Trail Stops

100 NE 1st St, Gainesville, FL 32601

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     Tom Petty and Jane Benyo were married here on March 31, 1974 -- the day before leaving for California the next day with the hope that Mudcrutch would hit the big time. 

Photo by Shawn Murphy.

6123 NW 109th Pl, Alachua, FL 32615

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     Tom Petty and Jane Benyo’s Alachua house from September 1991 to August 1998. They purchased it from Tom’s brother, Bruce. Note that today this is a gated community with a security guard at its entrance. It is also home to Turkey Creek Golf Course, which is a public course. 

Photo by Shawn Murphy.

321 NW 23rd St, Gainesville, FL 32607

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     Childhood home of Benmont Tench, keyboardist for Mudcrutch and Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers. Benmont started piano lessons at age 6, using the same piano teacher used by his father. He took lessons through his teen years, including from a University of Florida music professor. Throughout Benmont's childhood, his parents made him practice one hour a day, enforced by an egg timer. While Benmont detested this regimented practice, he took advantage of the time by exploring diverse musical genres. 

     After attending high school at the prestigious Phillips Exeter Academy in Exeter, N.H., Benmont majored in art at Tulane University in New Orleans, from where he would drop out to join Mudcrutch to pursue a career in music. Mike Campbell talked about Benmont being brought into the Mudcrutch fold for Warren Zanes' 2015 book Petty: The Biography.

     "Benmont was a kind of nerdy little guy that would come watch us play," Campbell told Zanes. "He was from a very different world, wore glasses, a turtleneck, went to prep school, came from a rich family. I just thought, 'Oh, he's just a college kid, and we're cool, out in the world with girlfriends, smoking pot and taking drugs and playing music. And then he played the piano. I was like, Whoa!' He could play circles around us" (pg. 77).

     When Benmont broached with his father, a circuit court judge, the topic of dropping out of college to join the band, "all hell broke loose," Tench told Zanes. Benmont was told that if didn't return to college, he'd be on his own for living quarters in Gainesville. 

     "That's when Tom [Petty] came over to talk with my father. I think he went into my father's study. ... I have no idea what Tom said. It was just the two of them. But my dad was a formidable character," Benmont told Zanes.

     About this intervention, Petty told Zanes: "He was a judge, so this wasn't the crowd I usually hung with. But he heard me out, back there in the office, surrounded by books. Looking back, I'm not sure where I got the balls to do that kind of thing. But I just told him that this was all going to work out. There was a plan, I assured him" (pg. 79).

     In the fall of 1973, with the intent of recording an album's worth of music, Mudcrutch rehearsed and recorded eight songs over two days in the front living room of the house. To read recording engineer Rick Reed's account of these sessions, read this transcript from an interview that was part of the research that Marty Jourard did for his 2016 book Music Everywhere: The Rock and Roll Roots of a Southern Town, which is found at a companion website:

http://www.gainesvillerockhistory.com/RickReed.htm

     During the summer of 1986, while Benmont and the Heartbreakers were on tour with Bob Dylan for the True Confessions tour, student Nancy Steigner interviewed Judge Tench as part of the Samuel Proctor Oral History Program at the University of Florida. The interview helps establish the footprint of the Tench family in the history of Gainesville. In it, Judge Tench dotes on all four of his successful children. In doing so, about Benmont he says: "And he is an amazing young man, a thoroughly amazing young man. I am intensely proud of him." 

     He tracks his son's interest in classical music and the piano from childhood to adulthood. The judge, who was also a piano player, marvels at his classically trained pianist son's ability to play anything from gospel and classical to the American songbook and rock and roll. 

     To read the interview, go here (the referenced portion about Benmont can be found on pages 16-19):

https://original-ufdc.uflib.ufl.edu/UF00024774/00001/29x 

Should you go here, remember that this private home, located in a residential neighborhood, must be treated with respect for the property owners and neighbors. 

Photo by Shawn Murphy.

115 S Main St, Gainesville, FL 32601

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     The Tench Building was built in 1887 (see building peak from Main Street for this notation). It is not named after Benjamin Montmorency Tench III, or Benmont, the keyboardist for Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers and Mudcrutch. Currently the site of an artist studio, it once housed the law practice of Benmont's father,  Benjamin Montmorency Tench II, an attorney and circuit court judge for nearly 50 years, and prior to that an office for his grandfather, who ran the B.M. Tench Shoe Store (where Benmont started working at age 10), and a great uncle, a dental surgeon. 

Photo by Shawn Murphy.

200 E University Ave, Gainesville, FL 32601

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     On an inside wall of city hall (not in the mayor's office) are photos of previous mayors, including B.M. Tench, 1935-36, who was the grandfather of Benmont Tench, the keyboardist for Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers and Mudcrutch. To see this portrait, a security guard escort is required. 

Photo by Shawn Murphy.

3000 NW 83 St, Gainesville, FL 32606

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     It was at this college that Tom Petty, who was in the recently formed Mudcrutch, enrolled just long enough to avoid the Vietnam War draft, then dropping out.

     Later, Mudcrutch performed concerts in 1971, 1972 and 1973 in the Auditorium. At its 1971 show, Mudcrutch shared the bill with RGF, which included Ron Blair, a future member of Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers.

     This college is also where Stanley Youngerman Lynch was a longtime psychology professor. He was the father of Stan Lynch, the Gainesville native would was the drummer of the band Road Turkey before becoming the first drummer for Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers. Professor Lynch was a supporter of his son’s interest in learning the drums.          

     To learn more about drummer Stan Lynch and his father, see entry from The Petty Archives:

https://www.thepettyarchives.com/archives/miscellany/interviews/2003-stanlynch-stars 

     To learn more about professor Stan Lynch, read his 2022 obituary from The Gainesville Sun here: https://www.gainesville.com/obituaries/pgai0127952 

Photo courtesy of Santa Fe College.

Maddox Field, 12955 FL-45, Archer, 32618

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     Approximately 3.5 miles southwest of here in Archer was the site of the Gainesville Music Festival on May 22-23, 1971. Held at Greer's Farm, this two-day festival included musical acts such as Mudcrutch (with future Heartbreakers Tom Petty, Mike Campbell and Benmont Tench), RGF (with future Heartbreaker Ron Blair), and Lynyrd Skynyrd (although then spelled Lynard Skynard). 

     Greer's Farm was also the site of the two-day Dusserah Festival on May 29-30, 1971. Musical acts in the lineup included Mudcrutch, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Moby Grape, The Amboy Dukes (with Ted Nugent), Iron Butterfly, Dion and Tom Paxton. On the second day of the festival, a half-dozen local and state law enforcement officers, overseen by Levy County Sheriff Pat Hartley, raided the concert grounds and arrested eight attendees for drug use. In doing so, clubs and tear gas were used by the officers. This was at a time when possession of a single marijuana joint could result in a one-year jail sentence.  

Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

 601 S Main St, Gainesville, FL 32601

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     The Lynx, a bookstore on South Main Street, is a stone's throw from Depot Park -- and even closer to Heartwood Soundstage, where the bookstore and music venue hosted a collaborative book club July 31, 2024, discussion about Warren Zanes' 2016 book, Petty: The Biography.

     Join the bookstore's email newsletter list, called the Lynx Watch, for notices about future events:

https://thelynxbooks.com/

Photo courtesy of The Lynx.