John Mellencamp - Ghost Brothers of Darkland County

Mellencamp has been working on a musical with horror author Stephen King, entitled Ghost Brothers of Darkland County, since 2000. The musical debuted in the spring of 2012 at Alliance Theatre in Atlanta, GA, where it ran from April 4 through May 13. A CD/DVD deluxe edition, featuring the soundtrack, handwritten lyrics and a mini-documentary about the making of the musical, will be released on March 19, 2013. Production on the CD/DVD package began on June 15, 2009, when T-Bone Burnett, who is serving as the project's musical producer, began laying down tracks in Los Angeles, California for the songs Mellencamp wrote for the musical. The recording will have a book containing the full text, two discs featuring the entire production of the spoken word script and songs performed by the cast, and a third CD of the songs only. The soundtrack includes Rosanne Cash, Sheryl Crow, Elvis Costello, Taj Mahal and Neko Case among others singing the songs Mellencamp wrote.

In November 2010, Mellencamp told the Chicago Tribune: "T-Bone and I and Stephen King are working on a musical. All the music has been recorded. We had Kris Kristofferson, Neko Case, Elvis Costello, Taj Mahal, all singing different characters’ roles. I wrote all the songs, 17 songs. (T-Bone) produced. It sounds like the 'Sgt. Pepper' of Americana to me. Forget about the play, just the songs, the way these people sing them. I’m sitting there listening to it and thinking, “Did Rosanne Cash just kill that song or what!” The play is called “Ghost Brothers of Darkland County,” about two brothers who hate each other. If you could imagine Tennessee Williams meets Stephen King. They’re recording the dialogue now and we’re putting out a record of the entire show before it comes out. Right now, Elvis Costello, Meg Ryan, Kris Kristofferson and Matthew McConaughey are doing table readings like an old radio play. So you’ll get all the dialogue, all the sound effects, and all the songs sung by different people so you can follow the story. The CD will come out ahead of time. So many people are involved, it’s taken a long time. But we don’t have to worry about money or record companies – it’s our own money we’re putting into it, so we said, let’s just make something beautiful."

Ryan D'Agostino of Esquire stated in a review of a New York rehearsal of Ghost Brothers of Darkland County in the fall of 2007, "Musicals aren't usually a guy thing. This one, though, is not only tolerable, it's good. It may be the first-ever musical written by men for men. There's no orchestra, just two twangy acoustic guitars, an accordion, and a fiddle. The songs are both haunting and all-American."

The Alliance described the show as a "Southern Gothic musical fraught with mystery, tragedy and ghosts of the past."

The official description of Ghost Brothers of Darkland County from the Alliance Theatre website:

In the tiny town of Lake Belle Reve, Mississippi in 1957, a terrible tragedy took the lives of two brothers and a beautiful young girl. During the next forty years, the events of that night became the stuff of local legend. But legend is often just another word for lie. Joe McCandless knows what really happened; he saw it all. The question is whether or not he can bring himself to tell the truth in time to save his own troubled sons, and whether the ghosts left behind by an act of violence will help him – or tear the McCandless family apart forever.

Ghost Brothers of Darkland County received mixed reviews upon its initial run in Atlanta. The future of the musical is uncertain at this time.