Ghost Brothers of Darkland County

Ghost Brothers of Darkland County
Music	John Mellencamp
Lyrics	John Mellencamp
Book	Stephen King

Ghost Brothers of Darkland County is an upcoming musical written by novelist Stephen King with original music written by rock musician John Mellencamp that is scheduled to debut at the Alliance Theatre in Atlanta, Georgia in the spring of 2012. A three-CD studio album of the production and its music will be released by Hear Music on May 22, 2012.

Production

The project was first announced by Billboard in 2000. At that time, the title was Mississippi Ghost Brothers. According to King, Mellencamp conceived the plot.

In August 2001, it was reported by the Associated Press that the musical would be finished by February 2002.^{[citation needed]}

In 2005, Mellencamp said in an interview, "He's got a hundred pages of dialogue, and I've got 15 songs. We have to figure how to cut it all down. We're having our first run-through in New York with actors and actresses to see what the hell it looks like."

In November 2010, Mellencamp provided this update of the musical's progress to 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 Darkling 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."

The musical will premiere at the Alliance Theatre in Atlanta, Georgia, beginning on April 4, 2012, playing until May 13, 2012.

The world premiere will be directed by Alliance Theatre Artistic Director Susan V. Booth, with musical direction by T Bone Burnett. The cast of the upcoming production is lead by Tony Award winner Shuler Hensley (Young Frankenstein, Oklahoma, Sweet and Sad) and Tony Award nominee Emily Skinner (Billy Elliot, Side Show, James Joyce's The Dead), and includes Justin Guarini ("American Idol," American Idiot, Women on the Verge…), blues musician and actor Jake La Botz, Lucas Kavner (Completeness, The Blue Flower), Kate Ferber (One Child Born: the Music of Laura Nyro), Christopher Morgan (Gut Bucket Blues) and country musician Dale Watson. Completing the cast are Peter Albrink, Kylie Brown, Lori Beth Edgeman, Gwen Hughes, Joe Jung, Joe Knezevich, Rob Lawhon, Royce Mann, Travis Smith, and Jeremy Aggers.

King and Mellencamp sought a regional theater to stage the show, and decided an Atlanta location offered unique advantages. “We wanted a place that was cosmopolitan but not out of touch with country roots. Atlanta seemed like the middle of the bulls-eye,” King said at a press conference for the musical on December 15, 2011. “You know that song, ‘If you can make it here, you can make it anywhere?’ That’s how I feel about Atlanta and this show.”

Plot

Regarding the plot, Mellencamp says, "I can tell what it's not going to be like: It won't be Jack and Diane meets Cujo. He's already written the story -- it's very beautiful, more like The Green Mile. It's an American story about an American family. Some of the characters are 100 years old, some are 15. So that will give me the opportunity to write for each character in a different style. I ain't writing a bunch of rock songs."

In a later interview he said, "[It's about] two brothers; they're 19 years old or 20, maybe 18 or 21, who are very competitive and dislike each other immensely. The father takes them to the family vacation place, a cabin that the boys hadn't been to since they were kids. What has happened is that the father had two older brothers who hated each other and killed each other in that cabin There's a confederacy of ghosts who also live in this house. The older [dead] brothers are there, and they speak to the audience, and they sing to the audience. That's all I want to say, except through this family vacation, many things are learned about the family, and many interesting songs are sung."

Official production synopsis: "In the tiny town of Lake Belle Reve, Mississippi in 1967, 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."

Songs

According to interviews, Mellencamp has written about 17 songs for the production. The ones that have been mentioned by name are: "You Don't Know Me," "My Name Is Joe," "Tear This Cabin Down," "That's Me," "Give Thy Soul to Me," and "Wrong, Wrong, Wrong, About Me," with the latter three being sung by Elvis Costello.

Mellencamp said in 2002, "I plan to have every person sing from their generation. This is what I'm thinking right now, but it may not work out this way. When the 18-year-old sings, he'll be rapping at you. When the people in their 70s are singing, they'll be singing in the style of Broadway or the style of Frank Sinatra or country. I intend to cover any type of music that Americans have invented."

Ryan D'Agostino of Esquire Magazine sat in on a New York rehearsal of "Ghost Brothers of Darkland County" in the fall of 2007 and had this to say in his review: "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."

Ghost Brothers of Darkland County
Soundtrack album by Various Artists
Released	May 22, 2012
Recorded	2009-2010
Genre	Rock, folk
Language	English
Label	Hear Music
Producer	T Bone Burnett

Album release

Hear Music will release a three-CD/book package (two CDs containing the entire production and another with just the songs) featuring major artists performing Mellencamp's songs, on May 22, 2012. The book will contain the play's dialogue. Two of those artists will be Elvis Costello and Neko Case. Kris Kristofferson, Sheryl Crow, Taj Mahal and Rosanne Cash will also contribute. The album was produced by T-Bone Burnett.

Mellencamp has compared the CD version of the musical as being akin to "an old radio show with music."

Cast (CD version)

• Kris Kristofferson as Joe
• Elvis Costello as The Shape
• Rosanne Cash as Monique
• Will Dailey as Frank
• Dave Alvin as Jack
• Phil Alvin as Andy
• John Mellencamp as Drake
• Sheryl Crow as Jenna
• Neko Case as Anna
• Joe Frazier as Dan Coker
• Stephen King as Uncle Steve
• Glenn Morshower as Narrator

Reception

In 2007, Esquire magazine listed an early read-through of the play at #88 (of 100) as a musical "by men for men" which the audience will "actually like".

External links

• "News 2000: Exclusive: Mellencamp, Stephen King Developing Musical". Liljas-library.com.
• "News - The Ghost Brothers of Darkland County Fox reports about Ghost Brothers" Liljas-Library.com. December 27, 2011
• "Work Progresses on John Mellencamp-Stephen King Musical Darkland County". Playbill.com. 3 January 2006.
• "Interview - Stephen King part 3". Liljas-library.com. January 18, 2007.