Tom Petty Country

A 20-Song Tribute From Nashville's "A" Listers

When Garth Brooks crossed over from country to major pop star, he often credited the Kiss concerts he attended as a kid for inspiring his flashy concert performances. Before Brooks, country music live, the wisdom went, was all "stand around and strum."

It's hard to believe how incredulous people were, as if Garth Brooks had discovered the Rosetta Stone with instructions on breaking out of the country music ghetto. (Country music radio remains, largely, parochial as ever.) Most of today's country stars have more than a passing familiarity with rock music and performances: They all know Springsteen, Elvis Presley and Elvis Costello, and most of all, Tom Petty.

Tom Petty was one of them. He was from Gainesville, in North Florida, which, college town aside, was the Deep South. No matter how many years he lived in L.A., he never lost his accent, both musically and vocally. If his first hit "American Girl," was redolent of the Byrds, it was as much the Byrds of "Sweetheart of the Rodeo" as it was "Mr. Tambourine Man" and "Hey Mr. Spaceman."

On June 21, Big Machine Records, the big machine that Taylor Swift rassled with, released the redundantly titled Tom Petty Country: A Country Music Celebration of Tom Petty, in case you need to be told twice in the title what the record is about. (Wouldn't one "Country" have sufficed?) It has 20 tracks, more than 20 different artists, each performing a different song. It gives Tom Petty his due as a songwriter. It also lands at that moment in the zeitgeist when Southern musicians are reappraising their relationship to country music and changing the way the game is played.

There are times when the songs themselves seem to be discovering their hard side. There are so many country singers, especially male artists, using rock as a swizzle stick in their whiskey and soda. Tom Petty Country it serves a useful function in exhibiting the ongoing blurred lines of genre.

There's good reason that Chris Stapleton gets the opening track, "I Should Have Known It." Stapleton once had feet in both country and rock; he seems to have chosen to rock, or at least split the difference between rock and country so intently that he has probably doubled his audience. He revs up the engines, turns the amps up to 11. I wasn't sure that "I Should Have Known It," a deep cut from Mojo (2010) whether this was a tribute to Tom Petty, or to Mötley Crüe.

You think I'm kidding? Breaking news: the Crüe are now on the Nashville-based Big Machine label. This is the same crew that released Nashville Outlaws: A Tribute to Mötley Crüe in 2019, with a few of the same artists, though not quite the "A" list that appears on the Petty tribute. Singleton also appeared on that "cöuntry Crüe" album, on "Oh Well" as a featured artist with Slash. Luke Combs and Brantley Gilbert are also on both tributes, and both appear on the Spotify-sanctioned "Rock Country" category playlist. Hate the algorithm if you must, but if I hadn't explored that list, I wouldn't have found Kasey Tyndall's remarkable testament to how to get through small town life teenage life, "Jesus and Joan Jett."

This is the environment in which Tom Petty Country emerges. Stapleton’s opening salvo makes you wonder if his model is Johnny Thunders' Heartbreakers rather than Tom Petty's. This is blues rock, brother, measurable as country only by the twang in his voice. One You Tube commentator noted the irony of performing a Petty song on a country tribute as if it's a Soundgarden track.

Luke Combs similarly locks down the left-of-center and rocks up "Runnin' Down a Dream," which has to be a karaoke favorite all along the nightspots on Nashville's Lower Broadway club district. He has more bang than twang, and received a major boost last year when he had a hit with Tracy Chapman's "Fast Car," which he performed with Chapman on the 2024 Grammy Awards telecast.   

Lady A goes directly to karaoke night, as a group with a singer who sounds like Stevie Nicks doesn't have to adjust a note to nail "Stop Draggin' My Heart Around." It was originally sung by Nicks and Petty, written by Petty and Mike Campbell of the Heartbreakers, from Nicks' debut solo album. As a single in 1981, "Stop Draggin'" reached No. 3 on the Billboard pop chart, higher than any Petty and the Heartbreaks hit.

If there's a musical sure thing here, it would be Steve Earle's "Yer So Bad," a version so original and yet true to the the Petty version that I would think Earle and Petty were the same person. Totally excellent spiritual manifestation! Margo Price, who is building a fine career skirting the humdrum Nashville's ladies cotillion and establishing herself on the lifestyle edge of alternative rock, nails "Ways to be Wicked," and featuring Heartbreaker Mike Campbell on guitar does not hurt her cause.

Dolly Parton, Wynonna (featuring Lainey Wilson) and Willie Nelson (with Lukas Nelson) are here. At this point, it's enough that Willie just shows up and sounds like a ruminative Moses on "Angel Dream No. 2." Dolly, on the suitable "Southern Accents," brings a small but effective orchestration, and gives this her full attention. Either that, or its just her spectacular work ethic. Wynonna and Lainey (or Judd and Wilson, if you prefer), also give an all-pro go to "Refugee."

A group I want to know better is Midland, whose "Mary Jane's Last Dance" is long but not too long, with some sharp but focused guitar solos. Breaking expectations, The Cadillac Three (featuring Breland) rock the synths on "Free Fallin'." And Rhianon Giddens continues to sing to her own drummer (in this case with the Silk Road Ensemble) showing elastic modalities on "Don't Come Around Here No More."

Zach Bryan, the biggest thing to hit Oklahoma since oil was discovered, or the birth of Mickey Mantle, is not here. But I thought I'd mention him because he is the voice, hypnotic and literate, of country's crossover from rural Oklahoma to stadium tours, and not just in the South: his summer itinerary includes Gillette Stadium outside Boston and Lincoln Financial Field in Philadelphia.

Substack's

Ted Gioia

posited a question to his readers almost two weeks ago: What artist broke the record for most people to attend a concert?  It didn't come to me immediately, but it was George Strait, who drew more than 110,000 people in mid-June to Kyle Field at Texas A&M in College Station, Texas. Now, it could be that some people thought the Aggies were getting an early start on the college football season. Or, that country fans are very loyal, across generations, at least for Texas native Strait. I don't know if Strait did any Tom Petty at that recent show, but the final track on Petty Country is Strait's live version of "You Wreck Me." It seemed like Strait and his band really knew the song, which is enough to recommend much of this album, and the lasting and ongoing legacy it represents.