by Ross Raihala, TwinCities.com - Pioneer PressFirst announced in 2000, the Stephen King/John Mellencamp musical "Ghost Brothers of Darkland County" finally debuted last year in Atlanta and visits the Twin Cities on Halloween at the State Theatre in downtown Minneapolis.
What took so long for the unlikely pair to scare up the production billed as a "Southern Gothic supernatural musical of fraternal love, lust, jealousy and revenge"?
"Well, I've got a real job, and he's got a real job," Mellencamp said during a recent phone interview. "I've probably done 1,000 shows since we started working on this, and he's probably written 1,000 books. We have the kind of relationship where three months could go by, and then we'd pick up the phone and start talking again. It's just like my own brother -- I don't speak to him for months sometimes."
But after a dozen years working on the project together and taking on a third collaborator in producer T-Bone Burnett, Mellencamp and King have created something utterly unexpected, both in its form and presentation. The pair owns the rights to "Ghost Brothers" and are promoting it via the current tour of one-night stands and an all-star cast recording with guests like Elvis Costello, Neko Case, Sheryl Crow and Taj Mahal.
Before "Ghost Brothers," Mellencamp said he had been approached numerous times by eager Broadway producers.
"Twenty years ago, someone wanted to make a musical out of 'Jack and Diane.' I said no," Mellencamp explained.
"First of all, I'm not for sale. Second of all, things are written for a reason. One size does not fit all. I couldn't see a song like, say, 'Pink Houses' being part of some silly story.
"When I wrote the song, it meant something, and I didn't want to take away the credibility of the song or any song I'd written."
Still, the interest got Mellencamp thinking. "I figured I'd do it my way, the throat-cutting way. I don't play well with other children. But I was talking to my agent about this story I had going about this cabin I owned and how Stephen King would be a great guy to write it.
"The good news is my agent is Steve's agent, too. I had direct access to the exact guy I was interested in working with. Since then, we've become like brothers."
It's not a coincidence that the topic of brothers came up several times with Mellencamp. His older brother introduced him to the art of the musical while in high school.
"I was the hoodlum of the family, and I was in a rock band as a teenager," Mellencamp said. "But my brother had all of the leads in the musicals, from his freshman through senior years. He did 'Camelot,' 'My Fair Lady,' 'South Pacific,' 'Li'l Abner.'
"I had to go to all of them, but what happened was, the more I went, the more I liked it."
On top of that, "Ghost Brothers of Darkland County" offers just what its title promises. It's about a pair of feuding brothers forced to spend time together in a cabin haunted by the ghosts of dead brothers who also hate each other.
"Steve and I had a conversation really early on, where I said, 'Look, if we do this, it has to be a play with music. It's not really a traditional musical,' " Mellencamp said. "I didn't want to write songs that moved the story forward. I find that corny.
"It wasn't very long before we realized (my songs) were doing the character development, and he was telling the story.
"We knew we were bucking the system. Broadway has a formula, and we weren't going to follow it."
After years of work, "Ghost Brothers" debuted in April 2012 for a six-week run in Atlanta. Reaction was decidedly mixed, with Mellencamp's music earning more acclaim than King's somewhat bloated story.
"That cost us a s--- pile of money," Mellencamp said. "But I think Steve and I both had the same reaction. It was exciting, but it wasn't quite right. All of this movement and dancing -- we needed to get rid of that stuff because it was interfering with the story.
"The story is beautiful and frightening, and the songs seemed cheapened with people dancing behind them. We had to come up with a new way to present this."
After plenty of tweaking and the input of producer Burnett, who joined Mellenamp and King six years ago, the new version of "Ghost Brothers" is spending October scaring audiences around the country with an ensemble cast of 15 actors and a four-piece band.
Reviews have again been mixed. A critic in Indianapolis called it a "hybrid of concert, old-time radio show and conventional musical drama -- elements that never converge effectively." A writer in Nashville praised the production for its "stripped-down approach to storytelling, offbeat narration and a stellar four-piece band."
Mellencamp said "Ghost Brothers" will always be a work in progress in his eyes.
"We'll continue to plug along and work on this thing," he said. "If we break even, we'll have another leg of this tour. I want to continue going to theaters and letting this thing find itself and letting the actors find themselves. It can only be interesting if it's something you've never seen before. And there are a couple of characters on this stage you've never seen before."
http://www.twincities.com/stage/ci_24379835/mellencamp-king-musical-coming-minneapolis-halloween
