John Mellencamp* Featuring Carlene Carter – Sad Clowns & Hillbillies

Great album. And very good mastering. Dead quiet where it should be.

John Mellencamp isn’t Bob Dylan, nor is he Bruce Springsteen or even Tom Petty for that matter, he’s a pop star who got old, and is now deep into the Americana side of music, where like Dylan, John now fancies himself a painter, and while there’s nothing wrong with indulging that aspect of one’s creative nature, I find clowns rather scary, and bespeak the nature of an individual I would rather not consider.

It’s my sincere desire to imagine that Mellencamp has gotten his life together, after all, he is supportive of the Farm Aid adventure, and he is now thoughtful of the folks at the back of the auditorium, no longer playing to multiple thousands, concerned that everyone walks away with a good experience. I was sort of looking forward to this outing for a number of reasons, the first being that I like Americana music, though hearing how this collaboration with Carlene Carter [daughter of June and Johnny Cash] came about, I was rather put off, thinking that this is not going to work for me in the least. The backstory: Coming off stage John said to Carlene, “We should get together and do a gospel album.” “Really John,” I said to no one scratching my head, “do we really need a gospel album from you?” Regardless, the inspiration for this release came about from he and Carter’s collaboration on Ghosts Brothers of Darkland Country and Ithaca.

Sad Clowns & Hillbillies is rather slow paced and lightly produced, reminding me of Steve Earle in many aspects, but that’s not to say that the album doesn’t have its resounding moments, even with all of its mid-western hills and valleys, and is delivered with the magic of a bygone era, an era of late night AM radio, static and all as the signal strengthens and weakens as your car skirts the curved backroads that are socked in with heavy fog. Why the man in true Wilco style even adds music to the Woody Guthrie lyrics for the song “My Soul’s Got Wings.” He also covers the Mickey Newbury number “Mobile Blue,” [a tribute to Mobile, Alabama] and the song “Early Bird Cafe” by Jerry Hank. Other songs are rather tear jerking in nature, seeming to pluck at one’s heartstrings for the simple fact that those strings can be plucked, though the songs of that nature define nothing other than a melancholy translucent emotional window that reveals nothing. Of course the songs are more than well executed and come across with a sense of considerably ‘crafted’ storytelling … though in all honesty, it’s that world ‘crafted’ that I can’t get by, because these songs, for all they are or are not, simply do not sound as if they come from a living beating heart … crafted and ambitious ‘yes,’ but lacking in a true nature, more themed than from actual life.

John pays tribute to many of his inspirational artists, you can hear them step out front and center momentarily in each song, and while the album is booked as a collaboration, it’s really not, it’s more that Carter showed up as a living inspiration, laid down a couple of tracks and backing vocals, and then disappeared into the night, leaving you with a handful of rock meets folk meets gospel, with the album ending on a very heavy note, with even a shot of bourbon only making the weight that much more difficult to bear.

There are those, especially the Public Radio fans who are gonna praise this album to the high heavens [no gospel pun intended], citing it as the perfect AM Sunday morning album to drop on your turntable as you slowly ebb back into consciousness and set about sweeping the cobwebs from your floor. Other than that, all I can say is that it’s been a very very long time since John Mellencamp gave us some intelligent rock, even toned down, that made sense and felt good.

*** The Fun Facts: The album artwork is taken from the 2005 painting by John Mellencamp entitled “Twelve Dreams.

Review by Jenell Kesler