Album Review - Mudcrutch

YYY 1/2 A Good Album

Tom Petty is a superstar. As a superstar you get to do some really amazing things, such as play halftime at the super bowl, make an album that is a scathing criticism of the record industry, and can call some of rocks biggest royalties your friends. Something else you can do as superstar is re-form your old band and make your first album 33 years after the band broke up. Mudcrutch was Petty's pre-Heartbreakers band and were well know in Gainsville Florida in the early 70's. Long before we had alt-country and southern rock became a parody of itself, there was an emerging sound called country rock and Mudcrutch was a prime example of the genre. The band is made up of Petty, fellow Heartbreaker Mike Campbell and Benmont Tench (who was not an original member of Mudcrutch), drummer Randall Marsh and guitarist Tom Leadon. If that name sounds familiar to you it is because Leadon's brother, Bernie Leadon, was a founding member of the country rock bands the Eagles and Flying Burrito Brothers. Next to the Byrds and Gram Parsons, Bernie Leadon is responsible for helping to put country rock on the musical map. Mudcrutch went west, recorded one song that never caught on, Petty and Campbell stayed in California and formed the Heartbreakers and Leadon and Marsh returned home, and the rest is history. The songs are top notch and even more impressive is they recorded this album in just two weeks with no overdubs. The album is lose and free, feeling a bit like the Wilbury's first record. Each instrument is clear and defined, with no one standing above the rest. Most of the songs are written by Petty, there are a few covers, a couple of traditional arrangements, one each from Tench and Leadon. Some of these songs are so southern that you forget that Petty is in the band. He's been out of Florida for so long that all that southern mud had long since been scrapped off his boots, but here he has managed to find that old pair of comfortable boots he has long since forgotten about. The opening track is a great arraignment of the bluegrass tune Shady Grove sung by Leadon; guitars and voices are harmonious and perfectly twangy. Six Days on the Road is the perfect life as a trucker song and sounds like it could have been on the Southern Accents album. Chrystal River is slow and deliberate, with a long extended melodic break in the middle that feels like it is taking us though a slow tour of a swampy river in Florida. In that fine tradition of southern rock Bootleg Flyer has some great duel guitar leads by Leadon and Campbell, avoiding the bloated self- indulgent guitar solo that became a staple of, and the thing that killed, southern rock. House of Stone is a perfect album closer, you can almost see Mudcrutch closing out the show in whatever roadhouse they're booked in with this song. I half expect to hear Petty say, "Thank you and good night" at the end. Petty has been around for so long you wonder when he's going to start repeating himself and with the exception of his last record Highway Companion he has somehow managed to avoid that. Usually what happens is when a side project comes up the weaker songs show up on that record, but when you're a superstar, you can do what you want and break all the rules...again.