2003 Guitar World Acoustic Interview

John Mellencamp does it his way on Trouble No More, his laid-back tribute to some great American music. There are some rules everyone knows. Never make the last out at third. Never disrespect the flag. And when recording an album of classic Americana, keep things simple and don't try to recreate the original arrangements. That John Mellencamp understands and endorses that last dictum, at least, is clear from his new album, Trouble No More (Columbia), a beautifully played and recorded, largely acoustic collection of Delta and Chicago blues, folk, old-time country, pop, R&B and standard tunes. Eclecticism has never sounded so seamless, thanks to Mellencamp's laid-back approach and the stellar guitar work of Andy York, who channels the spirit of the original tunes through his own instrumental personality.

Die-hard Mellencamp fans certainly will accept John singing songs written byor associated with the likes of Robert Johnson, Son House, Hoagy Carmichael, Skeeter Davis and the Carter Family. Unfortunately,tightly formatted album rock stations probably won't give this effort the exposure it deserves. John Mellencamp knows this, as it was he who, back in the days when "Cougar" was still his middle name, acknowledged, "I fight authority, authority always wins."

GUITAR WORLD ACOUSTIC Why did you decide to do this project of other people's songs?

JOHN MELLENCAMP After a good friend of mine, [longtime Billboard editor] Tim White died, I took part in a couple of benefit shows for his family. One of the songs I performed was Robert Johnson's "Stones in my Passway," and people said to me, "Hey, you ought to do a whole album of this kind of material." And I thought, Yeah,that'd be great, but record companies don't usually like you to do that stuff because they have to look at publishing and all that kind of crap. Then, although I had left Sony, [Sony Music U.S. president] Don lenner called me up and said, "Hey, man, why don't you make a record of this stuff?" That was an opportunity I couldn't say no to.

GWA The album is so eclectic. It's not just blues or rock and roll oldies or country songs you cover a very wide range of styles.

MELLENCAMP You could think you know everything about music history, but once you jump into it you find out you don't know much at all. Because the more you dig,the more of it there is. Doing research and finding these songs turned out to be a much tougher job than it would have been to just write-new ones. But it was awfully interesting.

GWA The key person in your band on this album is clearly the guitarist, Andy York. How did you work out the material together?

MELLENCAMP When I was making my last record, [2001's] Cuttin' Heads, Andy and I started listening exclusively to artists like Hank Williams and Robert Johnson. It was not so much to copy them, but to figure out how they were able to sound so real and natural, to be so plainspoken on their records. I said to Andy, "Man, youhave to listen to this Robert Johnson stuff, because white people have really destroyed the blues over the years. They have boiled it down to 'dunta-dunta-dunta-dunta' you know, that sixteen bar blues boogie." I really hate the blues when it's performed that way, and I'm as guilty as anyone else for doing it. The parts are always the same, the riffs are always the same, and I have been hearing it my whole life. Then you go back to the origins of it and realize they're not doing that at all. It's happening in there somewhere, but that's not really what they're doing. Johnson played ahead of the beat, behind the beat,and figuring out how he fucking did that, not to mention his fingerpicking and histunings, was just so interesting.

GWA So you and Andy actually took it apartand put it back together again.

MELLENCAMP We disassembled it, and a lot of the other older stuff we later recorded, to figure out why it works.

GWA Judging from the album, you and Andy did a great "disassembling" job. You managed to capture the spirit of the old songswithout trying to play them note-for-note.

MELLENCAMP Andy, of course, was the realdisciple. He's just like a sponge; he just soaks this stuff up. He's the guitar player.

GWA You also play guitar on many of the tunes. How did you work out your backup parts?

MELLENCAMP Oh, you know me, I did the same thing I always do. I just bang around on the acoustic guitar. Generally, anything that sounds pretty sloppy is me.

GWA What guitar did you use on the songs?

MELLENCAMP The same one I always have the Gibson Dove I've used since I started making records. I also played a little 3/4-size Martin built in 1951.

GWA How did you record them?

MELLENCAMP I just put my mic in front of 'em.

GWA I understand that the entire recording process was low-tech.

MELLENCAMP We used a 16-track machine;nothing there had a transistor anywhere near it. If we had taken a photo of the drum setup we had only three old RCA rhythm mikes on the whole drum kit and sent it to a modern recording magazine, they probably would've laughed at us.

GWA Along with your versions of relatively familiar blues tunes like "Stones in my Passway" and Son House's "Death Letter Blues," and the traditional country song "Johnny Hart," you covered some fairly obscure, or at least unusual, material. For instance, your take on the old Hoagy Carmichael song, "Baltimore Oriole." You're not known for your interpretations of standards.

MELLENCAMP Well, I live in Bloomington, Indiana, and so did Hoagy Carmichael.When I found that song, I thought, "Wow." The first time I listened to his version I didn't get it because the arrangement was very jazzy, but then on second listening I just fell in love with the song. And Andy and I went from there.

GWA Where did you find "Diamond Joe"?

MELLENCAMP That's one of those field recordings made in a prison by Alan and John Lomax for the Library of Congress that wererecently reissued [on Deep River of Song: Mississippi Saints and Sinners (Rounder) It was sung by a prisoner, along with another guy who claps his hands and screams along in the background. Our version is a little different [laughs].

GWA Then there's "The End of the World,"which Skeeter Davis sang in a real torchy style back in 1963. You guys turned that into something that sounds a little like a British Invasion tune.

MELLENCAMP I have to give a lot of credit toAndy, whose acoustic guitar playing madethat song work. The arrangement on the original record was precious, very beautifully done by Chet Atkins. When we started messing with it, we started trying to play it preciously too. I remember just stopping and saying, "Guys, we can't do this song ifwe are going to play it this way. We've got todo it more rhythmically and more in arock/folk vein."

CWA There's that "folk process." You've transformed it into something that is more you.

MELLENCAMP That was the goal of the whole project. I don't know if we succeeded with every song, but we tried to make each one our own song, as if I had walked in the studio, wrote them and said, "Let's do it." When I was a kid I was so surprised to find out that Cream hadn't written "Crossroads." I discovered Robert Johnson from that record. And the same thing happened when the Stones did "Love in Vain." I didn't know that was a Robert Johnson song it sounded like the Rolling Stones to me. So, because I'd seen other people do it, I knew that it was possible to take these songs and make them our own.

GWA You did write entirely new lyrics for thesong "To Washington," which I believe is based on "White House Blues," recorded in the mid 1920's by the country string band Charlie Poole & the North Carolina Ramblers.

MELLENCAMP Yeah, although the song actually goes back at least to 1908. Everybodywho's done this song took credit for it, andI did the same. That was the "tradition" of the song to take it and steal it.

GWA Musically, your arrangement is based on the traditional version. But where the original is about the assassination of President William McKinley, your lyrics have to do with the global economy, the 2000 presidential election, oil and the war in Iraq. It works beautifully.

MELLENCAMP People consider it an un-American song, and this shocks me. I don't think it was extremely mean or judgmental. The only judgment is that the economy is worse since Bush came in, and that isn't really even a judgment; it's just fact.

GWA Thirty years ago the song might've gotten some solid airplay. Not today.

MELLENCAMP With the radio stations being the way they are now, corporately owned and big business, they can't afford to offend anybody. If you remember, after 9/11 Clear Channel actually banned some of my songs, in particular one I wrote in 1983 called "Crumblin' Down," which had the line,"when the walls come crumblin' down." They thought it might be offensive. Ând I thought, "That's a stretch, isn't it?"