The New Tom Petty Tribute Album Is Straight Outta Country
Most of our musical heroes give us, sooner or later, their origin story.
For Springsteen, it arrived with “Adam Raised A Cain” from the “Darkness On the Edge of Town” album, four records into a run that was taking a turn towards the darker musings that assured his greatness. Bob Dylan, by contrast, has spent his career obfuscating about his rather ordinary if restless childhood. (Accounts say he mostly stayed parked in a limo when his father was interred in Hibbing in 1968.) Kurt Cobain, in Serving the Servant,” depicted the split-up of his working-class parents by singing, “That legendary divorce is such a bore,” and rather than detail his origins, mocked his own public rebirth with “Smells Like Teen Spirit”.
Tom Petty also took his time unveiling his roots. It would take until his sixth album release, with 1985’s “Southern Accents,” for his family saga to emerge, and only in glimpses. It’s a song of many virtues—the unexpectedly tender melody (on an album that begins with the roaring “Rebels”), the pensively voiced strings added by legendary arranger Jack Nitzsche, and the plaintive accompaniment played by Benmont Tench save for the part handled in the gorgeously moving and spiritual bridge picturing his late mother:
For just a minute there I was dreaming
For just a minute it was all so real
For just a minute she was standing there with me…
As Warren Zanes said in his astute 2015 Petty bio, “It’s the album’s moment of deepest longing.”
True enough, and the feeling continues as the moment it is introduced is just as gorgeously sung, reverberating as profoundly as any personal lyric the songwriter ever wrote or sang:
There's a dream I keep having
Where my mama comes to me
And kneels down over by the window
And says a prayer for me…
Anyone who’s read of Petty’s childhood history, whether in the Zanes book or the also invaluable “Conversations with Tom Petty” by Paul Zollo, might also dredge up thoughts of Tom’s dad Earl, who ran a “turbulent household”, regularly came home late and drunk, “didn't mind just popping you,” and only late in life was reconciled with the son who had accurately vowed to be a millionaire by thirty. Tom’s mom Katherine “didn’t really care about the `Tom Petty’," the singer would say some time after her death in 1981, “She stayed the same…had she lived, I think I could have given her a really nice life.”
The producers of “Petty Country: A Country Music Celebration of Tom Petty” made a series of smart decisions, but perhaps none more crucial than handing “Southern Accents” to Dolly Parton. Her commitment to the lyric, laid forth with that never-gets-old Dolly quaver, rises across a full Nashvile-scale production much thanks to her command of the song’s spiritual heft.
If that song is the centerpiece of this collection (as it was the pivot point of the album it came from), the rest of the slate is full of welcome interpretations. It roars into action with Chris Stapleton’s “I Should Have Known It”, and inviting moments include Luke Combs on “Runnin’ Down A Dream” catching the infectious riff of the original (and adding some train-whistle guitar), and Lady A stepping up to give full respect to the Petty/Nicks version of “Stop Draggin’ My Heart Around,”
Sure-footed as always are permanent members of the Americana pantheon Steve Earle for “Yer So Bad," Margo Price (with Mike Campbell on guitar) for “Ways To Be Wicked,” and Willie and Lukas Nelson for a dulcet “Angel Dream No. 2.”
Petty’s “Wildflowers” marks a hinge point in his solo-spawned songwriting. Often seen as the postlude to the onset of disenchantment with his marriage of decades to Jane Petty, the once-hymn-like song in Thomas Rhett’s take is speedy and bluegrassy; one does wonder why he felt the Petty version, with its immersion in words and phrasing beautifully plainspoken enough to be a Carter family work, needed the tempo boost.
Ultimately it’s with Wynonna Judd and guest Lainey Wilson’s fired-up “Refugee,” that the collection’s latter portion pops open, as the ladies share animated body language, camaraderie, full-throated vocal trade-offs, and plain old zest. Wilson’s got enough of of Brenda Lee’s innocently sexy growl to go amiably toe to toe with the powerful Wynonna:
Video from the studio session:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-gtqBZpmZq8
As the collection's twenty songs count down, the combo of Rhiannon Giddens, Silkroad Ensemble, and Tench work real magic with “Don’t Come Around Here No More,” a journey in itself that easily might have closed the album. But the producers from the multi-faceted Nashville brood chamber known as Big Machine Records either foresaw or realized in the recording, that the country-est dude of all might best fill Petty’s hat. ..
George Strait, born in 1952, owner of records for the most No. 1 hits ever in any genre, an ex-infantryman credited with all but singlehandedly creating “neotraditional” or “hard’ country in the early 80's even as Nashville was insisting on going pop, is both a logical and bold choice to deliver “You Wreck Me.”
The song began as just a hot riff Mike Campbell played Petty one day. Strait’s chesty reading honors TP’s scansion, offering precise diction with a little sob for some syllables, as he takes time to throw to his ace touring band and the performance sidles through teasing fiddle and guitar guitar breaks, emerging as a clinic any rock band would do well to study.
Go ahead and watch the live in Las Vegas video:
https://video.search.yahoo.com/search/video?fr=aaplw&ei=utf-8&p=george+strait+you+wrecvk+me#id=1&vid=10887dd001d7ba0ed18b3e802eaa023b&action=click
...but do listen to the clarion album mix. The roar of the Vegas arena crowd Strait plays if for (“Y`all love Tom Petty? I do.“) would surely gladden the heart of the singer/songwriter who so inspired this passel of spirited performers.
This record is making my Independence Day playlist on repeat, and might do the same for you. The producers took a big swing, and gave us something to play to death in the car. It could not have arrived at a better point as a balming respite from this troubling 2024. .
