My father-in-law warned me. And, as always, I should have listened. I was surprised he was willing to babysit on Wednesday night in lieu of going to see heartland rocker John Mellencamp, whose rousing rock anthems are right up his meat-and-potatoes alley. “I’ve seen it and I don’t want to pay $100 to hear some drunk guy singing the songs louder than Mellencamp,” he told me.

Make that 10,000 drunk jackasses, since I’m assuming not everyone in the sold-out 20,000-capacity amphitheater was as lit as my new best friend near the front who yelled at the top of his lungs all night while furiously banging on a strobing tambourine.

This, of course, is not Mellencamp’s fault. The 56-year-old rocker did his best to out-sing his zealous fans during what I realized was my maiden voyage on the good ship Mellonhead (as his hoarse-voiced diehard fans lovingly refer to themselves). While I knew Mellencamp from his two-plus decades of Americana hymns about hard times, rolling waves of grain and the gritty determination of the average Jack and Diane, I was surprised by the dramatic tenor of a show I assumed would be all rousing rockers and ’80s boot stomping radio favorites. Don’t worry, he busted all of those out too.

Backed by a huge patchwork quilt backdrop on which he projected flinty images of determined-looking Americans of all stripes, Mellencamp spent the first half of the show playing a kind of New Orleans funeral set that felt like a dance party at the edge of the apocalypse. Chewing furiously on his gum (I’ll assume it was Nicorette, since he is an inveterate smoker, despite some heart troubles), Mellencamp opened with the one-two punch of “Pink Houses” and “Paper in Fire,” songs that felt, like the optimistic “Check It Out,” a bit more ragged and tinged with more sadness than I remembered.

A solo acoustic set featured a few songs from his new Starbucks album, Life Death Love and Freedom, including “A Ride Back Home” — in which he wearily asks Jesus to open the car door — and “If I Die Sudden,” a grim mediation on mortality in which he begs, “Just put me in a pine box/ Six feet underground/ Don’t be calling no minister.”

During these songs, angry, ominous paintings of a skeletal Jesus and hollow eyed children flashed on the backdrop, ceding to gripping images of the civil rights struggle during the song “Jena,” Mellencamp’s controversial homage to the noose-hanging incident in Jena, Louisiana. Believe it or not, the women in front us were dirty dancing to this song, which features the refrain “Oh, oh, oh, Jena/ Take your nooses down.”

In the tradition of Woody Guthrie, Mellencamp has always been big on topical songs, but just as I feared that I’d gone to a rock show where a civics lesson broke out, Mellencamp turned the corner and let ‘er rip, wrapping a dark, edgy embrace around “Human Wheels” and telling the audience that now that he’d talked about politics and racism, it was time to dance. Slapping a bit of Indiana corn funk on “Crumblin’ Down,” he provided just the soundtrack, and plenty more with the crowd-pleasing double shot of “R.O.C.K. in the U.S.A.” and a soulful “Jack & Diane.”

And, for a minute there, I could almost hear him singing.

Check out all of Gil Kaufman’s uploads at yourhere.mtv.com…

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