ANDERSON – As he took his morning quarantine walk through his Anderson neighborhood on March 20, musician Dane Clark came up with an idea to write a song about COVID-19.

Excited, rocker John Mellancamp’s drummer of 24 years called his friend, singer-songwriter Jason Sturgeon, to flesh out the idea and blend their classic rock and country music styles. Clark worked on Sturgeon’s 2010 debut album titled “That’s Me” and the 2018 follow-up “Do It While You Can Do It.”

“I had half of ‘Six Feet Away’ written in my head before I could get to my piano and figure out the chords,” Clark said. “I finished the music very quickly and, using a couple of lines Jason Sturgeon had suggested, finished the lyrics as well.”

That became the first of about a dozen songs to make up “Songs From Isolation,” an album also featuring John Sebastian of The Lovin’ Spoonful, released Friday. Though many national artists have engaged in collaborations with others throughout the pandemic, Clark believes his is the first album in the nation related solely to songs inspired by the novel coronavirus experience.

“I’m still trying to prove myself at 60 years old,” he said. “I feel like this is a shot to be heard, other than at a bar in Anderson. I’m hoping this record will help people get through this situation because it helped me.”

With the exception of Jimmy Cliff’s “Sitting In Limbo,” all of the songs, with titles such as ‘Ain’t Getting Out Of Bed Today,’ ‘Killing Time’ and “Keep the Lights On” are originals.

About one-third – some serious and some silly – were the result of a very productive afternoon.

“I had two finished songs and two half-baked ones by four in the afternoon, after I came up with the idea, and that doesn’t happen too often,” Clark said. “It poured out of me like songs never poured out of me before. I felt like I had something to say. I didn’t really plan it. It just popped out that morning when I took a walk.”

Then he contacted various Indiana-based musicians, including his daughter Abigail Clark, Randy Melson, Eric Scull and Troye Kinnett, all of whom he had worked with frequently in the past. A vocalist-guitarist, the Anderson native and Madison Heights graduate previously released six albums of his own, including “Rebel Town” in 2019.

“I was unemployed, and so were they. Nobody had anything else to do. Why not start a new band and make a record?” he said. “I wouldn’t have called these guys if they weren’t great.”

Hall of Famer Mellencamp, like most performers, had canceled his engagements at least to the summer at the start of the pandemic.

The new band, one of several Clark has formed in his lifetime, is known as Dane Clark and the Backroom Boys.

“It had to be people who had the means and already were sharing musical files back and forth,” he said.

Clark started the process by recording his parts, sending them to one of the other performers, getting it back then sending what he had to someone else.

“We did it round robin like that for the whole process,” he said. “It took way longer to do. Normally when making a record, you have the core rhythm section together in the studio so you can talk about what you want the end result to be. With this, you have to guess what the end result will be.”

Though disease and pandemic usually take a back seat to issues like love and politics in music, Clark said any subject, even plague, really is fair game in songwriting.

“We didn’t try to overanalyze,” he said. “Musicians write about what‘s going on in our lives. This is what’s going on in our lives right now.”

Melson and Scull agreed.

Melson, an Anderson native and Madison Heights graduate who met Clark through mutual friends around 1976, said Clark was able to capture the nation’s mood.

“He really had his hand on the pulse of what people are really feeling,” Melson said. “I think you can write about this stuff in an artistic way, and Dane did a really good job with it without being really heavy-handed. He didn’t necessarily dwell in a bad way in terms of fretting and worrying. He was just expressing in an artistic way what people were thinking and feeling.”

Working on “Songs From Isolation” was a nice diversion while quarantined, Melson said.

“When he brought this idea forward, we thought, yeah, Dane is a really great songwriter,” he said. “The great mystique about it was you would get five guys in the music together and see where the magic melds.”

Gospel vocalist Sandy Patty’s bass player for 29 years, Melson said he’s honored to be on an album that also features Sebastian, who is one of Clark’s musical heroes.

“That’s a really cool thing to have a guy you listened to back in the ‘60s involved in the project you’re working on,” Melson said.

His favorite song on the album, Melson said, is “When The Panic Sets In.”

“It’s just a real rocker,” he said. “It’s kind of got the feel of when things really reach the boiling point, what’s going to happen, how we’re going to handle it.”

Scull, a web developer from Carmel, has been a guitarist for Clark’s bands for about 17 years and said he also was glad to be a part of the project.

He said though they used to have to perform together in person, technology has made it possible to jam together from afar.

“It used to be that I’d go to his house and sit with him or he’d come here. But we’ve known each other so long, we don’t have to do it this way anymore.”