The Tom Petty Project

The DJ comes back and the ditch he’s digging, to keep the flames from the temple, are the songs and the culture he’s trying to build around his freeform station to stop outside corporate influence from burning down his integrity and his artistic vision, which are his temple. He’s the Last DJ: he’s digging this ditch around rock and roll to protect it from the superficial and the formulaic and he’s...

Ten questions, ten answers. Matt Burke is back to let me know which artists he'd most like to see open for Tom and the Heartbreakers and he throws a little love Joe Walsh's way while he's at it! His cover song is an interesting choice and he wonders if subconsciously he picked it because it's already happened and we sign off with three VERY good words to describe Tom Petty! Don't forget to check o...

Today’s episode is a part of my artist conversation series and is a wonderful chat I had with songwriter for and lead singer of Have Gun, Will Travel. For those of you who were down in Gainesville for the Tom Petty Weekend, you probably say Matt and the guys play their killer set on Sunday afternoon. This one ranges all over the map. We do discuss Tom Petty’s influence on Matt’s songwriting, but w...

In last week’s outro I’d intimated that I hear a strong resemblance between this song and another favourite band of mine, The Kinks. So first of all, just sonically, if it walks like The Kinks and kinda quacks like The Kinks… it’s most likely inspired by The Kinks. That super cool key change into that second bridge section owes absolutely as much to the type of sharp left turns that Ray Davies wou...

Sam Krishnan is back to answer my ten questions! He gives me his "boring answer" (his words!) to the question "Who is your favourite Heartbreaker other than Tom?" and then gives me his deep cut answer. He also surprised me with his answer to which artist he'd like to see cover a Tom Petty song. We chat about Into the Great Wide Open and the production on that album and we basically just fanboy all...

Today’s episode is another bonus artist conversation that I had with a young French songwriter who’s currently based in England, performing under the name “Bye Lily”. Sam Krishnan started out thinking he was probably going to become a rapper, but through a circuitous route, that we discuss, found his way around to Tom Petty, the guitar, and a very contemporary spin on indie folk music. Sam's debut...

You and Me is another “Little song”, if we use Ivan Anderson’s brilliant concept of what that means. It doesn’t shoot for the moon, doesn’t explore nuanced or clever or grand themes. It’s a singular expression of companionship and love with a healthy dose of insecurity to humanize it. It’s a simple arrangement with some beautiful piano work and a very cool bass part that moves around that brisk ba...

Shine is back to answer my Ten Questions! She draws a brilliant parallel from Fault Lines to big band music, we ruminate on the brilliance of Mike Campbell and Shine shares her experience of being side stage during Speaker Wars' performance at least year's Tom Petty Weekend in Gainesville! Song and links: Shine's Insta : https://www.instagram.com/shineandtheshakers/ On Facebook : https://www.faceb...

This special bonus episode of the podcast is a conversation I had with the wonderful Brian Ruskin of the Honest and Unmerciful Record Review Podcast. As well as co-hosting one of my favourite shows, Brian is a prolific musician who has released over a dozen albums of his own material. We're taking a sylistic detour today however as we plunge headlong into the world of electronic music, loops, samp...

From the horse capital of the world to the main stage in Gainesville! This week's episode is a fantastic freewheeling chat that I had with the inimitable Shine, who I had the privilege of seeing perform at the Tom Petty Weekend and the greater pleasure spending an hour and change getting to know over Zoom. Like all the true originals, Shine has a way of expressing herself that imprints on you. She...

For an hour or so, with the sun starting to make it’s way to the basement to sleep, we drove in relative silence. Zoey’s mood seemed to darken with the sky. Or that’s the way it felt. I asked if there was anything wrong, she said, "Nothin' worth talkin' 'bout". And that’s how it was for a while. A blue Sunday, Down the interstate. Blue, with shades of grey, and orange as the light began to fade.&n...

In a 2006 Rolling Stone interview, Tom credits Ron Blair’s return as being pivotal for the band saying, “The band has a good family atmosphere that wasn't there for a while. It came back about a year or two ago. I think when Ron Blair returned, it really bonded us back together in a weird way. If he hadn't been there, I am sure it would have been the end of the whole thing when Howie died. Ron ste...

I’ve always really liked this song as part of the album but never really listened to it closely until sitting down to write this episode. And that has happened a lot over the course of the last four and a bit years of recording this show. Songs you don’t necessarily expect to reveal hidden depths do so with startling regularity. Does this song have a line the equal of “Most things I worry about ne...

I'm joined today by good pal Pete Nester. We're officially ACTUAL friends now, not just Facebook friends, because we've hung out, broken bread together, stood in a crowd and sung our hearts out, and hugged! I thought it would be fun to recap the weekend with Pete to get his thoughts as well as mine. Also included in the episode are chats I had with Maggie Clifford and Jeff Slate. I did chat to Shi...

Day Three of the Tom Petty Weekend in Gainesville was a perfect way to end a perfect weekend. I can't begin to tell you how much fun I had with the most amazing bunch of people you'll ever be lucky enough to meet. The energy at the Heartwood was electric again and was added to by the arrival of Keith Eveland. We also had some top tier musical performances and I'll go through the ones I saw in this...

Day Two of the Tom Petty Weekend in Gainesville was an absolutely sensational day of music, laughter, friendship, food, surprises, and warm, warm, warm temperatures!!! I hung out with Maggie Clifford, Shine, Jake Thistle, Jeff Slate, Pete Nester, Brad Gould, and a broad, brilliant cast of characters that are making this weekend so much fun. On and the music.................... holy hell Gainesvill...

Day One of the Tom Petty Weekend in Gainesville is in the books and man, it was a scorcher! Jake and Jeff, Shine, Nolia Joy and the Ramblers and so many other fantastic musical acts and I met a ton of super friendly, enthusiastic people who were a blast to hang out with and talk to. Being on stage in Gainesville still feels surreal but I enjoyed every single second of it! Oh - and this is the 250t...

Inspired by the wonderful Brian Colburn from the My Weekly Mixtape podcast, I decided to take a hard left turn this week, as I prepare to fly down to Gainesville, and do something a little different! We're going to take listener suggestions for artists to use as a starting point from which we'll attempt to link our way back to Tom Petty within six degrees of separation! This was a lot of fun and I...

In 2013, the Heartbreakers played a five night mini-residency at the Beacon Theatre in New York city. Among the tracks from the archives that the band pulled out during that run was today’s song, When a Kid Goes Bad. In an interview with Relix magazine, Tom says “I will make a point of playing that song because they didn’t listen to me the first time, I didn’t feel like they understood it and I th...

The incomparable Dan Spiess is back to talk about the upcoming Tom Petty Weekend in Gainesville, from November 7-9! We talk about the lineup for this year's shows including the two brilliant headline acts for Saturday and Sunday. We chat about how organizing for this year has been different from previous years, especially the complications the festival faced last year in the aftermath of two hurri...

This is top tier songwriting for me. When you have a platform and you can take a risk by punching up at people who have power, I think it’s good to do it now and again. If you can take that polemic and wrap it in a powerful, simple, stomping track like Joe, then I’m all in. There’s a theatrical element to the song that you could easily imagine fitting a full broadway production. You could see the...

Tom is hugely proud of this song. In Conversations with Tom Petty, he tells author Paul Zollo, “Dreamville” is one of the best songs I ever wrote. That was about innocence.” And it’s this innocence that contrasts so starkly and so effectively with the corporate interference in The Last DJ, or the commodification of Johnny’s art in Money Becomes King. Without this contrast the more belligerent song...

This disconnect between the artist and the audience is one of the subjects that Tom uses to explore the theme of greed that was the overarching construct behind the album. So this leads me to another quote from Tom in that 2002 interview that really does just get down to the nub of the matter. He asks; “How much money do you need?” And yes, I know that Tom was a multi-millionaire, but that was off...

The specificity of the song got Tom into a little bit of trouble and the single was banned on a lot of stations who didn’t reach for the deeper meaning and saw it as a direct attack on radio itself. In 2010, Tom told Mojo UK, “Radio was just a metaphor. ‘The Last DJ’ was really about losing our moral compass, our moral centre. We don’t care who gets hurt any more in the quest for the dollar. That...

I didn’t want to start the new season in earnest while I was away as I knew I wouldn’t have as much time to prep and barely any to record and edit, so I wanted to get a special episode and was trying to think of what to do to ease into the season. These two dates in 2002 completely destroy the conventional wisdom that you don’t go to see a "legacy act" to hear music from their new record. Hearing...