On Tuesday, March 9th, the “Double Indemnity episode of the hit CBS TV series “NCIS” will feature John’s “Someday The Rains My Fall.”

The tune was recorded in San Antonio during last year’s sessions for John’s forthcoming “No Better Than This” album. It was released last November on “NCIS: The Official TV Soundtrackl—Vol. 2.”

Previously, “Troubled Land,” one of the key tracks from “Life Death Love & Freedom,” appeared on the first “NCIS” volume. 

By Adam Sheets - Sometime in the next week as part of my job, I will be writing a newspaper review of the new Johnny Cash album. However, I will probably not post it here because it will probably not live up to the high standards of this site. To be honest, I'm not really looking forward to it.

"What?," you ask, "You're not looking forward to new Johnny Cash?!" Of course I am looking forward to the music itself; in fact, I can hardly wait until tomorrow for the release, but what I am not looking forward to is writing a review whose intended audience is people who did not know Johnny Cash ever existed until after he was dead.

That is why I am thankful for No Depression and the great work done by all of you here. You guys actually care about quality music and a good blog post or video on this site can brighten up a bad day. I'm hoping the following can maybe do the same for one of you.

Prior to my discovery of more “underground” Americana artists like Uncle Tupelo and the Bottle Rockets, most of the music I listened to could still be considered Americana; I just didn't know it. There was CCR, Dylan, the Byrds, the Band, Johnny Cash, Kris Kristofferson, Neil Young, etc. But for the narrative ballads of the working class, songs I could and still do relate to, I relied on people like Springsteen, Seger, Petty, and Mellencamp. All of these artists have a place in the Americana genre, in my opinion, but none more so than Mellencamp. He was often called “the poor man's Springsteen” in the early days but he outgrew that label long ago.

John Mellencamp, in my opinion, is remembered more for an unfortunate mistake during his early career than an excellent 30+ year body of work. And the worst part is that one of the mistakes was not even his and was not even very unusual. From Mark Twain to Bob Dylan to John Wayne, dozens of iconic figures have changed their names to achieve stardom. True, none of those names were half as ridiculous as "Johnny Cougar", but it was the '70s and it was nowhere near the MOST ridiculous stage name, nor is it the most ridiculous stage name ever invented (for proof, just look at this week's hip-hop charts).

This decision, however, was made by his manager in 1975, with no approval by Mellencamp. Why didn't he change it when he changed managers? Try to look at it from his perspective: he was a young up-and-coming singer who certainly didn't want to lose the fan base he currently had, however small that base may be. He ended up adding his real surname at the absolute height of his popularity, which says a lot about his integrity.

I've had to spend two paragraphs defending him and what are we forgetting while we read that? The most important aspect: the music. Simply put, I think Mellencamp could possibly be the most commercially successful of all Americana artists, and although commercial success sometimes means bad music, in this case it does not. His music is very rural in nature, yet with an urban R&B feel that he picked up from the radio, like if Hank Williams had lived to lead a garage band in the mid-'60s. His influences range from rockabilly, traditional country, pre-WWII country blues, British folk music of the 1960s, early punk rock, and everything in between. Now can a guy like that really be that bad?

I will give you a suggestion of albums you may want to check out depending on your tastes.

If you are into pure, Rolling Stones, flavored rock 1983's classic rocker Uh-Huh and 1991's edgy and slightly experimental Whenever We Wanted can't be beat. “Crazy Ones” from the latter sounds like a classic Buck Owens honky tonk tune, filtered through a punk aesthetic, then played by a Midwestern bar band who did not have a volume control on their amps. The fact that it is completely original (and relatively minor in his catalog) says a lot about the conglomeration of influences he has.

Roots rock fans will enjoy 1979's John Cougar, 1985's Scarecrow, 1999's Rough Harvest and 2007's Freedom's Road. It was the first album of that group which made me a fan when he told my life story in vivid detail on “The Great Midwest”. To most, that would just be a decent song, to me it was a song that changed my life.

Folkies should like 1987's rustic The Lonesome Jubilee, 1989's extremely quiet and personal Big Daddy, 2003's cover album Trouble No More, and 2008's Life, Death, Love and Freedom. These albums are where he really takes risks, whether adding instruments traditionally associated with bluegrass and other folk genres, transforming a traditional tune made famous by Charlie Poole into a protest of the Iraq War, or laying himself bare, as on Big Daddy or Life, Death, Love and Freedom. It is the latter that I want to talk about for a while here because there are some of you who probably haven't given him a chance since the 1980s.

Life, Death, Love and Freedom is both the most recent (until later this year), as well as the best album of his career. It is the one where he finally got it 100% right and I would have a hard time not calling it the best album of the last decade (even the normally clueless Rolling Stone named it the 5th best of its release year).

Part of it is that he has finally found the right producer. He seems to be a '30s folkie stuck in the body of a '70s rock star and who better to produce him than T Bone Burnett who knows a thing or two about the music of that era. This is a very minimalist approach and given the overtones throughout about death and loneliness, I immediately thought of three things upon first hearing it: Dock Boggs, Johnny Cash, and Springsteen's Nebraska.

The album begins with “Longest Days”, with just a foreboding acoustic guitar and Mellencamp's vocals. Here he makes it clear that his hit-making days are over and having previously broken up “Jack and Diane” on one of his '90s albums, here he buries them for good. “All I got here,” he moans, “is a rear-view mirror/reflections of where I've been/so you tell yourself I'll be back on top someday/But you know there's nothing waiting up there for you anyway”.

This attitude continues throughout the record on the song “If I Die Sudden”, a tune very reminiscent of “In My Time of Dying” where he growls orders about what to do in the event of his death as a Jimmy Reed electric guitar pattern plays beneath him.

Elsewhere on the album he laments that “All my friends are sick or dying and I'm here all by myself/All I got left is a headful of memories and the thought of my upcoming death”, displays his dark humor on “John Cockers”, asks Jesus to save him and admits suicidal thoughts on “A Ride Back Home”, and ventures into Phil Ochs' territory with “Without a Shot” and “Jena”, the former containing a beautiful Gothic mandolin.

There was always a darkness below the surface of even his most commercial music and here he brings it to the forefront.

Mellencamp has always been a huge fan and supporter of the Americana genre, performing a Steve Earle songs in concerts long before Earle was well-known, writing songs for The Blasters, and producing albums for James McMurtry. He was also a member of the short-lived supergroup The Buzzin' Cousins, along with McMurtry, John Prine, Joe Ely, Jimmie Dale Gilmore, and Dwight Yoakam. I tend to believe that Mellencamp himself has been an Americana artist since at least 1985, and possibly sooner.

Personally, I hear his influence every time I listen to artists like Deer Tick. But this is a participatory community, so what do y'all think?

Click HERE to read the No Depression Blog online and read the comments. 

John will appear in DIRECTV’s second of four one-hour “Farm Aid Presents” specials taped at Farm Aid 2009, airing on The 101 Network on DIRECTV over the next few months.

"Farm Aid Presents Gretchen Wilson & Friends" premieres on Feb. 22 at 9 p.m. Eastern Time and Pacific. In addition to Wilson's exciting set, the program features great performances by John along with Farm Aid board members Willie Nelson, Neil Young and Dave Matthews (with Tim Reynolds), and Ryan Bingham & The Dead Horses.

The current schedule for showings of "Farm Aid Presents Gretchen Wilson & Friends" is:

-2/22 @ 9 pm EST/PST
-2/23 @ 7 pm EST
-2/24 @ 8 am EST
-2/25 @ 6 pm EST
-2/25 @ 11 pm EST/PST
-2/26 @ 7 am EST
-2/27 @ 10 am EST
-2/27 @ 9 pm EST/PST
-2/28 @ 11 am EST
-2/28 @ 7 pm EST
-3/9 @ 7 am EST
-3/14 @ 6 pm EST
-3/15 @ 7 pm EST
-3/27 @ 5 pm EST
-3/29 @ 6 am EST

Meanwhile, the first installment in the "Farm Aid Presents" series, "Farm Aid Presents Jason Mraz & Friends,” continues to be shown as well. The program, which premiered last month, also features performances by John and fellow Farm Aid board member Willie Nelson, as well as the full Farm Aid set from Mraz and songs by Will Dailey.

The current schedule for showings of "Farm Aid Presents Jason Mraz & Friends" is:

-2/24 @ 6 pm EST
-3/17 @ 6 pm EST
-3/18 @ 8 am EST
-3/20 @ 7 pm EST
-3/20 @ 4 am EST
-3/26 @ 7 pm EST
-3/28 @ 3 am EST
-3/29 @ 8 pm EST/PST
-4/3 @ 6 pm EST
-4/12 @ 9 pm EST/PST


Still to come are "Farm Aid Presents Wilco & Friends," which is set to premiere March 29 at 9 p.m. Eastern and Pacific, and "Farm Aid Presents Jamey Johnson & Friends," to premiere April 19 at 9 p.m. Eastern and Pacific.
  

Last night’s 21st annual Pollstar Concert Industry Awards at Nokia Theatre L.A. recognized last summer’s Bob Dylan/John Mellencamp/Willie Nelson tour as the Most Creative Tour Package.

The event is staged by the Pollstar trade publication, which covers the worldwide concert industry in a weekly print magazine and daily Web service.  

John Mellencamp and his band will headline Rock Fest 2010 in Cadott WI on Saturday, July 17th. Rock Fest is four day music festival.

Rock Fest officials tell Mellencamp.com that attendee surveys over the past few years have had John at the top of the wish list for future fests. The venue is a naturally sloping amphitheater that can hold 25,000+ in the audience.

Tickets to the festival go on sale this Saturday, February 20th, at 8 AM CT. Please visit www.rock-fest.com for ticket pricing, complete line up and camping information.
 

John's official Fan Club, ClubCherryBomb.net, is partnering with Rock Fest to make available a limited number of one day VIP tickets only for PAID Club members. They will include a July 17th ticket in the reserved seating area right in front of the stage, along with complimentary lunch, dinner, drinks, VIP area and parking. This is a limited offer and only available here. Typically VIP tickets are only sold in a package for all four nights but Rock Fest and Club Cherry Bomb have come together for this exclusive offer for the PAID club member!

The one day VIP tickets will be $176.50 plus taxes and fees each and will be sold directly via phone by Rock Fest using a PAID Club member exclusive password. The presale will begin on Friday February 19th, please watch the Club TOUR page for details. Visit their website for more details about the perks of a VIP ticket.
 

By Mike Leonard - Commentary - There was a point before the musical program at the White House last week when John Mellencamp looked around the room and wondered, “What am I doing here?”

The singers and performers assembled were mostly African-American and rightly so. The program was put together in recognition of Black History Month and titled, “In Performance at the White House: A Celebration of Music from the Civil Rights Movement.”

Morgan Freeman, Smokey Robinson, Natalie Cole, Yolanda Adams, the Five Blind Boys from Alabama. That all made sense. All had either lived through the civil rights era of the late 1950s and ‘60s or lived it vicariously through family members and mentors.

Of the three white entertainers there, Bob Dylan clearly belonged. When he wrote “The Times They Are A-Changin’,” the civil rights movement was very much on his mind.

Joan Baez helped galvanize the aspirations of blacks and whites with her ethereal version of the spiritual, “We Shall Overcome.” She played an important role in the movement as well.

But for all of his musical success, the Bloomington-based Rock and Roll Hall of Fame member still wondered, “Why me?”

He posed the question to Baez. And she answered with a tone that n assured him. “Because you actually deal with race in your repertoire,” Baez said. “Most people don’t anymore.”

Baez knew that much first-hand. She sang a duet with Mellencamp on the song “Jim Crow” for his 2007 album, “Freedom Road.”

It’s hard to say whether Dylan was prescient or merely hopeful when he wrote “The Times They Are A-Changin’.” But if you were to have asked anyone in 1963 whether they could conceive of an African-American occupying the White House in 2010, you likely wouldn’t have gotten much affirmation.

Change has come in fits and spurts, as they say. Even a year before his election, most people would not have predicted that Barack Obama would become the first African-American president.

And less than three years ago, you wouldn’t have seen Baez on any list of the president’s honored guests.

Mellencamp pushed for the opportunity to entertain recovering soldiers at the Army’s Walter Reed Hospital in April 2007, just months after the Washington Post broke the story that the facility was in terrible shape and its patients were getting less than the first-class care they deserved.

After some behind-the-scenes bureaucratic battles, Mellencamp got the military’s OK. But when he said he was bringing Baez with him to sing on a couple of songs (including “Jim Crow”), the answer was an emphatic no-go. “Joan had her plane ticket and hotel booked,” Mellencamp told Rolling Stone magazine. “They didn’t give me a reason why she couldn’t come. We asked why, and they said, ‘She can’t fit here, period.’”

First Lady Laura Bush once canceled a White House poetry reading out of the fear that someone might say something controversial — to her ears — about war. Seven years later, protest singers are invited guests, and military officials and the secretary of Defense are telling the public that “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” discriminates against homosexuals and deprives the military of talented and dedicated personnel they sorely need.

Change has not been incremental. But it’s real.
 

A complete, unedited version of John's performance of "Born in the U.S.A." from December's Kennedy Center Honors segment celebrating the music of honoree Bruce Springsteen has surfaced.

The four-minute clip really stretches out the song, which opens slowly with John on acoustic guitar, Kenny Aronoff clapping tambourines, and Andy York inserting electric guitar licks before the houseband gradually joins in, maintaining a mostly acoustic simmer for the first two before John cuts it off for at the two-minute mark for 30 seconds of a cappella Vietnam reminiscence. He then kicks it off into the full-fledged rock anthem made famous in Springsteen's hit version.

“I was very proud and humbled to have been able to play ‘Born In The U.S.A.’ in a different fashion--that I think was true to the feelings that Bruce had when he wrote it,” Mellencamp told us shortly after the program was taped on Dec. 6. “As just some kid in New Jersey making records, I bet he never imagined in his wildest dreams that he’d someday be honored in this fashion. I’m glad to have been there to acknowledge the influence he’s had on all of us.”

"Born In The U.S.A." 32nd Annual Kennedy Center Honors