John Mellencamp [ tickets ] will kick off a ten-week US tour on May 5th, his first in two years. The itinerary, released Thursday (3/11) by Columbia Records, concentrates on outdoor amphitheatres, including a prestige stop at the Los Angeles-area Hollywood Bowl. The initial tour plan has Mellencamp beginning work in Houston, TX, doing a broad circle around the country and ending the tour in Dallas in mid-July.

The tour has been dubbed the ''Rural Electrification Tour,'' a reference to the initial wave of change brought by distributing electricity in rural sections of the country, a development that Mellencamp credits with bringing music to the masses. Mellencamp said is a written statement, ''We're lucky enough that for the last 20 years, we've had the opportunity to play our own small part in bringing music to people; to entertain them and have a lot of fun in the process.''

The tour will support Mellencamp's debut set for Columbia Records. The self-titled album, released in October of 1998, has seen some radio and VH1 support for the lead-off track Your Life Is Now, but has not fared particularly well at retail to date and currently doesn't hold any position on the US pop album chart.

Mellencamps' tour activity creates a noteworthy concert season for heartland music fans, with icons of the genre Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers and John Mellencamp now all taking to the road for the first time in years. Reaching to the generation that produced these songwriters, a Bob Dylan / Paul Simon tour is said to be in the works as well.

Here's the latest itinerary for John Mellencamp: