John Mellencamp Coming to Memphis March 17: Get Tickets Here

By TicketNetwork

MEMPHIS, TN — This will be one of the best concerts of the year, and you won’t want to miss it: John Mellencamp is coming to the Orpheum Theatre in Memphis, Tennessee, on Sunday, March 17. One of America’s greatest songwriters and rock musicians, he kicked off his current tour, “The John Mellencamp Show,” in his home state of Indiana, and wraps up in April in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

Mellencamp’s career spans 35 years. He started in 1982 as pop star Johnny Cougar with his breakthrough “American Fool,” but has endured simply as John Mellencamp, one of the most respected singer/songwriter/storytellers of his generation. Fans can expect to hear old favorites like “Small Town” and “Jack and Diane,” as well as new songs from “Other People’s Stuff,” his 24th studio album — an instant hit when it was released late last year.

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Mellencamp is one of America’s most honored musicians. A member of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, he is a Grammy winner, a recipient of the John Steinbeck Award, and the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers Foundation’s Lifetime Achievement Award and the Founders Award, its highest honor. He was inducted in the Songwriters Hall of Fame in June.

A social activist as well, he is a founding member with music legends Willie Nelson and Neil Young of Farm Aid, the concert series that has addressed the struggles of American farmers for a quarter of a century, themes that are often addressed in Mellencamp’s songs.

A troubadour for the blue-collar worker, he covered Merle Travis’ 1946 song, “Dark as a Dungeon,” which journeys into the darkness of working in coal mines, in support of the acclaimed National Geographic documentary, “From the Ashes,” produced by Michael Bloomberg, a former New York City Mayor.

The 2001 Billboard Century Award honoree, “John Mellencamp is arguably the most important roots rocker of his generation,” the magazine wrote. “John has made fiddles, hammer dulcimers Autoharps and accordions lead rock instruments on a par with electric guitar, bass and drums, and he also brought what he calls 'a raw Appalachian' lyrical outlook to his songs.”

He is a painter as well, and has completed more than 100 new works in recent years that have been featured in several gallery shows and published portfolios. His second solo exhibition was last spring in New York, and his most recent show at the famed Butler Museum in Youngstown, Ohio, in January. His Rock and Roll Hall of Fame show ran for almost two years and just recently closed at the Woody Guthrie Museum in Tulsa, Oklahoma.

A self-proclaimed rebel, he lives and works in Bloomington, Indiana, an hour outside of his birthplace of Seymour.

Mellencamp’s shows never disappoint and are full of good, old American rock. The Hollywood Reporter says Mellencamp concerts are a “triumphant, career spanning show.” The Duluth News Tribune said that “if you mixed a preacher, a punch press operator and an old bluesman together in the back of a cement mixer, John Mellencamp would come out in the pour.”

You won’t want to miss Mellencamp at the Orpheum Theatre in Memphis, Tennessee, on Sunday, March 17. Get your tickets here.

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