The clock struck 11 p.m., and – Noblesville’s noise ordinance be damned – Indiana’s home-grown rockstar roared on. These people paid to see a John Mellencamp show, and a John Mellencamp show they would get.
Not just a run-of-the-mill Mellencamp outing, mind you – a massive, marathon set packed with the Seymour native’s greatest hits. This is the promise of the Dancing Words Tour, Mellencamp’s summer road trip that guarantees a no-frills, all-kills roster of his biggest songs. Some of these favorites, Mellencamp’s said, he’ll perform live for the last time ever on this run of shows.
The Hoosier legend hit Ruoff Music Center July 18 for a two-and-a-half hour set that blazed past the projected 11 p.m. end time. Despite an apparent weather delay that set proceedings back an hour (Mellencamp told the crowd “the Earth had something to say” about the planned start time), Mellencamp delivered a triumph. Hit-packed as advertised, Mellencamp and his band stuck around until around 11:45 p.m. for a set that checked all the boxes.
It wasn’t pitch-perfect, but it was all heart. These are my takeaways from the Indiana icon’s career-spanning performance:
John Mellencamp is a rock star – and he’s ready to embrace it
Mellencamp has buoyed between sprawling arena and stadium tours and cozy theater shows throughout his career, never quite squaring with his level of fame. He’s resisted the nostalgia route of greatest hit road trips for years – opting for more intimate performances filled with deep cuts, charity gigs like Farm Aid or side projects like his impressive art portfolio. So opposed to mainstream status is the Bloomington resident that he even penned a track off his 1989 album “Big Daddy” about it: “Never wanted to be no pop singer. Never wanted to write no pop songs.”
But, technically, Mellencamp wrote a whole bunch of pop songs. You don’t land 29 tracks on the Billboard Hot 100 chart – 22 in the top 40 and 10 in the top 10 – without at least a little mass appeal. The Dancing Words Tour sees the 74-year-old properly step into that spotlight and embrace his hits. At Ruoff, he uncorked pretty much all of them.
Even with the delayed start time, Mellencamp managed to cram all the bona fides into his set. In an amphitheater setting, it’s obvious why the smashes resonated the way they did. “I Need a Lover,” “Authority Song,” “Small Town” and more are big, arena-ready anthems that sound incredible with some 24,000 people singing them back to the stage.
Some of the milder songs on the full setlist like “Minutes to Memories” and “What if I Came Knocking” were evidently sacrificed in the name of pace. But the heavy-hitters had their moments, and as an amphitheater full of Mellencamp lovers belted the last chorus of closer “Hurts So Good,” you really couldn’t nitpick about the few skips. If the lengthy ovation following that last song is any indication, the crowd didn’t have any complaints.
Mellencamp brought the hits and his signature politics
Though this tour is probably Mellencamp’s most strait-laced outing in years, he didn’t leave his politics at home.
A longtime progressive, much of Mellencamp’s work is infused with his frustrations with the government and his down-home morals. He trotted out “Walk Tall,” “Our Country” and “Your Life Right Now” – all odes to the American dream and loving thy neighbor in one way or another – as the overt political and philosophical numbers. But smaller, impromptu moments were just as charged.
He took a jab at U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and denounced President Donald Trump’s renaming of the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America after a line in “Pink Houses” nodded to that body of water. Farm Aid got a plug, too, as Mellencamp introduced “Rain on the Scarecrow” and said watching the destruction of family farms inspired him to co-found the organization with Willie Nelson and Neil Young.
“I was a kid, and I mean like a small kid, when they put interstates across America,” Mellencamp said in what was probably his lengthiest address to the audience among otherwise brief remarks. “It was a really good idea until you realized all of those roads bypassed all the small towns like in Indiana.”
Excellent backing band helps Mellencamp deliver high-energy set
Mellencamp is 74, so he’s not doing backflips up there. And, between wear-and-tear and his lifelong smoking habit, the voice isn’t where it used to be. But, donning a plain white tee and flicking his cigarette into the crowd upon entry, he’s effortlessly cool. And he still has a good bit left in the tank.
For a two-and-a-half-hour show, the pace never felt like it was lagging. The man of the hour was light on the talking and heavy on the rocking, and Mellencamp and Co. cruised through the 26-song setlist with enough zip to make the outing breeze by.
Mellencamp’s whoops, fist-pumps and little dance moves sent the crowd into a frenzy, and his backing band really filled in the gaps left by a voice that couldn’t commit to every word in every song. Longtime guitarists Mike Wanchic and Andy York shouldered the solos and rhythm loads, and dynamic drummer in Dane Clark and ultra-smooth bassist (and Indianapolis native) Jon E. Gee rounded out the eight-piece band.
Multi-instrumentalist and Indiana native Crystal Taliefero is a Swiss Army Knife of a performer: a quadruple-threat – at least – who tackled the saxophone, the bongos, the washboard and backup vocals. She took over lead singer duties for Mellencamp’s 1994 duet with MeShell Ndegeocello “Wild Night” for what became a real setlist highlight.
Why it matters: John Mellencamp, Seymour’s own, embodies Indiana
Close your eyes and throw on “Hurts so Good” or “Pink Houses” – those twangy guitars, that gruff voice betraying a slight drawl. Stories of a hopeful, idyllic youth wilting to an adulthood spent toiling away at a blue-collar job, of frustration with a broken system, of hard-working Americans just trying to get by. Can you see the endless rows of corn yet? Do you feel yourself cruising through that one-stoplight town?
Seymour’s son is synonymous with this state. The Jacksons take the crown as Indiana’s chief musical exports, but no artist so outwardly embodies Hoosier ideals like John Mellencamp. He wrote R.O.C.K. music for and from middle U.S.A. – the Crossroads of America, lest we forget – and his songs have soundtracked “born in a small town” Americana for almost 50 years.
The Ruoff crowd extended Mellencamp a proper Hoosier welcome for this homecoming show: His first at the venue since it hosted Farm Aid in 2023. The Noblesville amphitheater was positively packed. Lines stretched in every direction to enter. Some 20,000-plus broke out the “Hoo-, Hoo-, Hoo-, Hoosiers” chants when he noted that most of his band is from Indiana, and just a photo of Mellencamp in a “Seymour, Indiana” jacket got a nice crowd pop.
“Jack and Diane,” arguably the Mellencamp song that hits closest to home in a whole catalog full of Heartland anthems, closed the first half of the show before an intermission. Instead of a full-band jam as the recorded version constitutes, Mellencamp navigated his lone No. 1 hit alone with his acoustic guitar.
Though not billed as a farewell tour, Mellencamp’s made it clear we won’t hear him perform some of these songs live ever again. That feels like a goodbye in some sense. “Hurts So Good,” essential enough to Hoosiers that the national champion Indiana University football team rang in its victory celebration by singing it with Mellencamp, closed the show, but “Jack and Diane” brought the house down. And if that’s the note we’re left with – a Hoosier delivering his signature with all the sincerity he can muster, an amphitheater full of fellow Hoosiers singing it back to him – I can’t think of a better parting gift.
Contact IndyStar Pop Culture Reporter Heather Bushman at hbushman@indystar.com. Follow her on X @hmb_1013.
This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: John Mellencamp triumphs with a marathon homecoming show at Ruoff
Reporting by Heather Bushman, Indianapolis Star / Indianapolis Star
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
By Heather Bushman, Indianapolis Star | USA TODAY Network
