Podcast: The Tom Petty Project

oin Kev Brown as he digs into Tom Petty’s catalogue, starting with the first track from the debut Heartbreakers album, all the way through to the final song from Mudcrutch 2. Along the way, there will be special episodes dedicated to outtakes, b-sides, and other Tom Petty related material. This podcast is in no way affiliated with the Tom Petty estate and all rights to Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, Mudcrutch, Stevie Nicks, and the Travelling Wilbury’s are the property of their respective rights holders.

Damaged by Love

“There’s rain on the road And the faithful have gone. In a crowd all alone, Walking ’round in a song”. It’s a great little snapshot or vignette, as Tom so often gives us, of perhaps a wedding or some other celebration at a small roadside church. That feeling of being alone in a crowd is…

Read More

Night Driver

Night Driver is one of those perfect album tracks that you always want to hear on great records. There’s something to be said for albums where any song could basically be a single, but I tend to gravitate more towards albums that are very carefully curated around a central idea and Highway Companion is definitely…

Read More

Big Weekend

The first verse contains one of my all time favourite lyrics. Not just one of my very favourite Tom Petty lyrics, just one of my favourite lyrics full stop. And it’s not a superb piece of word play or a huge emotionally charge line. It’s not a cuttingly brilliant philosophically brilliant observation – we get…

Read More

Anything That’s Rock ‘n’ Roll (Revisited)

Turn This Car Around

In my mind’s eye, I see a younger couple, maybe mid to late twenties, driving an old cadillac along a dark desert highway… A kid, about 7 or 8 years is in the back seat having a bad dream: not exactly a nightmare but one of those dreams that feels you feeling really unsettled for…

Read More

Jack

Jack is a peculiar song. It doesn’t have a typical structure and it’s much more a mood piece. As I said, I sort of consider this one to be a chance encounter on the Highway Tom is taking us down. We don’t spend any quality time with this character but we’re left with a slightly…

Read More

Down South

Every now and then I try to think about my top ten Tom Petty deep cuts. There are so many that I love and that I’ve discovered, rediscovered, or come to appreciate so much more as I’ve been on this podcast journey, but Down South is at the very top table for me in that…

Read More

Flirting with Time

“You’re flirting with time” Tom sings. And I like that idea of not fully committing to time, just flirting with it. That’s definitely how life feels when you’re in your twenties and thirties. You don’t really have to enter into a serious relationship with time because there’s so much of it still ahead. You can…

Read More

Square One

Saving Grace is the work of a middle-aged man who fully knows himself and knows how to articulate the past and the present in three very vivid dimensions. Critical to retaining the song’s pathos though, Tom doesn’t project a future down this new path. It’s important that Square One is here and now. It’s important…

Read More

Saving Grace

“You keep running for another place To find that saving grace” probably doesn’t hit in the same place for most Pettyheads as “Most things I worry about never happen anyway” but I think there’s a comparable profundity to it. That search for spiritual, or social, or emotional redemption is a journey and one that can…

Read More