Details
Track Listing
1. Shady Grove
2. Scare Easy
3. Orphan of the Storm
4. Six Days On the Road
5. Crystal River
6. Oh Maria
7. This is a Good Street
8. Wrong Thing To Do, The
9. Queen of the Go-Go Girls
10. June Apple
11. Lover of the Bayou
12. Topanga Cowgirl
13. Bootleg Flyer
14. House of Stone
Album Notes
Mudcrutch: Tom Leadon (vocals, guitar, acoustic guitar); Benmont Tench (vocals, piano, keyboards); Tom Petty (vocals, bass guitar, background vocals); Mike Campbell (guitar, mandolin); Randall Marsh (drums).
Recording information: The Clubhouse, Los Angeles, CA.
In the early-to-mid 1970s, Tom Petty's band Mudcrutch was one of the biggest things in Gainesville, Florida, but when they went to L.A. to make it big, only about half the group survived the transformation to Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers. Three decades later, Petty decided to go back to his roots by re-forming Mudcrutch for a long-overdue debut album, along with Heartbreakers/former Mudcrutchers Benmont Tench and Mike Campbell and long-lost cohorts Tom Leadon (brother of former Eagle Bernie) and Randall Marsh.
Petty spontaneously banged out a batch of new tunes for the album, but the band stays true to the original Mudcrutch template of country-tinged roots rock, even attacking a couple of old cover tunes from the Mudcrutch setlist ("Six Days on the Road," "Shady Grove"). Whether it's the reconnection with his youth, the off-the-cuff working methods, or just a change of pace, Petty wound up turning out his most consistently rewarding album since the '80s.
Industry Reviews
4 stars out of 5 -- MUDCRUTCH has more jammy, expansive guitar work than any Petty record ever....The songs are mythic Americana: With help from his bandmates, Petty creates a vivid cast of road dogs, strippers and junkies that conjures Gram Parsons' Bible-haunted Southerners...
3 stars out of 5 -- 'Scare Easy,' the single, and 'Bootleg Flyer,' reminiscent of Petty's classic 'American Girl,' are the standouts on this collection of rough and ragged, feel-good country-rock.
Recorded live with no overdubs, the sound of Mudcrutch is tight, with a little bit of a folky edge...
[H]is vocals have rarely sounded more quaveringly beautiful than they do on honky-tonk lament 'Orphan of the Storm.' -- Grade: B+
Ranked #26 in Rolling Stone's 50 Best Albums Of 2008 -- It's the country-rock classic Tom Petty's old band never got to...
|
|
All rights reserved.
