Warner Brothers
2008
Mudcrutch
About This Album
Like many old rock & rollers, Tom Petty decided to get the band back together after taking a leisurely stroll through his back pages. Prompted by his Runnin' Down a Dream project -- a four-hour Peter Bogdanovich documentary supplemented by a coffee table book -- Petty began thinking about his first band, Mudcrutch, the Southern rock outfit he had before the Heartbreakers that featured Tom Leadon, brother of Eagle Bernie, on lead guitar. Formed in Florida in 1970, Mudcrutch ambled out to Los Angeles four years later but they fell apart not long afterward, never recording more than a handful of singles and demos, several of which -- including the original version of "Don't Do Me Like That" -- later surfaced on Petty's 1995 box, Playback. Mudcrutch morphed into the Heartbreakers not long after the breakup, retaining guitarist Mike Campbell and keyboardist Benmont Tench, who joined after Leadon's 1972 departure, and as Campbell and Tench remain Petty's lieutenants to this day, even appearing on his solo albums without the Heartbreakers, the question is why would he bother reuniting Mudcrutch when he's working with two-thirds of the same band?

Clearly, chemistry counts and names mean something, as reuniting with Tom Leadon -- who never played with Tench in the original lineup -- and drummer Randall Marsh, with Petty himself sliding over to bass -- affects the sound and attitude of the band, turning the group's belated 2008 debut, Mudcrutch, into something far looser than any Petty project in recent memory.
Track List (try tracks 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9 and 10)

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