part of the show. The crowd response was loud and enthusiastic throughout.

There were some wonderfully intimate numbers. Alone onstage, Mellencamp accompanied himself on acoustic guitar for "Jack and Diane," and with piano backing crooned a nightclub number in a style reminiscent of Tom Waits. His rendition of Robert Johnson's "Stones in My Passway" was impassioned blues. He sang "Pop Singer," which denounces shallow radio pap, with sly humor.

Other favorites on the setlist included "Small Town," "Check It Out," "Minutes to Memories," "Paper in Fire" and a lowdown and fierce "Rain On the Scarecrow," whose words seem as relevant as they did in 1985. Carlene Carter, June Carter's daughter and Johnny Cash's stepdaughter, shone vocally in two memorable duets with Mellencamp; her show-opening set was engaging and personable.

Introducing the warmly nostalgic "Cherry Bomb," Mellencamp said, "The problem with talking about old times is you've gotta be old." Clearly, he's not done yet.

http://www.cantonrep.com/news/20161020/john-mellencamp-concert-at-akron-civic-full-of-warmth-and-beloved-hits

[REVIEW: John Mellencamp at F.M. Kirby Center still playing great music, still improving]

REVIEW: John Mellencamp at F.M. Kirby Center still playing great music, still improving
By John J. Moser

It’s fair to conjecture that, 34 years ago when John Mellencamp wrote the song “Jack & Diane” with its lyrics “Oh yeah, life goes on/Long after the thrill of living is gone,” he wasn’t envisioning a time when he would be twice the age he was then and still performing it.

But since that time – when, as he sang in 1987’s “Cherry Bomb,” just five years later, “we were young and we were improving” – Mellencamp has surprised perhaps even himself by creating more great music that proved the thrill of living isn’t the only fodder for great songs.

At Wilkes-Barre’s F.M. Kirby Center on Friday, Mellencamp, now 65, played a 19-song (including an instrumental by his band), 95-minute show that included many of his early hits, but often presented them from an older, more wizened perspective – but made them no less successful.

And with them, he offered newer songs that resonated perhaps differently, but just as strongly with a sold out audience that, like Mellencamp, also has grown older.

Among them were the show’s two first songs, both from his most recent album, 2014’s “Plain Spoken,” after which his current tour is named.

The opening “Lawless Times” and “Troubled Man” told of the unsettled situation of both today’s society and our personal lives, and Mellencamp sang them in a Dylanesque growl – the first song boozy and bluesy, sounding like Dylan’s “Rainy Day Women Nos. 12 & 35,” the second warm and confessional.

Later in the set, another song from the disc, “The Isolation of Mister,” talked even more of the place Mellencamp finds himself – as likely does much of his audience: “Never looked forward to the future/Never enjoyed where I’ve been.”

One of the night’s best songs, “Longest Days” from his 2008 disc “Life, Death, Love and Freedom,” was a font of such wisdom.

In a spotlight on acoustic guitar, Mellencamp sang its lines such as “Nothing lasts forever/Your best efforts don't always pay”; “So you pretend not to notice/That everything about us has changed”; and “All I got here Is a rear view mirror/Reflections of where we been,” aptly changing the first-person perspective on the record to include his listeners.

Mellencamp even took a turn at the blues, singing, again in that Dylan growl, a slow piano-and-voice burn on “The Full Catastrophe” from 1996’s “Mr. Happy Go Lucky,” and doing Robert Johnson’s “Stones in My Passing” – though he did a surprisingly limber dance and spin as he wailed vocally to slide guitar.

And he did a gospel number with opening act Carlene Carter –the fun and bouncy “My Soul’s Got Wings” from their  duet album “Sad Clowns and Hillbillies,” due out in February.

But the best part of the concert was how Mellencamp, backed by a skilled and sympathetic six-person band, delivered his biggest hits in a way that both reminded of the celebrations of life they were back when they were released, as well as added a older perspective.

“Pop Singer” still reminded that “I never wanted to be no pop singer,” but was harder and more forceful. “Check It Out” was even more wistful and ethereal, its violin soul-searing, as Mellencamp sang, “Is this all that we’ve learned about living?”

And yet the crowd was up and dancing and gave it a huge cheer, as if it, too, was a celebration of making it this far.

His fiddle and accordion players even did an instrumental medley of “Hurt So Good” and “I Need a Lover,” two songs Mellencamp had left out of recent shows, perhaps because he no longer connected to them.

And he prefaced “Jack & Diane,” his biggest hit, by telling the crowd, “I don’t know why I play it, actually. I wrote it so long ago. But I play it because I know you want to hear it.” He played it slower, solo acoustic, and the audience gleefully sang all the words – even forcing Mellencamp to stop when it sang the chorus early.

Mellencamp closed the show with a run of some of his biggest hits, and like the ornery cuss her portrays himself as, attacked all of them with fervor.

“Rain on the Scarecrow” was dynamic and ominous. “Crumblin’ Down” booming, rumbling and loud – and by the end of it, Mellencamp was throwing punched at the air. “Paper in Fire” and its lyric “We keep no check on our appetite” resonated even more in this era.

And ”Authority Song” had the crowd dancing again – clearly, like Mellencamp, resisting time with its dismissal of age: “Growing up leads to growing old and then to dying/And dying to me don't sound like all that much fun." Mellencamp even added a two minute segue of the 1960s song “Land of 1,000 Dances.”

There were songs left unsung: "Lonely Ol' Night" and "R.O.C.K. in the U.S.A.” would have been great to hear.

But he closed the main set with a wonderful “Pink Houses” – deeper, more reflective, perhaps more jaded and, with its violin, more mournful than the original. But it connected deeply with the crowd, who made it a Springsteen-esque call-and-response singalong.

Before the encore, Mellencamp talked about how members of his band have been with him 40 years, and how instead of living the rock ‘n’ roll lifestyle, they talk about the old times.

“The only problem with talking about old times is you got to be old to talk about them,” he said, before playing a great “Cherry Bomb.”

“Seventeen has turned 35/I’m surprised we’re still living,” he sang, and yet – at nearly double that larger number now -- finished the song with a jump and swing.

Not only is Mellencamp still living, as the song says, he's still improving.

http://www.mcall.com/entertainment/lehigh-valley-music/mc-review-john-mellencamp-at-f-m-kirby-center-still-playing-great-music-still-improving-20161015-story.html

[John Mellencamp's guitarist for 40 years shares stories]

John Mellencamp's guitarist for 40 years shares stories
Midwest rock 'n' roll hero to play Akron Civic Theatre on Wednesday
By Dan Kane Repository entertainment editor

No, I didn't get an interview with John Mellencamp.

But what I got is someone who's unquestionably the next best thing.

I had an insightful conversation with Mike Wanchic, Mellencamp's guitarist for 40 years, onstage at every concert and in the studio for every one of his 22 albums.

The occasion for our chat was Mellencamp's upcoming concert Wednesday at the Akron Civic Theatre, part of his career-spanning Plain Spoken Tour. For those needing a refresher, a 65-year-old Seymour, Ind., native, Mellencamp, previously known as John Cougar, has enjoyed a long and rich musical career with a string of hits that includes "Hurts So Good," "Jack and Diane," "Crumblin' Down," "Pink Houses," "The Authority Song," "Lonely Ol' Night," "Small Town," "R.O.C.K. in the U.S.A.," "Paper in Fire," "Cherry Bomb" and "Wild Night."

Q. What can you tell me about the show you're bringing to Akron?

A. "What we're trying to do on this tour is play the records that people want to hear, but at the same time dip into our repository of 20-plus albums. We want to expand musically for both our sake and to honor the listeners that we have. The people that come to see us, they know our material. These are ardent fans, they're not curiosity seekers. And that allows us a lot of leeway to be more musical and diverse. It's a chance to give a really expansive look at our career and the music that we do. We're not living off our laurels. We're not the Beach Boys. We're still making records. Why not make this a musically satisfying evening? (Opening act Carlene Carter) is going to come out and do some songs. We're also going to present a couple of songs from the new record that haven't been heard before. And I guarantee we'll pound out some hits."

Q. Are there any political elements to the show, this being election season and all?

A. "Not overtly. Most of our music is about the human condition, and it definitely speaks to the condition of things as we sit right now. But we're not proselytizing, no."

Q. Aside from you and John, are any other longtime band members still on board?

A. "Toby (Myers, bassist) retired. He had his first kid when he was like 50 and he said, 'I've gotta get off the road.' Of course, I've had two kids after 50, but that's me. I'm a loyalist. I'll die in this band. Kenny (Aronoff, drummer) moved on after 20 years. Of the current cast that we have, Miriam Sturm, our violinist, has been in the band for 20-plus years; Andy York, our guitarist, has been in the band for 22 years; Dane Clark, our drummer, has been in the band 19 years. This is the second generation of this band. With that kind of long-term commitment, it becomes second nature. When everyone knows what everyone else is thinking musically, it becomes a living organism. You can't get that with mercenaries."

Q. How have you seen John change musically over these many years?

A. "He's become more astute. At this point, in my opinion, he's the best songwriter that he's ever been, he's writing the best songs that he's ever written, which is a big tribute to a guy who's written all kinds of fabulous material. The songs are definitely reflective of his age and his experience. There's no 'Oh baby I miss you' songs or anything like that. It all has content, they're story-songs. There's beauty involved. There's definitely a political overtone to a lot of the material. I think a lot of it is just having a bigger worldview. When you're young, you're looking at what's right in front of your face and moving sort of blindly at 100 miles an hour."

Q. How did you first meet up with this Mellencamp character?

A. "We were just out of college. John went to Vincennes University and I went to DePaul. We both moved into the Bloomington (Indiana) area and just met at a recording studio. I was doing an internship there to learn recording engineering. We just kinda clicked."

Q. So you played on his very first album (1976's "Chestnut Street Incident")? I always found the David Bowie connection so bizarre.

A. "John went to New York and literally walked into Tony DeFries' office — who was David Bowie's manager — and said, 'You need me.' John had such balls. That's when Bowie was doing the Ziggy Stardust thing with the drag queens, and John was just this kid from the Midwest. Tony picked up on this James Dean thing, John being from Indiana. Tony said, (imitating his British accent) "This is never going to work. You've got to get a little flair, you know? Your name is now Johnny Cougar.' And John was like, 'What?!'"

Q. "Hurt So Good" and "Jack and Diane" blew things wide open in the early '80s. I remember those videos were all over MTV. What was that time like?

A. "Remember, we had four stiff albums before that. The 'Nothing Matters' record had 'Ain't Even Done With the Night' on it, which was a top-40 hit, but before that we couldn't get arrested. We were still playing to empty rooms and opening in clubs for people. We were sure the next record would be our last record. We went into rehearsals for 'American Fool,' wrote a bunch of material and started making a record. It was just John, Kenny and myself, no bass player even. A record company guy came to the studio while we were working and made some really bad suggestions like, 'Put horns on it.' John pushed him out the side door and said, '(expletive) you. You either take the album the way it is or give it back to me.' The record company reluctantly released the album and BOOM it was the No. 1 album with two No. 1 singles on it. Things have never been the same. With that record, we bought our freedom."

Q. Was it your fateful moment?

A. "Maybe. We were not so smart to come up with something new. We were just continually refining that simple Midwestern thing that we do. We were the same guys doing the same (expletive) a little better. Then contemporary culture crossed our path and BAM!"

Q. You've played the biggest venues around and now you're playing theaters. Does it feel a lot different?

A. "I was very comfortable in arenas because we were an arena-rock band — two guitars, bass, drums and more swagger that you can stuff into a 50-gallon oil drum. We'd go out there and play it loud, and we were great at it. But over the course of years, the music has grown and become more sophisticated, we have grown older and wiser and what we are doing fits us perfectly right now. The theatrical environment allows the fans to have a better time. Our crowd is no longer 20 years old, standing up, getting drunk and whooping it up."

Q. It's cool that John is in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, but I think he is underrated in rock 'n' roll history. I'm guessing you might agree.

A. "I think part of that is where we live (in Bloomington) and the fact that we never kowtowed to the Los Angeles and New York scenes. John has never kissed anyone's (expletive), and ultimately that hurts you in this business. But we're still here 40 years later. How many fashions and faces have come and gone in the L.A. music scene in that time? I think the reason we have endured is because we have lived outside the bubble."

http://www.cantonrep.com/entertainmentlife/20161013/john-mellencamps-guitarist-for-40-years-shares-stories

[John Mellencamp's band will never be 'the human jukebox']

John Mellencamp's band will never be 'the human jukebox'
By L. KENT WOLGAMOTT

After more than 100 sold out shows over nearly two years, John Mellencamp’s “Plain Spoken” tour is coming to an end with a string of fall shows, all set in theaters and performing arts centers.

Those usually aren’t places associated with rock shows. But Mellencamp’s guitarist Mike Wanchic says they’ve proven to be the perfect fit for the veteran rocker and his superb band to showcase four decades worth of music.

“I think the whole point is trying to match a vibe we’re trying to create on stage with the room,” says Wanchic, who joins Mellencamp and the rest of the band at Borgata’s Event Center 8 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 15.

“There’s such a treasure trove of material that you can choose from when you’ve done 20-some albums,” Wanchic says. “The name of the game anymore is music and art put together. That’s the whole concept of the tour.”

Wanchic acknowledges that those who now come to see Mellencamp are often older, many having followed him since the ’70s and ’80s, and they appreciate the nice indoor venue.

“You want to respect your audience and not put them under a tin roof in August when it’s 150 degrees,” Wanchic says. “I’ve been there too many times.”

But the primary reason that the concert halls are a good fit for the tour is, musically, Mellencamp and the band have mined their catalog for some lesser-heard songs, like “Lawless Times,” “Minutes to Mystery” and “Isolation of Mister” to go along with the hits.

“There are some really cool tunes we want to play,” Wanchic says. “You need to pay respect to every album on some level because there are memories and meanings attached to each one. I can remember hearing The Doors’ ‘Light My Fire’ when I was a kid in Florida walking on the boardwalk with my brother, the first time I looked at girls. You have to respect that. And you have to respect the hits. When Neil Young plays, I want to hear ‘Old Man’ along with his new material. He did it just by himself at Farm Aid. It was great.”

Adding new material, which is likely to happen with a song or two on the final leg of the tour, also keeps the shows fresh for both the audience and the band. Wanchic has no interest in becoming a part of a human jukebox that plays the same set of songs over and over for decades.

“The day that comes is the day I quit,” Wanchic says. “If it’s not a fresh new element that’s going somewhere, what’s the point? At that point, you’re going to the office.”

Wanchic, who has been with Mellencamp for 40 years and is one of his primary collaborators in the studio, says the band unintentionally created what’s been tagged as the “heartland rock” sound over the course of about a decade.

“If you take it all the way back to ’82, we kind of found our voice,” he says. “We were young, we were rockers and we were passionate about it. At the time we had two guitar players, a drummer and John, no bass player. We decided we’d make this record, just stripped down with big guitars and drums. That was ‘American Fool.’ We suddenly went from fool to cool.

“When it came up to ‘Scarecrow,’ (in 1985) we’d used up that concept,” Wanchic says. “We decided to expand and started exploring Appalachian music, country music. I brought mandolin and dobro. We hired a violin player. That’s how we came up with that heartland sound.”

Since then the band has largely worked inside those confines, rolling gospel and soul with the country and Appalachian sounds mixed into rock ’n’ roll — and definitely not changing to keep up with the pop of the times.

“We’re not smart enough to do that,” Wanchic says. “There’s a beauty in that. That’s what it’s all based on. John’s a real songwriter. He’s coming up with real songs with real themes and real lyrics. You have to match the music with the song.

“That’s how records should be made, not put together from a beat and going backward,” he says. “I understand pop records and how they’re made and why they’re made that way. But whatever you put on a track needs to enable the lyric and the melody. That’s our concept and we’ve lived and died by it.”

That, of course, means Mellencamp hasn’t had a radio hit since the mid ’90s. But he has released a string of well-regarded albums through 2014’s “Plain Spoken,” and his ’80s and ’90s hits like “Hurts So Good,” “Pink Houses,” “Lonely Ol’ Night,” and “What If I Came Knocking,” to name a few, stand up as strongly today as they did decades ago. The shows remain stellar.

“There’s a simple reason for that,” Wanchic says. “Honesty. Honesty in the music, honesty in the performance, honesty in the song, honesty in the lyric.”

http://www.pressofatlanticcity.com/attheshore/headliners/john-mellencamp-s-band-will-never-be-the-human-jukebox/article_4476468b-d048-5f33-aadf-3e15c571f114.html

[John Mellencamp brings raucous show to Hanover]

John Mellencamp brings raucous show to Hanover
By Paula Owen, Telegram & Gazette Reviewer

WORCESTER — John Mellencamp rocked the Hanover Theater Tuesday night, kicking off the final leg of his “Plain Spoken” tour on his only stop in New England scheduled during the extended performances.

He is touring with an entourage of stellar musicians on accordion, violin, guitar, keyboard, bass and drums performing heartland rock with traditional instrumentation on his "Plain Spoken" Tour, named for his 2015 album.

Though his voice sounds a little gruffer, the Rock and Roll Hall of Famer, whose career spans more than four decades, didn’t look like he was slowing down any at 65.

Mellencamp, conjured “The Voice of the Heartland” with songs that often tell a story of the common experiences of ordinary people, started the night off with "Lawless Times," "Troubled Man" and "Minutes to Memories."

But, it was his performance of "Small Town" that seemed to really get his fans moving — standing up, hooting and dancing through the entire song.

A fan jumping around in row 12 remarked that he “rocked the (expletive) out of it,” and “destroyed it.”

Mellencamp told his fans he would be performing songs they knew and didn’t know, but either way, he wanted them to sing and dance with him — and they did to songs including "Stones in My Passway," "Human Wheels," "The Isolation of Mister" and more fervently to "Check it Out," which brought screams when the audience recognized it.

In a more intimate moment, Mellencamp prefaced the song "Longest Days" with a story about his grandmother, who he said called him “Buddy” and lived to be 100.

“She said, 'Buddy, you better drive over here and see me this afternoon,’" Mellencamp recalled. “She was ready to go.”

Mellencamp said his grandmother would tell him they needed to pray together.

“She would say, ‘If you don’t stop cussing and smoking, you’re not going to get into heaven,’” Mellencamp said. “She’d say, 'God, can you hear me? Buddy and I are ready to come home.' And, I told her, Buddy was not ready to come home. Buddy has a lot more sinning he’s intending to do.”

Mellencamp said his grandmother told him it was like him to make a “smart Alec” remark like that. Then they locked eyes, and his 100-year-old grandmother’s face took on the face of a child, he said.

“And, she would say, ‘You know Buddy, you find out life is real short, even its longer days,'” he said.

Mellencamp also performed "Jack and Diane," though he said, “I don’t know why I do this song, except that you like to sing along,” and the crowd devotedly did.

Mellencamp also rocked "Full Catastrophe of Life," on stage only with his piano player. His voice seemed to take on a Louis Armstrong-ish quality during some parts.

Mellencamp performed "Indigo Sunset" and "My Soul's Got Wings" with Carlene Carter, 61, who is the daughter of country music legends June Carter and Carl Smith and stepdaughter of Johnny Cash. He said when he heard Carter's voice, he knew he wanted to work with her. Mellencamp said they managed to sneak in making an album while touring the past two years. It's called "Sad Clowns and Hillbillies," and it's set to be released in February.

After a short break, Mellencamp came out on stage, crushed out his cigarette and went into "Scarecrow," telling the crowd it was a song he was very proud of. A fan remarked after the song, “Imagine that at Farm Aid? He rocks!” (Mellencamp is one of the founding members of Farm Aid, an organization he helped start in 1985 to raise awareness about the loss of family farms.)

Mellencamp also performed "Paper in Fire" and "If I Die Sudden," and during the driving drum beat of "Crumbling Down," fans took the aisles and screamed during an awesome drum solo. That song was followed up by Mellencamp classics including "Authority Song," "Pink Houses" and "Cherry Bomb."

Timothy G. Davis of Upton, who attended the performance with his wife, seemed to sum it up best.

“It was just awesome,” Mr. Davis said. “He played a lot of great songs from many years ago plus a whole lot of other new stuff. It was a fantastic show!”

http://www.telegram.com/entertainmentlife/20161012/john-mellencamp-brings-raucous-show-to-hanover

No changes. Here is what was played last night in Worcester:

1. Lawless Times
2. Troubled Man
3. Minutes to Memories
4. Small Town
5. Stones in My Passway
6. Human Wheels
7. The Isolation of Mister
8. Check It Out
9. Longest Days
10. Jack and Diane
11. The Full Catastrophe
12. Indigo Sunset (with Carlene Carter)
13. My Soul's Got Wings (with Carlene Carter)
14. Overture
15. Rain on the Scarecrow
16. Paper in Fire
17. Crumblin' Down
18. Authority Song
19. Pink Houses
20. Cherry Bomb

[25 Years Ago: John Mellencamp Gets Frisky on ‘Whenever We Wanted’]

25 Years Ago: John Mellencamp Gets Frisky on ‘Whenever We Wanted’
By Nick DeRiso

Ironically, just as John Mellencamp was finally shedding the “Cougar” moniker he’d been saddled with early on as a duck-tailed rocker, he took a turn back toward feel-good music. In fact, he’s described Whenever We Wanted – a platinum-selling Top 20 album released on Oct. 8, 1991 – as an attempt to write “American Fool with better lyrics.”

This project followed an era of music dominated by darker themes focusing on a heartland in peril, presented amid bucolic musical accompaniment from violins, dulcimers and accordions. Not everyone had followed him down this more serious path, however, as Mellencamp learned during a happenstance meeting with a fan on a South Carolina beach.

“He said, ‘I loved your last two records, but there wasn’t one thing about sex on either one of them,'” Mellencamp recalled in David Masciotra’s Mellencamp: American Troubadour. “I realized he was right, and I didn’t really like that.”

Mellencamp decided to apply the cinematic detail of albums like 1987’s The Lonesome Jubilee to something more elemental.

“I felt like everybody, maybe even me, was taking me a little too seriously,” he told the Detroit Free Press in 1991. “I have to remind people, ‘Hey, I’m the guy who wrote ‘Hurts So Good,’ who put chains around girls in the video. A friend of mine, one of the guys who started MTV, said, ‘You’re the guy who started all that sexist stuff.’ I kind of invented heavy-metal videos by accident. So many people don’t view me that way anymore,” he added with a sigh. “I kind of miss it.”

And so Whenever We Wanted is powered along by provocative tracks like “Crazy Ones,” in which Mellencamp admits being “drawn to the devil, every time we kiss.” On the title song, he’s helpless against a woman’s powers. The No. 14 hit “Get a Leg Up,” which featured a video shoot where Mellencamp met his future wife Elaine Irwin, was even more direct in its sensual focus.

Mission accomplished. “People think that songwriting is magic, and that I have no control over what happens,” he said in Mellencamp: American Troubadour. “Do you really think that after I wrote ‘Rain on the Scarecrow’ and ‘Jackie Brown,’ that I didn’t realize ‘Get a Leg Up’ was leaning in another direction?”

This newfound lyrical vigor was matched stride for stride with the kind of direct musical approach unheard since 1983’s Uh-Huh. “It’s very rock ‘n’ roll,” Mellencamp admitted in a talk with the Houston Chronicle in 1991. “I just wanted to get back to the basics.”

At the same time, however, Whenever We Wanted kept a few issues of central importance to Mellencamp in the forefront. “Love and Happiness,” for instance, lamented a world in which “we’re droppin’ our bombs in the southern hemisphere, and the people are starving that live right here.” Elsewhere, he found hope in desperate times with “Now More Than Ever,” a track that joined “Love and Happiness” and “Again Tonight” in the Top Five of Billboard‘s Album Rock Tracks chart.

A far more mature writer now, Mellencamp found that he could confidently plant one foot in each world. “The thing is, I want songs that work whether you’re a good listener or not,” he told the Detroit Free Press. “If you don’t apply yourself – and I’m not saying that’s necessary – you should still be able to like the song.”

Whenever We Wanted didn’t chart as high as 1989’s rootsy Big Daddy. Still, it set the stage for a return to the Top 10 with 1993’s Human Wheels – and, more importantly, finally helped Mellencamp achieve some needed career balance. He learned he could, in fact, have it both ways.

http://ultimateclassicrock.com/john-mellencamp-whenever-we-wanted-album/?trackback=tsmclip

[John Mellencamp at Hanover won’t be a lonely old night]

John Mellencamp at Hanover won’t be a lonely old night

By Walter Bird Jr.
October 6, 2016

John Mellencamp rumbles into Worcester Tuesday, Oct. 11 to kick off the final leg of a tour that started last year. “Plain Spoken” is the name of both the tour and Mellencamp’s 2015 album, his 22nd studio recording, and the show at Hanover Theatre promises to be among the most intimate yet.

That is just fine by the band, according to Mellencamp’s longtime friend and guitarist, Mike Wanchic. Same goes for opening act Carlene Carter, daughter of June Carter and stepdaughter to Johnny Cash. Both Wanchic and Carter embrace the change of pace brought by a smaller venue.

“I can tell you this,” Wanchic, who has been playing with Mellencamp since 1976, told Worcester Magazine. “I grew up in arenas. I’m very comfortable in arenas. However, those medium-sized theaters are a perfect fit. There’s so much more subtlety in our concerts now. Everything balances out for us in the theater. It’s the perfect place to be.”

Carter, who spoke with Worcester Magazine while in Los Angeles with her husband, said the theater setting accommodates her style of performing.

“I like the intimate venue,” she said. “Really, for me it’s the perfect place to tell a story. That’s what I do. I tend to talk about my life and my family. I never know exactly what I’m going to do.”

With what promises to be a rapt audience in the cozy Hanover Theatre and friends and colleagues like Wanchic and Carter sharing the stage, Mellencamp won’t want for intimacy. He will be free to connect directly with the audience, who in turn will get to see a performer regarded by many as among the best in the business.

It didn’t happen overnight, but years of practice and working together have lifted Mellencamp and his band to great heights. They have taken it one step at a time, Wanchic said.

“When it starts out, you have goals when you’re a kid,” he said. “You do something, and then it’s, ‘What’s the next goal?’ Like, you want to play [a certain theater]. From there, it’s, ‘If we could just play Madison Square Garden. If we could only win a Grammy.’ Your goals grow, but at the same time, you realize you’re just doing what you do.”

That, he stressed, is important. The band has never compromised its ideals and ambitions.

“We’ve never tried to bend what we do to the public taste,” Wanchic said. “People that do that put a termination date on their career.”

When you play with someone as long as Wanchic has with Mellencamp, a certain chemistry develops. That bond, he said, is critical.

“It’s everything, man,” Wanchic said. “That’s what a lot of people don’t understand. We have something [other acts] don’t have. We are a team, and there is no ‘I’ in team, and it’s true. The only way you can get what we have is through time. It becomes second nature, that anticipation of what John’s going to do. You get it through time.”

Through it all, the constant has been Mellencamp as the glue that holds it all together. He is, as Wanchic described him, “the benevolent dictator.” The band contributes, but Mellencamp calls the shots.

“The philosophy of the band is John is the songwriter,” Wanchic said. “We don’t ever want to dilute that. Number one, the songwriting comes from John. The musical [part] comes from us. Things have to marry together. I may be thinking I have the coolest riff in the world. It may not serve the song, it may not serve the lyric, and I may just have to let it go.”

Just like not every song from a career that spans four decades will find its way into a live show.

“There are a number of songs from the new record,” Wanchic said of the tour. “There are so many different requirements to putting a set together. You have to play the hits, because people want to hear them. We recognized [the importance] of the legacy hits, but we also want to dig into the library. We also want to deliver material people haven’t heard.”

There is a balance to be struck when crafting a set list from such a deep catalog, but Wanchic knows the band has the advantage of a fan base that craves the rare stuff as much as the pop sensations.

“Number one,” he said, “when you have 20-plus albums, you have to recognize … let’s find the best two songs off a record and put it on the set list. Our fan base is not stupid. They know the albums inside and out. We have the option of going deeper into the catalog without people going, ‘What?’”

There is, Wanchic said, a certain amount of curiosity over the new songs.

“You learn over the years how you place those songs [on a set list],” he said. “We will play songs in Worcester no one has heard.”

For Carter, the show presents a chance to showcase the music of her family, including the works of the Carter Sisters, the influences of her famous stepfather and to show off her own music. Whatever she chooses to do, Carter said she will feel right at home.

“I love going out [on tour] myself, because I get to play longer, but this is just the right amount of time so Mellencamp fans aren’t going to fidget,” she said with a laugh. “I’m the hostess for the evening.”

John Mellencamp plays at Worcester’s Hanover Theatre Tuesday, Oct. 11.

http://worcestermag.com/2016/10/06/john-mellencamp-hanover-wont-lonely-old-night/46506

Is the new record on course for a late 2016 release, or do we have to wait until 2017?

Here's an update on the album straight from Carlene: “Sad Clowns and Hillbillies is a wonderful conglomeration of [John's] songs and my songs. Some are duets and some are by themselves - it’s different, but really kind of the way John and I roll. We are very like-minded and on musical ground that really feels right. It’s been quite a wonderful ride.”

This article states it is slated for release in the spring of 2017. Read the full article here: http://www.pacificu.edu/about-us/news-events/carlene-carter-opens-pacifics-2016-2017-performing-arts-series-saturday-night

 

[John Mellencamp plays intimate concert for Buddhist celebration]

John Mellencamp plays intimate concert for Buddhist celebration

By Emily Abshire



While thousands of IU fans celebrated another weekend of home football on Saturday, John Mellencamp played an intimate concert to a crowd of about 100 at the Tibetan Mongolian Buddhist Cultural 
Center.

His performance was part of the festivities for the two-day celebration at the center. Saturday was a celebration of the 10th anniversary of Arjia Rinpoche assuming directorship of the center, and the events also celebrated Rinpoche’s 66th birthday.

“The center in 2006, when he took over, was going through some serious challenges,” said Chenli Rejie, volunteer and previous manager of the center. “For it to be able to get back on track and get to this level is definitely something for all of us to celebrate.”

Sunday was a celebration of Rinpoche’s birthday with prayers, offerings, lunch and cake.

Rinpoche met Mellencamp upon his arrival and placed a white satin scarf around his neck. Rinpoche introduced the guest of honor to those around him, then led Mellencamp back to a large golden tent facing the stage. The two conversed until Mellencamp was called up to perform.

“He knows our director pretty well,” Rejie said. “He has a pretty good relationship with our director.”

Mellencamp’s ex-wife Elaine Irwin serves as the public relations director for the center, according to the center’s website. Mellencamp often visited the center with her, Rejie said.

Mellencamp, dressed in jeans and a white T-shirt, took the stage alone with just an acoustic guitar. He played three songs and told stories about religion, life and death.

His only spiritual upbringing was from his grandmother, a practicing Nazarene, he said. He told stories of visiting her in Seymour, Indiana until her death at age 100. She once told him, “Life is short, even in its longest days.” That quote inspired the song “Longest Days” on his 2008 album “Life, Death, Love and Freedom”, which he played first for Saturday’s crowd.

He followed up with “Save Some Time to Dream” from his 2010 album “No Better Than This.” He ended with his 1982 hit “Jack & 
Diane.”

The small crowd sat on blankets, mats and lawn chairs facing the stage tent adorned with flags and tassels and surrounded by flowers. The center and the celebration are open to the public, Rejie said.

“It’s kind of mysterious, I get it,” he said. “We’re kind of hidden back here. The gates and everything look a little bit different than other churches, but we’re open to the public, and we really welcome people to 
come here.”

The center is nestled in a forested area on Snoddy Road, southeast of campus. There is one winding road from the center’s gates through its 108 acres. On Saturday, the road was adorned with colorful banners that led guests into a clearing with the stage, tents and vendors selling artisan gifts and religious tokens.

Although the center was celebrating 10 years of Rinpoche’s directorship, the center has had a place in Bloomington since 1979. It was founded by IU professor Jigme Norbu, the Dalai Lama’s older brother, 
Rejie said.

The center was established to educate the public about Tibetan religion, culture and heritage. It is also a place for other cultures and religions to join together, Rejie said.

“The big thing is not that just we promote diversity or interfaith, but we value and we try to communicate with other cultures and try to have common dialogue,” he said.

“That’s very important to us because we just want to contribute in a 
positive way.”

http://www.idsnews.com/article/2016/09/john-mellencamp-plays-intimate-concert-for-buddhist-celebration

Tony/Sharon;

I know John's album with Carlene "Clowns And Hillbillies" is due in 2017 but is it planned to release the Ithaca soundtrack as a release?

It's not a soundtrack, but here are two of the songs John wrote for "Ithaca":

"Sugar Hill Mountain" (performed by Carlene Carter): https://vimeo.com/182077831

"Seeing You Around" (performed by Leon Redbone): https://vimeo.com/182077716

Thanks to John Darner for the video/audio.

[Born in a ‘Small Town’: How John Mellencamp Wrote the Song]

Born in a ‘Small Town’: How John Mellencamp Wrote the Song
John Mellencamp wrote ‘Small Town’ in his basement laundry room, using an electric typewriter

By MARC MYERS



When John Mellencamp’s “Small Town” was released on his “Scarecrow” album in September 1985, the song helped launch a form of heartland rock that celebrated family farms and blue-collar workers.

Originally written by Mr. Mellencamp as a valentine to his hometown of Seymour, Ind., “Small Town” reached No. 6 on Billboard’s pop chart in early ’86 while “Scarecrow” climbed to No. 2 on the album chart.

“Scarecrow” was reissued this month on the extra-thick 180-gram vinyl format by Mercury/UMe in advance of Mr. Mellencamp’s tour in the fall. Recently, Mr. Mellencamp, 64, looked back on the song’s evolution. Edited from an interview:

John Mellencamp: I was 12 when I first picked up a guitar. My family lived in Seymour, Ind., and my older brother, Joe, was the star of our high school musicals. In one show, he had to play some guitar chords, so my parents bought him a nylon-stringed model.

Once the musical was over, the guitar sat in the corner of the bedroom we shared. One day I grabbed it. My goal was to learn enough chords to play along with the songs I was listening to on the radio.

I never had a guitar lesson in my life and I still can’t read music. But I had a good ear and a feel for it. By 1965, I was in a soul band that played parties, dances and proms at local high schools and colleges.

I was 14 and the youngest kid in the seven-member band. The older musicians all knew American soul music inside and out. We covered obscure pop and soul songs by big stars, which exposed me to music that most people never get to hear.

I also learned about racism. Three of us in the band were white and the rest of the guys were black. The audience loved us when we played. Offstage, the black guys in the band were often met with racial slurs. I was offended at their treatment, not to mention my great-great grandmother was black.

After junior college, I went to New York hoping to get a record deal or be admitted to the Art Students League to study painting. After dropping off a demo tape at Main Man, the management agency signed me and cut a deal with MCA Records. They also insisted I use “Cougar” as my middle name. I hated that.

I had no songwriting skills, so my first few albums were awful. They featured mostly cover songs and early originals. Critics didn’t like me, so I knew that to make it, I’d have to write songs and convince radio to play them

I began carrying a pad around and jotting down lyrics for songs I was working on. By 1984, I had written and recorded quite a few top-10 hits, including “Jack & Diane,” “Hurts So Good,” “Crumblin’ Down” and “Pink Houses.”

At the time, my label, Mercury/Riva, wanted an album from me every 18 months. In between I was on tour, so I was rarely home. But one day in ’84 when I was home in Bloomington, Ind., Vicky, my wife then, called me down to our basement laundry room. When I got there, a big box was on our clothes-folding counter.

I’m the worst speller in the world, so Vicky had ordered an electric typewriter with a built-in spell-check system. I tried to make sense of the owner’s manual, but I couldn’t figure it out. I’d put a sheet of paper in and start typing, but the words I misspelled weren’t being corrected.

Frustrated, I said to myself, “Well, I guess I’m just a stupid hillbilly. What do I know? I was born in a small town.” After a few more minutes with the typewriter, I began to realize it didn’t automatically correct misspelled words. It had a dictionary on a computer chip that identified words you misspelled and beeped to alert you to fix them

I had my Gibson Dove, so I put the guitar strap around my neck and started playing and typing lyrics [he sings softly], “Well, I was born in a small town / And I live in a small town.” But as I typed my lyrics fast, the machine let off beeps to flag spelling errors: “All my friends—beep!— are so—beep!—small town / My parents—beep!—live in the same small—beep!—town.” Upstairs, I could hear Vicky and my Aunt Tootes, who was also our nanny, dying of laughter over the beeps. Finally I yelled out, “Would you guys shut up!”

Once the song started to come, it came fast. I’d sing some lyrics, type them out and play the music on my guitar. Then I’d start at the beginning to sing what I had to inspire additional lines.

Eventually I went upstairs, looked at Vicky and Aunt Tootes, and said, “I’m glad you guys think this is so funny.” They started laughing again. I said, “OK, now laugh at this.” I played them “Small Town,” and they went dead quiet. When you play what you’ve done for a family member and you get that kind of reaction, you know you have something.

For some time, my friends and I had been talking about how small towns and the people who lived there were getting screwed economically as America changed. Soon I realized that “Small Town” was more than a phrase of my own frustration. It was a song that felt as though Woody Guthrie had sent it to me from the grave.

That’s when I started working with Willie Nelson and Neil Young to organize Farm Aid. We planned a concert like Live Aid for September ’85 in Champaign, Ill. The purpose was to raise money for families trying to save their family farms from new laws that favored corporate farms.

The next step for “Small Town” was to arrange and rehearse it with my band. I had a second house a few minutes outside of Bloomington that operated as an office. I had added a recording studio and turned the two-car garage into rehearsal space.

In April ’85, the band and I went into the garage to arrange “Small Town.” I sat there like a conductor with the band facing me. There was no writing out parts. We had it all in our heads. I just told my drummer, Kenny Aronoff, what I wanted—a pounding beat—and we went to work.

“Small Town’s” opener was already written in my chord progressions. That was the hook line. The trick going forward was to keep the song simple and not over-arrange it. But we had a problem.

The song was verse-chorus, verse-chorus, verse chorus—it felt too same-samey. The solution was to add a bridge. In the garage, I took one of the verses [he sings softly]—“No, I cannot forget where it is that I come from / I cannot forget the people who love me / Yeah, I can be myself here in this small town / And people let me be just what I want to be”—and rewrote the melody to make it a bridge. This broke up the song’s sameness.

“Small Town’s” arrangement was critical. I knew there was no way I could walk out on stage and sing and play it acoustically. The audience would tune out. We also had to arrange the song in a higher key. Back then, I tended to write songs in a lower key and transpose them to a higher key later so I could belt them out on stage.

When the arrangement was done, we walked into the studio inside the house to record. I only sang on the record, I didn’t play. Larry Crane was on lead guitar. We finished the song in just two or three takes.

The only instrument we added later was John Cascella’s organ. For some reason, he wasn’t there when we had recorded. He came in later that night, and we overdubbed his part. At first, John kept trying to play complex stuff that didn’t work. Finally I said, “John, damn it, stop noodling around. Just go to those big chords.” What he played next was beautiful.

Before the single was released in November ’85, we needed something for MTV. In Bloomington and Seymour, we took out ads asking for snapshots and home movies. We were flooded with material.

The video was good, but I always felt it ruined the song. Songs are meant for dreaming, and the video gave my lyrics a literal context. The focus was all on me instead of letting listeners imagine their own small-town experiences.

I never used that tan typewriter again. Now I have no idea where it is—probably gathering dust in one of my storage units.

http://www.wsj.com/articles/born-in-a-small-town-how-john-mellencamp-wrote-the-song-1466605133