John Cougar....

Great song! Struck me too, hearing it for the first time. Doesn't good music just kick your ass?

A footnote: His keyboard player -Troye Kinette- produced an album for me at TRC Studios in Indianpolis. Great guy. Great player. His drummer, Dane Clark, was a regular studio musician there as well, as was John Casella who tragically passed away at too young an age..

Hey Wiz...
The recording that the movie is about, John did about 5 years ago.
It's called...."No better then this"
It was produced by T Bone, and was recorded using a single Ribbon Mic....and released in MONO!
Pretty damn cool, especially in today's market.

They moved the players around in each location till they got the perfect blend and went for it.

I heard there was a PA used for some of the recordings, and the PA might have reverb or a delay on it. But that was captured along with the vocal and band in the one mic.

I bought the record the day it was released as I was eager to hear what they captured using only one mic, and a mono Tube tape recorder.

And I love it. Some of the tunes sound better then others, but for the most part it's great!

More info here...
No Better Than This is an album by American singer-songwriter and musician John Mellencamp, produced by T Bone Burnett, that was released on August 17, 2010. The album was recorded at several historic locations throughout the United States. The title track was the album's first single and was sent to multiple radio formats on June 28, 2010.

Mellencamp said that the album is "as American folk as I've ever been." He also told Rolling Stone in July 2009 that he's not concerned whether or not there's a large audience for such a raw, simple record. "I am done being a rock star," Mellencamp said. "I have no interest in that, in having the biggest concerts. I have only one interest: to have fun while we’re doing this and maybe have something that somebody might discover."

Rolling Stone placed No Better Than This No. 12 on its list of the best albums of 2010.

Mellencamp wrote over 30 songs for potential inclusion on the album but only 13 made the final cut. He debuted the first of those, "Save Some Time to Dream," on May 17, 2009 at a political fundraiser for President Barack Obama at the Westin Hotel in downtown Indianapolis. "It's about individual freedom and thought—and controlling our own lives," Mellencamp said of "Save Some Time to Dream," which he performed solo on acoustic guitar throughout much of his 2009 summer tour with Bob Dylan and Willie Nelson.

During breaks on the Nelson/Dylan tour, Mellencamp recorded No Better Than This at historic locations, such as the First African Baptist Church in Savannah, Georgia as well as at the historic Sun Studios in Memphis and the Sheraton Gunter Hotel in San Antonio, where blues pioneer Robert Johnson recorded blues staples like “Sweet Home Chicago” and “Cross Road Blues.” Mellencamp recorded the album using a 1955 Ampex portable recording machine and only one microphone, requiring all the musicians to gather together around the mic. The album was recorded in mono, the same manner as the classic folk and blues recordings of the 1930s and '40s.

Mellencamp wrote one song specifically for Room 414 at the Gunter Hotel, which is the exact room where Johnson recorded in November 1936. He told the San Antonio Express-News, "It's called 'Right Behind Me' or 'Right Behind Us,' I haven't decided yet. I wrote it just for this room. I could have done this in my studio. But I want to do it this way, and if I can't do what I want at this point, I'm not going to do it. If it's not fun, I'm not going to do it. I'm through digging a ditch."

"John is a really great singer and I'm always happy working with him in any environment," T Bone Burnett told the Express-News. "The fact he chose these historic locations is a big plus. The stories that have come out of the sessions are extraordinary. The First African Baptist Church was started in 1775. It was an important stop on the Underground Railroad and central to the civil rights movement. Sun Studio, from a completely different angle, was also important to the civil rights movement and, from another angle, so were Robert Johnson's recordings at the Gunter."

During Mellencamp's session at Sun Studios in late July 2009, he recorded several songs, including "Each Day of Sorrow," "No One Cares About Me," "The West End," and "Easter Eve," which Rolling Stone magazine's David Fricke compared to "one of Bob Dylan's talking blues." Regarding this session, Mellencamp told the magazine, "[T Bone] and I were laughing. We got five songs here last night. We asked ourselves, ‘What the fuck were we doing in the 70s and 80s, spending days and days on a drum sound, when it was all right here the whole time?’"

"Everything was set up exactly as Johnny Cash and Elvis Presley recorded. They had 'X' marks made with electrical tape on the floor where Elvis and his musicians stood and where the instruments were placed, because Sam Philips walked around the room and decided where everything sounded best."

Mellencamp wanted to record at the now-derelict Brunswick Records Building in Dallas, where Robert Johnson cut his final sessions in 1937, but the current owner of the building denied him permission to record there.

As for the organic recording process of the album, Mellencamp says it's unique for this day and age. “The same mic I was singing into is the same mic that recorded the drums at the same time,” Mellencamp said on his website. “And everything was cut live with no overdubs or studio nothing! These are real songs being performed by real musicians—an unheard-of process in today’s world. Real music, for real people!”

Mellencamp has said in interviews to promote the album that the song "The West End" is not about a certain part of town but rather about America, which is the west end of the world.

Well you are THE expert on drums around here! I thought it might have been a vintage kit of mahogany Luds, the ones that came with the Colosseum snare drum.

after watching the vid, I don't think they're Ayotte's, those are some old drums, i honestly have no idea what they are?