Being authentic is a hallmark trait of millennials. Be true to yourself. Keep it real. It’s so central to millennial identity that marketers have discovered that they can sell almost anything if they brand it as authentic. Pre-torn jeans? Weathered flannel shirts? Soap! Food and beverages! Hair dyes!
And this drive for authenticity has always been a major current of pop music. Consider rock’s initial primal authenticity against the smoothly manufactured crooning of Crosby (that would be Bing, not David), or Perry Como. Or punk’s hallowed rage against the disco machine.
Roots rock, garage bands, Americana – all describe an attempt to get at some musical essence that is distinctly American. Rarely from big eastern cities, Americana is usually white, southern, with occasional folk frills by banjos and fiddles. Even urban cosmopolitans believe that the “soul” of America lies in its industrial cities, teeming with ethnic and racial minorities, the “heart” of the countr y lies in the countryside.
Authenticity is defined by place. And two bands, long mainstays of the rock pantheon, experience place differently – but in ways that capture something essential, something authentic in their music.
30-year and 25- album career, Mellencamp has harnessed simple
populist
homilies to a driving , often anthemic sound. And like Springsteen, his politics have always been out front — sitting on that rocking chair on the front porch of his Indiana home, supporting farmers in Farm Aid, and a host of liberal Democrats in recent elections. But his music’s been too timid, too uncritically embrace those
eager to Hoosier folkways, that his songs could be misread. while searching for something real, authentic and essential about America. He’s been so adept at tapping this vein that “This is Our Country” became a jingle for another iconic American brand: Chevrolet. “Ain’t that America” was used before that.
John Mellencamp takes this search for authenticity to a new level. Like Bruce Springsteen, Mellencamp wants to put the pop back in populist. Over a
(where the home made band stands on the original markers laid out for Elvis’s band), and room 414 in the old Gunter Hotel in San Antonio, where Robert Johnson recorded his legendary acoustic blues in 1936. In those hallowed rooms, standing or sitting in the literal footprints of those who came before him, Mellencamp makes a case for transcendence through immersion.
The songs are spare, acoustic, and Mellencamp’s voice is hardly the arena rock bellowing he used to do. He’s restrained, gravely,
scratchy even – as befits the songs he composed. (Apparently, he composed them during the tour he did in the summer of 2009 with Willie Nelson and Bob Dylan to a dozen minor league baseball parks). Punctuated by mournful fiddles, light acoustic guitar picking, his voice deliberately muddy – well, this must be the most constructed authentic sound of the year.
But somehow it works. It’s haunting, mournful, melodic and inspiring. Singing about the little guy, who tries to make it, but fails, Mellencamp reminds us that the
American story is not about the ones who make it (the countless celebrities who parade their wealth) but about well-intentioned failure, the Edsels, the Gatsbys, the Charlie Chaplin characters, those down on their luck true believers who are undone by their faith in America. They do not fail America as much as America fails them. Ours is not a story of triumph but of resilience. And Mellencamp captures that defiance in the face of adversity, that willingness to pick yourself up, dust yourself off, and get back in the saddle.
“On No Better than This,” (his first record for the traditional, authentic, formerly folkie label Rounder Records) Mellencamp goes searching for those actual, literal places of authenticity and records new songs in old familiar places. (The sound is so familiar, the songs so obviously inspired by traditional folk and blues stylings, that the album packaging has to constantly make clear these are new songs).
He and Grammy-winning producer T-Bone Burnett pack a 55-year old Ampex mono reel- to-reel tape recorder, a single handhelp microphone, and barebones backing combo, and head out to three iconic locations: The First African Baptist Church in Savannah, Georgia (the first black church in America, a sanctuary for runaway slaves and a source of powerhouse gospel music), Sun Studios in Memphis
