John Mellencamp – Strictly A One-Eyed Jack

21-01-2022

John J. Mellencamp (born October 7, 1951), previously known as Johnny Cougar, John Cougar, and John Cougar Mellencamp, is an American musician, singer-songwriter, painter, actor, and film director. He is known for his catchy brand of heartland rock, which emphasizes traditional instrumentation. Mellencamp rose to fame in the 1980s while "honing an almost startlingly plainspoken writing style" that, starting in 1982, yielded a string of Top 10 singles. His biggest musical influences are Bob Dylan, Woody Guthrie, James Brown, and the Rolling Stones. Mellencamp suffered a minor heart attack after a show at Jones Beach in New York on August 8, 1994, that eventually forced him to cancel the last few weeks of his Dance Naked tour. "I was up to 80 cigarettes a day," Mellencamp told the Boston Herald in September 1996 about the habits that led to his heart malfunction two years beforehand. "We'd finish a show and I'd go out and have steak and french fries and eggs at 4 in the morning and then go to sleep with all that in my gut. It was just a terrible lifestyle." A linchpin in the heartland rock movement of the 1980s, John Mellencamp embodied the rock & roll traditions of the midwest. Deeply rooted in the rock & roll of the '60s -- specifically the muscular wallop of the Rolling Stones and their garagey imitators, along with the folk-rock revolution pioneered by Bob Dylan, Mellencamp gravitated toward socially conscious storytelling as his career progressed, an interest that surfaced in the mid-'80s. In 2021, Mellencamp released "Wasted Days," a duet with Bruce Springsteen. It was the first song from Strictly a One-Eyed Jack, a collection of new material released in 2022. When I hear the term "heartland rock," one voice pops up in my head, John Mellencamp. Decades of guitar-based, everyman songs sung in a gritty voice, combined with tireless, real-life advocacy of American farmers and other Midwestern folks, make him the Head of the Heartland. Hell, "Pink Houses" alone would've been enough to earn the title. But after four decades of writing songs for the salt of the Earth, is the nearly 70-year-old singer still, well, salty ? One pass of his latest record, "Strictly a One-Eyed Jack", answers that squarely in the affirmative. For those who strayed from straight-up rock 'n' roll sometime around the grunge era, John Mellencamp has remained a busy, creative and interesting character. He's taken up painting. He produced a musical with Stephen King, "The Ghost Brothers of Darkland County" (interesting stuff, check out the soundtrack). He remains involved with Farm Aid. And, of course, he's been writing and recording music all along (2001's Cuttin' Heads is a personal favorite). One-Eyed Jack, though, has Mellencamp grumpily embracing his present self, while also throwing a few glances back toward the glory days. Lead track "I Always Lie to Strangers" has Mellencamp, with a voice scarred by a million cigarettes, singing of mistrust both given and earned, "I've never taken the high road home/The old low road seems to get me there fast," the wariness deepened by Miriam Sturm's ragged violin line. "I Am a Man That Worries" is a bluesy look at angst with a side of menace, "You better get out of my way, boy", punctuated by Andy York's ferocious slide work. And "Sweet Honey Brown" is a slinky elegy to the kind drug dependency that ebbs and flows with a long musical career and ends up having a passing resemblance to a love affair, "Haven't seen your tracks/For a long long while/I'm thinking about quitting on you." Tough stuff. So, about that look back at the good ol' days, it comes when The Boss shows up midway through the record. "Did You Say Such a Thing," the first true heartland-feel tune on the record, features Springsteen on guitar and harmony vocals on Mellencamp's anti-cheap-talk screed, "You say you keep the secret/It's just the people that you tell/Well here's a little secret/You can go straight to hell." The album's first single, "Wasted Days," is a true duet between the two rock vets counting down their days without throwing them away. And album closer "A Life Full of Rain" is a somber, piano-driven tune about the good times that maybe weren't so grand, "There's a blue-eyed world/That said it once loved you/But that was in your youth/Such a long, long time ago." The mood is drawn along by a Springsteen solo that resembles the work of another 80s heartlander of the Scottish variety, Mark Knopfler. But this old Indiana rocker isn't living in a land completely devoid of hope and dreams. "Chasing Rainbows," with a chiming guitar line that will remind you of Buffalo Springfield's "For What It's Worth" (or, for younger readers, Brandi Carlile's "Fulton County Jane Doe"), has Mellencamp, nearly half a century into a successful career, realizing that there's no ultimate payoff at the end of the road. Rather, it truly is about the journey, "At the end of the rainbow/Turns out it's not somewhere/Look around it's everywhere/For anyone who cares. The old man's been down more roads than just about anyone, he might just know what he's talking about. Song "I Can't Wait to Hear" Live : "Wasted Days", A Mellencamp/Springsteen duet is an event that 14-year-old me would never have thought possible. "Strictly a One-Eyed Jack" was recorded and mixed by David Leonard and mastered by Bob Ludwig. Additional musicians on the album include Andy York (acoustic and electric guitars, bass, banjo, autoharp, vocals), Troye Kinnett (piano, accordion, organs, harmonica, vocals), Miriam Sturm (violin), John Gunnell (upright bass, electric bass, vocals), Dane Clark (drums, percussion, vocals), Merritt Lear (violin, vocals) and Mike Wanchic (electric guitar, vocals). "I didn't even know what I was writing about. It was just sent to me", John Mellencamp has said of "Strictly A One-Eyed Jack", his first album in five years. Lauded by Johnny Cash, Bob Dylan, and Nora Guthrie, who sees in his work echoes of her father Woody, and Bruce Springsteen, who is writ large on this his 24th studio album, Mellencamp really does seem to contain multitudes. From the first notes of "I Always Lie to Strangers", Jack's opening track, you're hooked, grabbed by the lapels, and happily held close. The style and mood are reminiscent of Dylan's Time Out of Mind, his great late Nineties album, while Mellencamp's voice mostly sits somewhere between Dylan and Tom Waits, with a touch of Steve Earle. Like many singer-songwriters of his generation, though at 70 he's a relative youngster, Mellencamp is reckoning with death. Still, there can be no compromises : "I don't grovel and I don't bend/I don't give a fuck where you stand" he sings in "Streets of Galilee". A determined activist who's lent his voice to Vote for Change and Iraq vets among other causes, and who, from its inception, has been a key figure in Farm Aid, Mellencamp offers his austere view of the world where "there's so many crying, and that's all my eyes can see." It's intimate, straight-talking, a folk-say cautionary tale : "the end of the rainbow, turns out it's not somewhere/ Look around it's everywhere for anyone who cares". It's "One-Eyed Jack" speaking throughout: looking back, looking forwards, thinking aloud, pontificating, perhaps allowing Mellencamp to go places he hasn't previously gone. John Steinbeck would be proud. There are three cuts with Springsteen: the single "Wasted Days", all distinctive tight harmonies and great guitar solos - think Traveling Wilburys; "Did You Say Such a Thing"; and "A Life Full of Rain". "Gone Too Soon", bluesy and elegiac, is perhaps the album's highpoint with its scrumptious, keyboards, horns and percussion and a vocal in which Mellencamp seems to be channelling Louis Armstrong. It's a well-paced album, a reminder in these pick 'n' mix days that thoughtful artists do indeed give great thought to how a suite of songs comes together. As a whole, in its entirety, is how we should listen to "Strictly A One-Eyed Jack". It's a profound album that deserves no less. The heart of Americana. Forty years ago, John Mellencamp (then John Cougar) told us to "hold onto 16 as long as you can." On Strictly a One-Eyed Jack, he laments what happens when you no longer maintain that grip. The Indiana icon is no stranger to dour countenance, of course - he famously dubbed himself the Little Bastard for production credits, after all, and a scowl has never been too far from his face even when he was rockin' in the U.S.A. and beyond. On "Strictly a One-Eyed Jack", however, sweet 16 has turned 70 and is looking at "a life full of rain, coming down on my shoulders" with a reflective, gray-tinged gaze that doesn't like what he sees but, importantly, doesn't regret or apologize for feeling that way. It's there in titles such as "I Am a Man Who Worries" and "I Always Lie to Strangers," and in ruminations about living in a world where "there's so many crying, and that's all my eyes can see."

1 "I Always Lie to Strangers"

2 "Driving in the Rain"

3 "I Am a Man That Worries"

4 "Streets of Galilee"

5 "Sweet Honey Brown"

6 "Did You Say Such a Thing" (with Bruce Springsteen)

7 "Gone So Soon"

8 "Wasted Days" (with Springsteen)

9 "Simply a One-Eyed Jack"

10 "Chasing Rainbows"

11 "Lie to Me"

12 "A Life Full of Rain" (with Springsteen)