Stephen King and John Mellencamp bring 'Ghost Brothers' musical to Philly

SOMETIMES, even the master of horror, Stephen King, needs a little inspiration, a certain something to get the bones rolling in his head.

That's where John Mellencamp came in, and that's how their project, the musical "Ghost Brothers of Darkland County," took form - evolving from the standard cabin-in-the-woods idea into a supernatural yarn about brothers at odds, set in the South with a backdrop of Spanish moss and the blues.

"I had never written a play, let alone a musical, but I figured we'll learn as we go along," King said in a recent interview with the Daily News. "I had done an outline, but once [Mellencamp] started to send me music, that made my little outline come to life."

The musical - starring Gina Gershon, Billy Burke, a four-piece band and more than a dozen other performers - tells the story of two brothers who pined for the same woman, and how the love triangle claimed them all and haunts their own ancestors. It plays the Merriam Theater for one night on Thursday, before heading to Durham, N.C., on its North American tour.

Along with Mellencamp's songs, "Ghost Brothers" also features musical direction by Grammy-winner T Bone Burnett, who also brought a Southern Gothic vibe to HBO's atmospheric "True Detective" as that show's musical supervisor.

The musical was roughly 16 years in the making, all starting with a cabin that Mellencamp bought in his native Indiana. King, who's authored 50 books, admitted that he gets intrigued easily, and he bit.

"Basically, he bought a cabin that had a ghost story attached to it," King said. "He asked me if I'd like to talk about it and I thought, 'You ought to try something new every now and then. If you dig yourself into a rut, you put some furniture down there.' "

King said that he and Mellencamp talked over their ideas at King's winter home in Florida.

"He grabbed my guitar and it was out of tune, terribly out of tune," King said. "I kept thinking to myself, 'John Mellencamp is tuning my guitar.' "

The musical was first staged as a table reading in New York, in 2005, but didn't debut until 2012, at the Alliance Theatre, in Atlanta. A soundtrack also has been released, and King says that the music alone is worth the ticket.

"When I started hearing the music, I got goose bumps," he said.

King wasn't affiliated with the Broadway adaptation of his best-seller "Carrie," but he's as prolific as it gets and his forthcoming book, "Revival," is about a guitar player.

"The basic underlying thing is telling a good story that people want to see: a beginning, a middle and an end," he said.

King said that there are some good scares in "Ghost Brothers," moments the audience won't see coming.

So, what scares Stephen King these days?

"Oh, all the ordinary terrors scare me," he said. "Writers, novelists, actors, we live by our wits, so the notion of senility and Alzheimer's gets to me. I hate the idea of becoming physically unable to write."