Trouble No More

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Before John Mellencamp recorded his classic Scarecrow, he learned hundreds of classic rock covers from the '60s. Here the Indiana troubadour ventures back to the very roots of American popular music, learning traditional songs associated with the likes of Robert Johnson, Son House, Howlin' Wolf, and Woody Guthrie. The result is Mellencamp's rawest album to date, updating the acoustic sounds of those early idioms for modern times while keeping them firmly rooted in tradition. In that sense, it's not unlike his hero Bob Dylan's two country-blues cover albums from the mid-'90s--though the ever-mischievous Mellencamp has a little fun with his definitions here, paying tribute to his Hoosier background by covering Bloomington native Hoagy Carmichael's "Brooklyn Oriole" and Lucinda Williams's 1980 ode to "Lafayette," while pulling a beautiful stark version of Skeeter Davis's wonderful 1963 country-pop ballad "End of the World" out of left field. The former James Brown impersonator has never sang better. The album closes with "To Washington," credited to Mellencamp, but actually a "borrowed blues" that's been used to address political figures as far back as Calvin Coolidge when recorded by Charlie Poole, the Carter Family, and Guthrie. This time, the song addresses one George W. Bush and surely won't gain Mellencamp any new fans among those who'd support a Dixie Chicks boycott. --Bill Holdship