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05/12/2009 - Here are a few updates on John's current activities-with the usual caveat that everything is subject to change.
The tentative title of John's long-awaited box set is "On the Rural Route 7609." Clever readers will decipher the title as a reference to the fact that John's first album, "Chestnut Street Incident," was released in 1976, hence the number 7609 is a reference to the fact that the box spans John's recording career from 1976 to the present 2009.
The box will contain four CDs, with at least 72 tracks. John and veteran record company a&r executive and producer Steve Berkowitz are still working on the artwork and the audio contents, but the set will highlight alternate takes of classic songs. "Some of them show me actually in the process of writing them," says John, "so there's a lot of stopping and starting up again-a lot of head-scratching. It's turned into quite a project."
Prior to the box set, though, will come "L Read More
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05/08/2009 - Three more dates have just been added to The Bob Dylan Show Featuring Bob Dylan and his Band, John Mellencamp, and Willie Nelson:
07.31.09 Orange Beach AL - The Amphitheater at the Wharf
08.02.09 Houston TX - Cynthia Woods Mitchell Pavilion
08.09.09 Albuquerque NM - Journal Pavilion
Orange Beach's presale will begin on Monday, May 11th. Houston and Albuquerque's presales will begin on Monday May 25th. All three shows feature reserved tickets and general admission seating. Check the TOUR page of Mellencamp.com for more details.
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05/07/2009 - The video for "A Ride Back Home," the latest single from "Life, Death, Love & Freedom," will premiere as a Top 20 extra this Fri./Sat./Sun. on CMT's Top 20 Countdown show. The program will also feature an interview by Top 20 Countdown Host Lance Smith with JM and Little Big Town's Karen Fairchild (who guests in the video).
The show will run at 11 AM ET/PT on Friday and Saturday, and 11:30 AM ET/PT on Sunday.
While in Nashville,
John and Karen also taped an interview with CMT's Cody Alan for the syndicated radio show CMT Radio Live, w Read More
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05/06/2009 - Club Cherry Bomb - The Official John Mellencamp Fan Club is celebrating the start of its FIFTH year with an impressive new contest for PAID members. Three random winners of this contest will receive a SUPER prize pack full of signed and rare Mellencamp items (pictured below)! If you are a PAID member, click HERE to enter the contest. For more details on what is included, click HERE. Contest ends May 20th.
If you are not a PAID member, yet, click HERE to join the club and enter the contest! If you are a member, make sure to log in and check your membership status, your membership might have expired!
To confirm your Club status, log in today and click Read More
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05/06/2009 - The third round of ticket presales start Monday for The Bob Dylan Show 2009 Tour—also featuring John and Willie Nelson.
Presale tickets will allow fans to enter ballpark shows at 4:30 PM, instead of 5 PM when the gates open to regular ticket holders.
On Monday, May 11th, presales commence for the following shows: July 29 (Sevierville, TN), Aug. 4 (Round Rock, TX), Aug. 5 (Corpus Christi, TX), and Aug 11 (Glendale, AZ). Links and passwords to buy tickets online will be available on the tour page of Mellencamp.com on Monday morning.
This weekend, the following shows go on sale to the general public: July 8 (Louisville, KY), July 15 (New Britain, CT), July 17 (Essex Junction, VT), July 18 (Bethel Woods, NY), July 19 (Syracuse, NY), July 21 (Pawtucket, RI), July 24 (Aberdeen, MD), July 25 (Norfolk, VA), and July 28 (Durham, NC).
Visit our tour Mini Site and Read More
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05/06/2009 - Depending on how they edit and present the interview footage, CMT has plenty of excellent material to work with following John's extensive sit-down at the Nashville country music cable TV network earlier this week.
He and Little Big Town's Karen Fairchild visited the CMT studios to accompany the station's programming this weekend of the video for "A Ride Back Home," the latest single from "Life, Death, Love & Freedom." They were interviewed by Top 20 Countdown Host Lance Smith (additionally, CMT Radio Network did a separate radio interview with John for use in other CMT programming slots).
John and Karen first spoke about the song itself.
"When I wrote ['A Ride Back Home'] it kind of frightened me," John said. "But I was listening to a lot of great American folk and country songs and so much American music Read More
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05/04/2009 - John's "My Sweet Love" video clip has been nominated in the Wide Open Country Video of the Year category in the first round of nominees for the 2009 CMT Music Awards.
The clip, which also features Little Big Town's Karen Fairchild, is up against "Backyard" (Kevin Costner & Modern West), "Nine Lives" (Def Leppard and Tim McGraw), "Photograph" (Def Leppard and Taylor Swift), "All Summer Long" (Kid Rock), "Please Read the Letter" (Robert Plant and Alison Krauss), "Old Enough" (The Raconteurs featuring Ricky Skaggs and Ashley Monroe) and "Bartender Song" (Rehab featuring Hank Williams, Jr.).
The CMT Music Award Read More
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05/04/2009 - John has been a big part of many big events, most recently the
superstar-studded "We Are One" concert at the Lincoln Memorial that kicked off
President Obama's inauguration festivities in January. Even then, no event was
bigger musically and politically than yesterday's "The Clearwater Concert:
Creating the Next Generation of Environmental Leaders" show at Madison Square
Garden, which celebrated Pete Seeger's 90th birthday while raising money for his
Hudson River Sloop Clearwater non-profit organization (created to defend and
restore the Hudson River).
The concert featured scores of music luminaries spanning Seeger's immensely
influential career as a folksinger and political activist. Going back the
furthest were like-minded folkies Joan Baez, Ramblin' Jack Elliott , Richie
Havens, Tom Paxton and Taj Mahal, legendary singer-songwriter Kris
Kristofferson, and Bernice Johnson Reagon, the famed singer/organizer of the
1960s Civil Rights era and founder Read More
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05/04/2009 - Sunday's star-studded "The Clearwater Concert: Creating the Next Generation of Environmental Leaders" show at Madison Square Garden, which celebrated Pete Seeger's 90th birthday, has rightly received tremendous press coverage.
John was prominently featured in many of the print articles and web postings, with the Los Angeles Times quoting his remarks leading into his acoustic version of Seeger's "If I Had a Hammer" and the Chicago Tribune's site illustrating it's Associated Press coverage of the even with a big picture of John and Pete from the press room.
Click the following links (which open in a new window) to read the full stories:
Entertainment Weekly
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04/28/2009 -
BENEFIT CONCERT IN CELEBRATION OF PETE SEEGER’S 90th BIRTHDAY MAY 3rd AT MADISON SQUARE GARDEN
Featuring John Mellencamp, Dave Matthews, Eddie Vedder, Bruce Springsteen Among Over 40 Artists Performing
OFFICIAL PRESS RELEASE: NEW YORK, March 18, 2009 —The Clearwater Concert: Creating the Next Generation of Environmental Leaders, a star-studded, one night only concert event celebrating Pete Seeger’s 90th Birthday, will be held on Sunday, May 3, at 7PM, at Madison Square Garden. This once-in-a-lifetime concert event will benefit and raise awareness for Hudson River Sloop Clearwater, founded by Pete Seeger, which strives to preserve and protect the Hudson River. Seeger, a legendary folk singer, political activist and avid environmentalist, has long inspired social change through his extraordinary life an Read More
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04/24/2009 - It's official: John is heading out on the road this summer with Bob Dylan and fellow Farm Aid founder Willie Nelson.
Today, Dylan announced John and Willie as the all-star roster for the tour, which is being called The Bob Dylan Show Ballpark Tour since the dates announced so far are scheduled at minor league baseball stadium venues. Additional dates featuring the threesome at more standard concert venues will be announced later, and will be called simply The Bob Dylan Show.
The 22-date ballpark tour is set to begin July 2 at GCS Ballpark in Sauget, Il. and conclude Aug. 15 at Banner Island Ballpark in Stockton, Ca. It marks just the second time in the past 24 years that these three performers have shared the concert stage.
In addition to the Bob Dylan Show Ballpark Tour stops announced today, it is anticipated that several more July and August Bob Dylan Show dates, also featuring John Mellencamp and Willie Nelson, will be added to the tour in the very ne Read More
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04/21/2009 - John's appearance on Sundance Channel's Spectacle: Elvis Costello With... that premiered earlier in the year repeats this week:
Wednesday, April 22 @ 9 PM ET
Thursday, April 23 @ 8 PM ET
Friday, April 24 @ 12:30 AM ET
Sunday, April 26 @ 12:40 PM ET
In Washington, D.C. during the Obama inaugural festivities, John was asked about
his appearance on Elvis Costello's Sundance Channel series "Spectacle: Elvis
Costello with...," which premiered on January 21, 2009.
“It was an honor and a joy to be on that show,” he said. “Elvis Costello is
arguably the best songwriter of our generation, and an engaging host who showed
interest in all of us. It was so interesting to me that I forgot I was on
television, because I was so interested in what everyone had to say. Then I
looked up and saw myself on the monitor and said, ‘Oh, shit!’”
Taped at Harlem's famed Apollo Theater in September, the program features
Mellencamp, Rosanne Cash, Kris Kristof Read More
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04/14/2009 - Indianapolis/Bloomington radio station 92.3 WTTS--which covers John's hometown vicinity--is putting up for auction a Fender guitar signed by John to benefit its "Band Together" program.
The program, which is now in its seventh year, raises awareness and donations for local school student musicians and music programs. It has raised tens of thousands of dollars through listener generosity, and has sent over 100 kids to local band camps to learn more about music.
Visit http://www.wttsfm.com/bandtogether.htm to see and bid on the guitar.
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04/14/2009 - From January 17, 1983 comes this vintage clip with John and the great Mitch Ryder duetting on "B.I.G.T.I.M.E.," as performed that night on the American Music Awards show.
The song was the lead track on Ryder's 1983 comeback album "Never Kick a Sleeping Dog, which John produced at "The Shack" studio near Seymour, Indiana, in Jackson County (he was credited as "Little Bastard"-same as he was as producer of his own albums in the 1980s). John also sang backup vocals on several songs including "B.I.G.T.I.M.E." and "Come Again"; legendary 1960s English vocalist Marianne Faithful joined him in singing with Mitch on "A Thrill's A Thrill."
"Never Kick a Sleeping Dog" was released on Mellencamp's label Riva/Polygram and utilized the same location and setup that he would use to record his classic album "Uh-Huh" in July, 1983. So it is quite similar in sound to both "Uh-Huh" and "American Fool,&quo Read More
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04/08/2009 - "America's Heart and Soul," Blacklight Films' 2004 documentary about ordinary Americans whose lives are really quite extraordinary, will be rereleased starting April 17th with an exclusive 10-day engagement in three test markets-Bloomington, Ind., Madison Wis., and Burlington, Vt. The main title song is John's "The World Don't Bother Me None," which he wrote exclusively for the film. Director/producer/cinematographer Louie Schwartzberg hails it as "an anthem for a new beginning."
"We reached out to John because he embodies America's grassroots," says Schwartzberg. "His music certainly resonates with hardworking Americans and epitomizes the best in the common man. The film is all about recognizing remarkable 'ordinary people'--everyone from a dairy farmer in Vermont to a bike messenger in New York City to jazz musicians in New Orleans, oil well fighters and a blind mountain climber. The real kind of heart and soul of America. In these challe Read More
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