John Mellencamp - Good Samaritan Tour
During August 2000, John Mellencamp had a small acoustic tour which he called "The Good Samaritan Tour". This page provides information about that tour primarily in the form of links to webpages put together by fans who attended the shows. Please email me at mrticsay@ticsay.com if you know of links that I should add.
The normally one-hour acoustic shows were perfored with Merritt Lear (from Butterfly Child) and Mike Flynn (from Old Pike).
Starting with the Chicago show, they were joined at times by Mike Wanchic and Mirium Sturm.
The shows featured lots of cover tunes. You can check out a list of songs John has covered at http://www.ticsay.com/mrticsay/JohnMellencamp/JM-Covers.htm
From the August 26, 2000 Billboard Magazine...
http://www.billboard.com/musictomyears/
MUSIC TO MY EARS: Mellencamp's Acoustic Samaritans
by Timothy White
"I guess the point is to share the spirit of that old song, by just 'playing
real good for free,' " said John Mellencamp, making a sandwich in the
kitchenette of his tour bus as it pulled away from Philadelphia's
Rittenhouse Square. The song in question was Joni Mitchell's classic 1970
"Ladies Of The Canyon" track "For Free," and the bus Mellencamp stood in
belongs to colleague Don Henley, but the sandwich was for John's young son
Hud. The child was hungry after spending 70 minutes sitting placidly on an
equipment case in the center of the park, watching and listening as his dad
strummed more than a dozen familiar songs and obscure favorites for a
stunned lunchtime throng of 400 fans.
Like his offspring's meal, Mellencamp's unannounced outdoor concert was a
handcrafted, spur-of-the-moment repast. But contrary to Mitchell's folk/pop
hymn, nobody "passed his music by." Indeed, sidewalks fringing the quaint
square emptied as a ravenous crowd flocked onto the green from all
directions to catch the casual performance. The site had been chosen
scarcely an hour before, and Chicago violinist Merritt Lear and accordionist
Mike Flynn (guesting from the Indiana band Old Pike) set up the portable
amps and battery-powered P.A. system. John walked over with wife Elaine,
toting his vintage acoustic guitar (emblazoned with a hand-drawn eagle and a
"Fuck Fascism" slogan), and he paused under the trees to check its tuning.
Moments later, Mellencamp launched into a hearty rendition of the
traditional blues spiritual "In My Time Of Dying," as a nearby bicyclist
hollered, "Hey, man, that's John Cougar!" while his jogging companion
barked, "Huh? No way!"
The sun sprang out from behind threatening clouds as a grinning Mellencamp
eased through a relaxed repertoire highlighted by the Rolling Stones'
"Street Fighting Man"; "Cut Across Shorty," the Marijohn Wilkin/Wayne P.
Walker raver popularized by Eddie Cochran and Rod Stewart; Donovan's 1970
hit "Riki Tiki Tavi"; Mellencamp's own "Pink Houses" and "Big Daddy Of Them
All"; and choice Midwestern pop nuggets like "Captain Bobby Stout," off the
1969 LP "The Jerry Hahn Brotherhood."
"I saw the Jerry Hahn Brotherhood play that song in Indianapolis in 1971,"
Mellencamp later recalled as his bus sped onto the interstate en route to
Massachusetts. "They opened for Frank Zappa at an old converted movie
house-turned-rock palace called Middle Earth." Hahn hailed from Wichita,
Kan., and his band's song immortalized a local deputy police chief who later
became executive director of the Wichita Crime Commission.
Mellencamp retains fond memories of his first encounters with such "great,
old hippie rock songs," and over the course of his 11-day August trek-which
was actually an itinerant family camping trip with unscheduled musical pit
stops-he hoped to reintroduce a menu of similar material to unsuspecting
audiences. Peering out the bus window as it roared through New Jersey, John
held his guitar in his lap and indicated the working set list taped to its
side, whose 20-odd scrawled selections also included the Stones' "The Spider
And The Fly" and "Dead Flowers," "Last Of The Rock Stars" (off Elliott
Murphy's 1973 "Aquashow" album), the Animals' "Hey Gyp," plus some Woody
Guthrie ("Oklahoma Hills") and Bob Dylan ("All Along The Watchtower").
The next day, Mellencamp was seated before a log fire at his self-dubbed
"Mellencampsite" in Yogi Bear's Jellystone Park outside of Old Sturbridge
Village, Mass., watching as Elaine and sons Hud and Speck scurried between
Yogi's Petting Zoo, Boo Boo's Aqua Center swimming pool, and Pine Lake. "My
family loves this place!" he said with a big grin, stirring the coals. "But
I was never much of a camper or woodsman myself as a kid. I got kicked out
of Cub Scouts after one week! And the one time I remember camping with my
family as a kid in Bloomington, Ind., my mom got so mad at me for general
mischief that she left and walked all the way home!"
The occasion for this current atypical road trip was Mellencamp's
late-summer hiatus between the recent wrap of location filming in Rochester,
N.Y., for "After Image," a murder mystery (in which he stars in the role of
a crime-scene photographer) expected to premiere at the next Sundance Film
Festival, and the completion of his next album, which he's been cutting in
Key West, Fla. "We had some off-time to take our kids around to state parks
and family recreation spots before they have to head back to school," he
explained. "It was strictly no-stress, and I suddenly get the idea to make a
little music the same way. Since my band was also on vacation, I invited
Mike and his friend Merritt to come along with us to help eat the
marshmellows and chase our boys, and we're just making up free gigs as we
go."
The whimsical title coined for the musical side of the journey is "Live In
The Streets: The Good Samaritan Tour," a notion inspired by Tony Tingle, a
Kentucky buddy of Mellencamp's who once ruminated about quitting his day
job, loading his tools in a truck, and heading into the sunset to spend a
few months helping anyone gratis that he encountered along the roadside. "I
loved that idea," said Mellencamp, "and I decided to take along my own tools
as we traveled in the Northeast and Midwest, spreading cheer without looking
for a paycheck."
Following a little mid-morning reconnaissance in the Boston area on Aug. 13,
Mellencamp and company hopped out next to the Harvard campus and placed
their milkbox-size amps in front of the fountain in J.F.K. Park. As
rollerbladers and Frisbee tossers frolicked along the stretch of meadow
between Memorial Drive and the River Charles, the familiar strains of "Key
West Intermezzo (I Saw You First)" lofted over the bucolic corner of
Cambridge, Mass., and drew 400 disbelieving spectators to the scene. By the
concluding number, "Pink Houses," some onlookers were in tears. "Why is he
doing this?" asked one woman with kids. "For our families, I think," replied
another, pointing to Hud and Speck, who were playing tag with children in
the crowd. Two days later, in downtown Pittsburgh, word-of-mouth and clues
posted on Mellencamp's Web site led 3,000 people to assemble in Market
Square, assuming that would be a likely site for the next "Samaritan" show.
Actually no place had been picked yet, but Mellencamp hurried over to the ad
hoc rallying point.
Twenty-four hours onward, Cleveland's Public Square had 4,000 people waiting
on him, so he obliged. Locales in the Detroit and Chicago areas were
scheduled to complete the remaining itinerary, and Mellencamp accepted that
he should stop scouting for locations and just turn up where his congregated
fans decided he should logically be.
"I've already learned a lot from this experience," said Mellencamp, as he
settled into his Michigan "Mellencampsite" and anticipated the final stops
on his pilgrimage. "This has been for the joy of the music rather than a
job. It's been about pleasure rather than pressure. Once people see we've
only got this tiny bit of sound equipment, they get quiet as mice. I can see
why people have such an emotional response when we play like this, because
they can really feel it's for all of us together. My wife, my boys, Merritt,
and Mike, we all got a lot out of it. Nobody's selling anything, there's no
souvenirs-except what's in everybody's heart. Think about it: Isn't that
where music started? To anybody who's said thank you to me, I say, 'You're
very nice, but, really, thank you.' "
Philadelphia, PA - August 11, 2000
Estimated attendance: 125
Wall of Sound
JFK Park, Boston, MA - August 13, 2000
Estimated attendance:
Shelley Turnbaugh's
Debbie Roy's #1 Debbie Roy's #2
Market Square, Pittsburg, PA - August 15, 2000
Estimated attendance: 3000
WRRK
Post Gazette
USA Today
Public Square, Cleveland, OH - August 16, 2000
Estimated attendance: 4000
Lynda Wisniewski's #1 Lynda Wisniewski's #2
Linda's
Kennedy Square, Detroit, MI - August 18, 2000
Estimated attendance: 4000
Lynda Wisniewski's #1 Lynda Wisniewski's #3
The Detroit News
Daley Plaza, Chicago, IL - August 21, 2000
Estimated attendance: 15,000
Michael Ticsay's
Durk Brownlee's
Shelley Turnbaugh's
Krista Attreau's
Rolling Stone
Fountain Square, Cincinnati, OH - August 25, 2000
Estimated attendance: 7000
Shelley Turnbaugh's
Freetime's
Cincinnati Post (article) Cincinnati Post (editorial)
Centennial Olympic Park, Atlanta, GA - August 29, 2000
Estimated attendance: 3000
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution The Atlanta Journal-Constitution (article)
Legislative Plaza, Nashville, TN - August 30, 2000
Estimated attendance: 3000
Gibson Guitar
Woodlawn Field, Bloomington, IN - August 31, 2000
Estimated attendance: 6000
Brian Bruner's
Shari Jardina's
Indiana Daily Student #1 (article) Indiana Daily Student #2 (article)
The Indianapolis Star
Billboard
Hoosier Times #1 Hoosier Times #2
The Columbus Republic
The Synapse (main article) The Synapse #1 The Synapse #2 The Synapse #3 The Synapse #4