Petty Country: A Country Music Celebration of Tom Petty opens with
Chris Stapleton stomping through "I Should Have Known It," a song buried on
Mojo, a blues album
Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers released late in their career. By beginning this tribute album with such a deep cut, the team behind
Petty Country -- it's executive produced by
George Drakoulias,
Randall Poster, and
Scott Borchetta with the cooperation of a
Petty estate supervised by his daughter
Adria -- signal that the record is coming from a place of deep knowledge and love. The rest of this hefty tribute -- it spans 20 songs, running a full 76 minutes -- proves this to be true, alternating between imaginative reinterpretations and faithful renditions of familiar hits, offering a testament to the resilience of the songbook of
Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers.
Justin Moore boasts his way through "Here Comes My Girl,"
Brothers Osborne deliver "I Won't Back Down" with resolve,
Midland replicates the after-hours ramble of "Mary Jane's Last Dance,"
Dolly Parton retains the bittersweetness of "Southern Accents," and
Luke Combs sings "Runnin' Down a Dream" from his gut. The real fun in
Petty Country lies in the cuts where the musicians get a little loose, whether it's
Marty Stuart and His Fabulous Superlatives barreling through "I Need to Know,"
Steve Earle steering "Yer So Bad" away from rockabilly toward hillbilly, or
Rhiannon Giddens leaning into the unsettling undertones of "Don't Come Around Here No More" with the assistance of
Benmont Tench,
Petty's longtime keyboardist. He's not the only
Heartbreaker here, either. Guitarist
Mike Campbell tears through "Ways to Be Wicked" -- a tune he and
Petty gave to
Lone Justice back in 1985 -- with
Margo Price in what perhaps is the quintessential moment on
Petty Country: it's pitched precisely between rock and country, the past and the present, a song that sounds simultaneously eternal and fresh. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine
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