Mudcrutch - Mudcrutch - Music & Performance - CD

In August 2007, the original members of Mudcrutch reunited and recorded an album for release in 2008. Mudcrutch contains 14 old and new tracks. "We would play and then we would just talk about the old days," says Tom Leadon, who left the band in 1972. Mudcrutch was a rock band from Gainesville, Florida best known for being the forerunner of Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers. Tom Petty's first band, the Sundowners changed their name to the Epics, and around 1970, the Epics became Mudcrutch. Much like the Beatles at the Cavern Club in Liverpool, Mudcrutch served as the house band at Dub's Diner in their hometown of Gainesville, Florida.

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. "Looser" suggests that Mudcrutch rock hard, following through on the rangy, cheerful raunch of those five tracks on Playback, but this album doesn't rock, not really. Mudcrutch ramble and roll, sometimes stretching out for upwards of ten minutes, sometimes stopping off for a circular circus instrumental, but they never quite ramp up the rock & roll, never lock into a thick swamp groove that would bring them back to their Southern roots. This is thoroughly a Californian album, all sun-bleached riffs and mellow grooves, so unhurried that it never breaks a sweat, more interested in the journey than the destination. More specifically, Mudcrutch is an uncanny evocation of latter-day Byrds, after Gram Parsons left for the Flying Burrito Brothers and Roger McGuinn brought in Clarence White for the winding jams of Untitled -- a connection Mudcrutch make explicit via a cover of that album's "Lover of the Bayou," which is paired with the Burritos' version of the Red Simpson anthem "Six Days on the Road." Although it has a quicker pulse than most of the 14 tracks here, Mudcrutch's version of "Six Days on the Road" lacks the zippy Bakersfield drive of the Burritos' version, as everything the band does is very, very laid-back, a sensibility these five guys absorbed years ago when the Byrds were still releasing new records. The remarkable thing about Mudcrutch is that it sounds like it could have been released in 1970 or 1971, with the obligatory Hurricane Katrina song "Orphan of the Storm" being the only concession to modern times (and even that departs only in topic, not sound).

On Petty's part, it's a conscious reconnection to the past, one that revitalizes him, albeit in a very low-key fashion. It's been a long, long time since he's released a record as band-oriented as this, emphasizing interplay and vibe over song and concept, not caring if there are loose ends and detours cluttering the record, and it's refreshing to hear him in such a casual

Performer	Mudcrutch
Music genre	Rock
Music subgenre	Rock
Music release type	Release
Media format	CD
Original release date	2008
Edition	Standard
Language	English
Number of tracks	14
Has parental advisory label	N
Number of discs	1
Series title	Mudcrutch - Mudcrutch [COMPACT DISCS]
Track listing	Shady Grove, Scare Easy, Orphan of the Storm, Six Days on the Road, Crystal River, Oh Maria, This Is a Good Street, The Wrong Thing to Do, Queen of the Go-Go Girls, June Apple, Lover of the Bayou, Topanga Cowgirl, Bootleg Flyer, House of Stone
Record label	Reprise / WEA
Songwriter	songwriter
Music media format	CD
Is edited	N
Is enhanced	N