lyrics.....as fast as I could write is how long it took me to write the whole song". Background Mellencamp said Sad Clowns & Hillbillies was borne out of his collaboration with Carter on Ghost Brothers of Darkland County and Ithaca. He said through those two projects and their time on tour together that the two became "singing buddies". Mellencamp gave insight into the genesis of the project to Yahoo's Katie Couric when debuting "Easy Target" on January 19, 2017, saying: "It's crazy the way it started – it was going to be a religious record. It started out like 'Look, lets go back and do an old country religious record. We'll try to write songs that sound like those songs, but they'll be new.' And then it just kept evolving and evolving and evolving, and the songs that she was bringing and the songs that I was bringing – they weren't so religious. I write a lot of sad songs, so it's like Sad Clowns & Hillbillies – that's where it came from". Artwork The artwork on the front cover of Sad Clowns & Hillbillies was taken from a 2005 Mellencamp painting called "Twelve Dreams". Mellencamp said he saw an article that reviewed of one of his painting exhibits where "Twelve Dreams" was "stripped" and he then thought it would work as the album's cover art. He told Jim Kerr of iHeart Radio: "It never really dawned on me to use it for an album cover, but I saw a review of one of my painting shows and they had stripped it like that – you know, just that stripe – and I thought, 'That looks good for the album cover.' Because they were talking to me about doing a photo session and I went, 'I don't want to do that.'" This marks the first time since 1991's Whenever We Wanted that Mellencamp has displayed one of his paintings on an album cover. Tour Mellencamp launched his Sad Clowns & Hillbillies Tour on June 5, 2017 in Denver, CO. The 2017 leg of the tour concluded on September 3 in Canfield, OH. Carter, Emmylou Harris, Jewel, and Lily & Madeleine served as supporting acts on the 2017 leg of the tour. Mellencamp finished the Sad Clowns & Hillbillies Tour with a run of Canadian shows that began September 26, 2018 in Moncton, New Brunswick and wrapped up on November 14