Where Tom’s vocal on a song like Refugee or Rebels is like a sharpened steel, his voice here sits more in that butterscotch place that he could employ when he wanted to dial the energy back. Even in the chorus, he doesn’t lean into any vibrato, doesn’t crack or pinch his voice and just lets…

Like Learning To Fly, it’s a song that the band would change the arrangement of and when Paul Zollo mentions the acoustic version on the Playback boxset, Tom responds that “It’ll work just about any way you want to play it.” He also goes on to say “It was a tricky one to record. We…

Another recap episode for you this week folks as I try to wrangle guest schedules! This week we’re looking back at which live shows my guests wish they could have seen. Winterland? The Fillmore? The True Confessions tour with Bob? The Superbowl half time show? The Gainesville homecoming show on the 30th anniversary tour…There are…

When Paul asks Tom to confirm that the origin of the song is him hearing a pilot say that learning to fly is easy, but coming down’s the hard part, Tom replies “True. That was the inspiration and I took it from there. Jeff and I wrote that together.” He also comments that it was…

This week’s episode is the second installment The Petty 8ight! I love talking to Pettyheads, musicians, and other people who have been influenced by Tom or his music in myriad ways, but I thought it would be neat to see what non-fans, or non-hardcore fans think of Tom’s music if I threw deeper cuts at…

It’s a long one this season folks! But there’s so much to talk about with this album and we felt we needed to talk about each individual track. Which song does John think that Kevin rated too low? Which songs made it onto Kevin and John’s resqeuenced discs and which songs do they think could…

Another recap episode for you this week folks as I try to wrangle guest schedules! This week we’re looking back at the songs of Tom’s that my guests would love to hear covered by other artists. This is a question I always look forward to discussing and it’s thrown up some brilliant ideas! In order,…

In Conversations With Tom Petty, when author Paul Zollo asks about the origins of the song, Tom explains “It was when Jeff and George (Jeff Lynne and George Harrison obviously), went out to Anaheim to ask Roy Orbison to be in the band (the Traveling Wilburys, again obviously). We were writing everything we saw. One…

I do wonder whether the friend who’s treehouse he’s slept in is the same girl from the opening verse. There’s almost a Forrest and Jenny vibe to it if you link those two verses. “She never looked different but something would change” is later in the timeline, and the later treehouse reference snaps you back…

This week’s episode sees Dan Spiess return to the podcast to fill us in on what we can expect at this year’s Tom Petty Weekend in Gainesville. There are so many cool things to do, from the Wildflowers exhibit at the Cade Museum, to the Gainesville tour bus, to the Heartwood Soundstage Storytellers sessions! The…