It's hard to imagine that his recent album "Trouble No More" is JOHN MELLENCAMP'S 21st album. Whoo. Admittedly, the Indiana-based troubadour had slipped off your reviewer's radar somewhat since the days of "Rain On The Scarecrow" and "The Lonesome Jubilee," but it's hard to believe he's now been in this business over 25 years and, as he candidly admits here, is "51 years old...I'm only three years younger than George W.Bush."
This is no idle boast, as "Trouble No More" - ostensibly a Smithsonian eye view of Americana's folk and blues roots, with Mellencamp and band covering songs from artists as diverse as Robert Johnson, Hoagy Carmichael, Woody Guthrie and Lucinda Williams - includes a tune called "To Washington"(restyled from a Guthrie song), which in simple, Pete Seeger-esque fashion took on a life of its' own in the media with the American invasion of Iraq last spring. Proof positive that there are still people out there who can respond to the Manic Street Preachers' question of: "Can anyone make a difference anymore, can anyone write a Protest song?" from "Let Robeson Sing."
In truth, though, for all his respected rock'n'roll credentials, Mellencamp's not an obvious revolutionary; "not an extremist" as one man on the street says here. Yet the self-confessed "troubadour" is a good choice to voice the peoples' dissatisfaction in an effective blue-collar way, which is why his choice of many of the songs on "Trouble No More" such as "End Of The World," "Teardrops Will Fall" and Lucinda Williams' "Lafayette" - essentially still songs of hard times for honest (wo)men - seems apposite.
The effort in narrowing down the dozen songs for "Trouble No More" was itself one of the project's biggest hazards, and Mellencamp had to listen to upward of 200 CDs to cherry pick the songs he could do justice to and remould in a setting that would sound both authentic and still resonant today.
From Indiana University, director Ron Osgood and his team were granted pretty much unlimited access to Mellancamp's studio, Belmont Mall, in Bloomington, and the footage they shot is entirely of the grainy, fly on the wall, Black and White variety, with hundreds of hours sensibly edited down to approximately the hour we get here, which does go some way to letting you into Mellencamp and his associates' modus operandi.
Well into his third decade in the business, Mellencamp (no longer "Cougar" and there's no reference to it here either) still has his chiselled good looks and clearly doesn't suffer fools gladly. His approach is steely, no-nonsense and determined and -from the way he at one point loses his rag with engineer Ray Kennedy who's seriously underachieving at the time - you get the feeling nobody in his band hasn't suffered a few serious bollockings along the way.
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Having said that, Mellencamp's no bullshit approach also vibes his band up and encourages them to apply themselves. Guitarist Andy York has a particularly tough job in learning Robert Johnson's strange licks on "Stones In My Passway", but the raw, live-in-the-studio take of this song is amongst the most electrifying footage here.
Indeed, while the documentary does include decent interview clips featuring all the musicians involved (well, possibly excepting stand-up bassist Toby Myers, whose rambling on about how "his gray notes sometimes turn to blue" does get a bit Nigel Tufnel), the lack of more killer performance footage of these songs is a little disappointing. The initial "Stones In My Passway" is great, sure, and ditto for "Teardrops Will Fall", but it would have been great to have captured "John The Revelator" properly and a number of the album's other featured tracks - not least Son House's creepy "Death Letter" - are only fleetingly referred to.
Nonetheless, as a relatively tight, concise insight into both the making of the album and the businesslike way Mellancamp and his associates conduct their work, "The Making of 'Trouble No More'" succeeds well enough. The lack of straight musical footage doesn't help to sell it to the merely curious and it doesn't work for the uninitiated, but if you have even a fleeting interest in this enduring midwestern musician's oeuvre it does have its' moments. Besides, this reviewer came away wanting to hear "Trouble No More" on CD, so surely that's recommendation enough?
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