Stephen King, John Mellencamp, T Bone Burnett's 13 years of collaboration brings ghost story to stage By Piet Levy
Stephen King fans can enjoy new content across multiple mediums this Halloween season, whether it's a book ("Doctor Sleep," his sequel to "The Shining"), a movie (the remake of "Carrie") or a musical.
Yeah, that's right, a musical.
If you're expecting splashy songs like "You've Been a Bad Dog Cujo!" or "I Wish I Could Roam, but I'm Under the Dome," or perhaps a soft-shoe number with the "It" clown, think again.
"Ghost Brothers of Darkland County" is a supernatural (of course) slice of southern Gothic concerning feuding brothers and their father, and the fraternal ghosts that haunt them.
And while King has dabbled in music on the side, the haunting Americana songs come from a pair of tried-and-true professionals — John Mellencamp and Grammy-winning producer T Bone Burnett.
In the making for 13 years, "County" has itself taken on multiple forms since its debut last year, including an Atlanta stage production, an illustrated digital book and an album featuring performers such as Sheryl Crow, Rosanne Cash, Kris Kristofferson, Neko Case and Elvis Costello.
The latest iteration is a traveling radio play with a live band, starring character actor Bruce Greenwood (John F. Kennedy in "Thirteen Days"), that makes a stop Tuesday at the Riverside Theater.
Mellencamp's haunted cabinEven though King is the writer, the germinal idea came from Mellencamp, Burnett said in an interview with the Journal Sentinel.
"John bought a cabin in Indiana that really is haunted," Burnett said. "Radios would come on in the middle of the night, all these sounds would happen... He would put his guests up in this cabin.... happy to scare the pants off of them."
"It turned out there had been this horrible murder there," Burnett said.
The story goes that in the late 1930s, a couple of brothers and a girl were at the cabin. The men were drinking, quarreled and one hit the other in the head with a poker, accidentally killing him. The surviving brother and the girl drove into town for help, but skidded off the road, crashed into a pond and drowned.
"He was compelled to tell that story," Burnett said, he suspects in part because Mellencamp had his own history of brotherly strife. "He more or less enlisted Stephen King, who tells the best ghost stories of anybody."
That was back in 2000, but despite their busy schedules, Mellencamp continued to write songs while King revised the book over the next 10 years.
"They're both simpatico," Burnett said as the reason they stayed committed to the project and collaboration. "They both live in small towns and write about small-town America and write stories that grow right out of the ground. And they both use urban legends and the stuff of this country and reframe it, and talk about life with it."
But after 10 years, Mellencamp and King had a whole lot to say.
When Burnett was asked to join the project, the show was 31/2 hours long.
"When I first came on board, we were thinking about doing this as a radio play," Burnett said.
"It was something I had never done and would be fun ... I wanted it to sound like you were going down the bayou, and you can hear music in the distance across the swamp, music in the trees, that spooky, otherworldly feel."
That's the vibe that's conveyed on the guest-star-studded album, which Burnett oversaw, emailing notes and song files to King and Mellencamp for their approval.
"The music part went really smoothly," Burnett said. "It was seriously the easiest job I ever had."
No bells or whistlesA few years back, another party — Susan V. Booth, artistic director at the Alliance Theatre in Atlanta, became interested in bringing the story to life on stage.
"I had been asked what projects I'd hoped to bring to the Alliance Theatre," Booth said via email. "I said I hoped to get John Mellencamp to write a musical. ... A few years later, a mutual friend reached out to me and told me he had."
When Mellencamp and King had trouble getting a stage version to New York, the job went to Alliance.
"This was John Mellencamp writing these beautiful character study songs, Steve King writing a multigenerational family ghost story, and T Bone Burnett creating swampy atmospherics," Booth said. "It's three brilliant artists all working in their sweet spots."
But aside from Burnett, theater was a completely new experience for King and Mellencamp.
Right out of the gate they broke some rules, with the songs expressing character sentiment instead of moving the plot forward, and Broadway-style razzmatazz left out completely.
Consequently, the Atlanta production received mixed reviews.
"It has the feel of something devised over Skype," the New York Times proclaimed. And Booth admitted that "just getting the three of them in a room together can take months."
But Burnett said the negative reviews were justified. "The pacing could be better, the story could be clearer," he said.
"One really great song got cut." In fact, during the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel interview, Burnett made a note to himself to insist the "beautiful song" called "You Are Blind" — it sounds like Leonard Cohen, imagined as rustic Americana — "is put into this production."
Perhaps to escape the stigma of the Atlanta show, and most likely for budgetary reasons, the touring show is "the story told simply and without bells and whistles."
Even without sets and costumes, the cast remains large at 15, plus a four-man band. Booth insists the story is better for it.
"The end result is gorgeous music, a great story and the audience's imagination completing the picture," he said.
And if you think after all these years that King, Mellencamp and Burnett are ready to move on from "County," think again.
"I'm still working on it," Burnett said. "I think it makes a great movie."
More T BoneLike King and Mellencamp, Burnett keeps himself busy. He shared some thoughts about his latest projects.
"The Diving Board" by Elton John: "Elton is getting a lot of respect for his work on this record and I'm glad to see it," said Burnett, who produced John's September album. At Burnett's insistence, it was largely constructed around piano, bass and drums, John's band set-up early in his career.
"Inside Llewyn Davis": Burnett's biggest career breakthrough came from collaborating with the Coen Brothers as the producer for the "O Brother, Where Art Thou?" soundtrack, which won a Grammy for album of the year in 2001 and triggered the American folk resurgence. Burnett has teamed up with the fraternal filmmakers again for their forthcoming feature "Davis," set in New York's folk scene in 1961.
"Everything was recorded live on set without a click track, without any overdubbing or lipsyncing," Burnett said. "That was intense. It was like walking a tight rope — without a net, and without a rope." They also recently teamed up on a related project: a live concert in New York featuring songs from the film, performed by the Avett Brothers, Jack White, Marcus Mumford and others.
"The Coens are doing a film on it," Burnett said. It's slated to air on Showtime in December. "It's an evening about the way this music continues to be reinvented in the 21st century."
A secretive, all-electronic musical score. You read that correctly: The producer celebrated for his earthy folk, rock and country catalog is going digital. If he's committing sacrilege, he's "having the most fun ... Doing electronic music, it's really incredibly easy."
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