USA Today Premiere: John Mellencamp's live 'John the Revelator'

http://www.usatoday.com/story/life/music/2014/06/30/song-premiere-john-mellencamp-live-john-the-revelator/11436739/

On July 31, 2003, roughly eight weeks after releasing his acclaimed Trouble No More, John Mellencamp performed the entire album for a sold-out audience at New York's Town Hall.

That performance is finally surfacing on July 8 as part of a newly inked agreement with Universal Music Enterprises to curate and release material from Mellencamp's vault.

The freshly mixed and mastered concert recording, John Mellencamp Performs Trouble No More Live At Town Hall, will be available in CD, digital and vinyl formats. All three include a new liner-notes essay by Bob Merlis.

The set tackles folk and blues classics, from Robert Johnson's Stones in My Passway and Willie Dixon's Down in the Bottom to Son House's Death Letter and Woody Guthrie's Johnny Hart. Trouble was recorded and mixed in 17 days.

Before an audience of 1,500 that included members of Woody Guthrie's family, Mellencamp and his band (guitarists Mike Wanchic and Andy York, violinist Miriam Sturm, drummer Dane Clark, bassist John Gunnell and keyboardist Michael Ramos) recreated the album's fire and grit, adding pared versions of Small Town, Paper in Fire, Pink Houses and Bob Dylan's Highway 61 Revisited.

Here's their haunted take on the traditional John the Revelator.