Trail Stops

112 SE 1st St, Gainesville, FL 32601

https://maps.app.goo.gl/pitaxYV95uxodhkN7

     Today this is a bar that retains the name of the music store that once was located here. In the music store, which sold sheet music and some equipment, Tom Petty frequented in his youth. The historic sign for the business remains. 

    Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers' song "Dreamville," from the 2002 album "The Last DJ," contains this lyric: 

"Goin' down to Lillian's Music Store 

To buy a Black Diamond string 

Gonna wind it up on my guitar 

Gonna make that silver sing 

Like it was Dreamville 

A long time ago 

A million miles away 

All the trees were green In Dreamville" 

     Keith Harben, who was Tom Petty's lifelong friend and lived in Tom's neighborhood through their child and teen years, recalled to me that he was with Tom when he purchased from the store a set of Black Diamond strings, which were hung on the wall to the left as you walked through the front door. Keith noted that his mother drove him and Tom to Lillian's Music Store that day. Tom would later strum these strings on his acoustic guitar.

Photo by Shawn Murphy

4562 NW 13th St, Gainesville, FL 32609

https://maps.app.goo.gl/uKThcBxytdzKhdxq7

     Dub’s Steer Room, or simply Dub’s, was located here from 1966 to 1991. The steak restaurant transitioned into a lounge known for its live music – and, for a while, its topless entertainment. Starting in 1969, James Wayne Thomas, the owner who got the “Dub” nickname because it was an abbreviation for his middle name (Wayne = W.= double U = Dub), hired the dancers to entertain along with the bands, as noted in Marty Jourard’s 2016 book Music Everywhere: The Rock and Roll Roots of a Southern Town. The topless dancers were discontinued in January 1972.

    The 600-capacity club is where Mudcrutch was the weeks-long house act in the fall of 1970. It was hired to play popular danceable cover songs from 9 p.m. until 2 a.m. for six nights a week. 

    In Mike Campbell’s 2025 autobiography, Heartbreaker, he recounted (pgs. 62-63) how the band got the Dub’s gig. Dub went to Mudcrutch Farm (2203 NW 45th Ave.) to hear the band perform. The band decided to begin by playing the song that had recently gotten Campbell a spot in the band, Chuck Berry’s “Johnny B. Goode.”

    “James Wayne Thomas stood in the main room of the farmhouse looking like he was built out of beer kegs. Short, bald, and burly, with massive arms crossed over a chest like a barrel. He was nearly a foot shorter than me, but he looked like he could pick me up and use me to dislodge a piece of steak from his teeth,” Campbell wrote.

    When the band finished the song, Dub simply shrugged his shoulders. He admitted they were good…

    “But he didn’t want too much of that old-timey 1950s stuff,” Campbell wrote. “He didn’t want any groovy noodling either. No jamming. No songs nobody knew. He only wanted hits, he said. Get it? Hits. Big, bouncing hits. Jukebox hits that people knew, that made them want to get drunk and dance and get hot and get thirsty and get more drunk. This was the alcohol-sales business. He wanted a band that could pull them in and keep them drinking but, he said, we did sound pretty good.”

    Dub hired the band for six weeks, adding that they could stay for eight weeks if they drew crowds that bought a lot of beer and hard liquor. Each band member was paid a weekly stipend of $100 in beer-soaked cash, which then was considered good money. Campbell noted it was more money than his factory-working mother back in Jacksonville made in a month.

    “(Dub’s) wasn’t yet the best rock and roll bar in Gainesville, much less the state, or even, arguably, the South – but it would be soon. Admittedly, at the time, it was a low bar to clear,” Campbell wrote. 

    Dub’s would eventually have on its stage a number of national acts, among them Black Sabbath, Foghat, Joan Jett, Molly Hatchet, the Righteous Brothers, and Bob Seger.

    “But Dub loved live bands and loud music, and his bar had a nearly magical ability to conjure large crowds of heavy drinkers with pockets full of ash,” Campbell wrote. “Especially, he realized, when it was paired with additional forms of entertainment.”

    So began Mudcruth’s periodic house-band residency from 1970 to 1972 at Dub’s – an establishment that attracted customers by sponsoring wet t-shirt and the shortest mini-skirt contests, selling cheap beer, and hiring local bands who would play cover songs while topless women danced.

    Mudcrutch’s first show at Dub’s was on a Tuesday night. An hour before showtime, there were a couple of old guys at the bar drinking canned beer – and Bubbles and Laura, Dub’s dancers, sitting by the stage. By 9 p.m. when the band took the stage, customers had begun to show up. 

    “In front of the stage, a rowdy congregation of beer-drunk good ol’ boys had gathered at all the closest tables, some in overalls, some with flannel shirts rolled up to reveal dark hands and pale white wrists and forearms from working outside, some wearing ball caps, some smoking cigarettes, some spitting tobacco into their empty beer bottles, some smoking cigarettes and spitting tobacco at the same time. They looked amped up and excited when we got onstage, like they were waiting for something. Just not us.”

    Its first song was Steppenwolf’s “Sookie Sookie.” Meanwhile, Bubbles and Laura had ditched their blue jeans and t-shirts for stage attire: “tight black hot pants, with black fishnet stockings and thigh-high black go-go boots,” Campbell recalled (pg. 67). “They wore matching pink leather fringe vests, pulled so tight their breasts pushed from the top and sides.” With the male contingent in the audience getting verbally riled up, Tom Petty shot Mike Campbell “a look.”

    When the song got to the chorus, “Bubbles and Laura ripped open their vests and shook their huge breasts at the men at the front tables,” Campbell recounted (pgs. 67-68). “A deep roar rose from the crowd. I went bright red. My jaw dropped open. … I could not believe it. I looked over at (Tom) Leadon, who was just as stunned. Petty laughed. I glanced over at Randall (Marsh), his eyes wide, the drumsticks in his hand midswing.” The band had stopped playing, just standing there in stunned silence. “Laura yelled ‘hey’ at me. I turned to her but I didn’t know where to look.” She said, “don’t stop,” and the band resumed the song, continuing to play through the night as the crowd grew bigger, maxing out at 50-60 people, by Campbell’s estimate.

    After playing their last set of the night, the band members walked about a mile from here, heading west down the then-dirt NW 45th Ave. back to Mudcrutch Farm – along with Bubbles and Laura and a few of their female friends.

    “Later, sitting on the couch, surrounded by pretty girls and long-haired hippie kids, happy and sleepy and stoned and drunk off big quart jugs of sticky sweet Boone’s Farm strawberry bum wine they got passed around with joints, the air blue with smoke, I looked around at all the people, laughing and talking and dancing, and maybe for the first time ever, I felt like I fit right in,” Campbell wrote (pg. 68).

    Back at Dub’s that first week on Thursday night, it was the highly anticipated wet t-shirt contest. By the time the band’s second set came around, the place had become crowded with rowdy Schlitz-drinking patrons who were eager for the night’s entertainment. Chances are they had not gone there to see Mudcrutch.

    “When I turned to look behind me, Dub himself was onstage, grinning, carrying two pitchers of ice water,” Campbell wrote (pg. 69). “He went to the front of the stage and mugged for the crowd. They cheered. They chanted, ‘Dub! Dub! Dub!’ He set the pitchers down on stage and took the mic from the stand. ‘Welcome to Dub’s! The classiest bar in Gainesville! … Well, you know what that means! If it’s Thursday night at Dub’s, it’s a wet T-shirt night! Are you ready? Are you ready? Well, then, come on up, ladies!”

   Campbell describes how Dub waved three $100 bills, the night’s prize, as ladies in T-shirts or tank tops lined the side of the stage.

    “Some looked nervous, some embarrassed, some drunk,” Campbell wrote (pg 70). “Some looked like they realized what had seemed like a good idea, just dumb fun, sitting at the bar, now looked very different from the stage, as the mob of locals and frat boys catcalled them.”

    Dub would pick up the pitcher of ice-cold water, holding it high over his head, while he one-by-one would pull down the collar of a woman’s shirt and pour water down her shirt as the crowd went wild. In between, Dub had Mudcrutch play song snippets, just to further liven up the night. 

    Over time, the band grew weary of being Dub’s jukebox. While Mudcrutch continued to periodically play Dub’s, including a six-night-per-week, five-sets-per-night residency during the summer of 1972, they eventually charted their own path forward, which consisted of writing originals and reworking select songs – and trying to find venues where they were allowed to play their own songs.

    Prior to Mudcrutch’s standing gig at Dub’s starting in the fall of 1970, Tom Petty and Tom Leadon had been working during the stifling summer of 1970 for the Plants and Grounds Department on the campus of the University of Florida where they helped maintain lawns, benches, crosswalks and roads. For a while, the ground crew job continued into the Dub’s residency. During this time, they would labor all day in the oppressive heat and humidity, then quickly head home to shower and eat, go to Mudcrutch Farm for rehearsals, and then on to Dub’s for a show. On top of that, late-night parties at the farm were sometimes in store.

    “Queen of the Go Go Girls,” a song written and sung by Tom Leadon on the self-titled Mudcrutch album in 2008, harkens back to the Dub’s days. Here is a taste of the lyrics: 

‘Cause you’re the Queen of the Go-Go Girls

You're laughin’ while you work

But I don’t ever seem to get the joke

You're smilin’ at all the guys

In the shadows where they lurk

Gazing through their cigarette smoke

Well I’ve had a good time hangin' with you baby

In your fantasy world I've learned a lot

And I can’t say that I won’t miss you baby

And all the royal treatment that I got’

   To listen to the song, go here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TtLX0EXbI4Q

   To watch Tom Leadon perform it on Heartwood Soundstage at Tom Petty Weekend in 2022, see the video uploaded on Facebook here:

https://www.facebook.com/groups/tompettynation/posts/7504562336305836/

    Note that at times at Dub’s, Mudcrutch would alternate sets with Road Turkey (including future Heartbreaker Stan Lynch). 

     The Gainesville Sun reported in January of 1990 that 58-year-old James Wayne “Dub” Thomas died of an apparent heart attack at his home in Monteocha, north of Gainesville.” His daughter continued the business until it closed in 1991. To learn more, read this Gainesville Sun article, which is available at The Petty Archives:

https://www.thepettyarchives.com/archives/newspapers/1990s/1991-01-16-gainesvillesun 

     Today you will find here a Social Security building, although part of the original Dub’s building was incorporated into the architectural design. Gainesville native Jody Cake told me that he passed by here every day during the demolition and construction. In doing so, he “could see what parts they left as it was being constructed.” He noted that “Dub’s wasn’t completely razed” and that “only the north side was.” He pointed out that architects repurposed the rest of the walls on the south side of the building where the parking lot and its entryway are located. Architects added windows to that wall. Most notably, they left the original rounded southwest corner. If one examines the Google Street View photo from 2015, you can see the rounded pink corner, which has since been painted white. 

    “Who knows,” Cake noted, “there may still be some spirits lurking there.”

Photo by Shawn Murphy

233 W University Ave, Gainesville, FL 32601 

https://maps.app.goo.gl/DdnKJYSyijTmYVK37

       Once the site of the Florida Theater, where in the late 1950s and early 1960s Tom Petty and his childhood friend Keith Harben would go on Saturdays to watch movies.

     After the movie theater ceased operations, this became the site of the Great Southern Music Hall, which featured live music by national and regional artists from 1974 to 1981. A long list of diverse national acts performed here, among them America, The Band, Dave Brubeck, Jimmy Buffet, Bo Diddley, Ray Charles, Cheech and Chong, Jimmy Cliff, Count Basie, Dan Fogleberg, Patti LaBelle, Richie Havens, Howlin’ Wolf, Waylon Jennings, B.B. King, Keo Kottke, Kraftwerk, Jerry Lee Lewis, Taj Mahal, Chuck Mangione, Steve Martin, John Mayall, Molly Hatchet, Randy Newman, The Outlaws, John Prine, The Ramones, Leon Redbone, Minnie Ripperton, Rush, Earl Scruggs, Bob Seger, Steppenwolf, Peter Tosh, Grover Washington, Muddy Waters, Johnny Winter and Frank Zappa. 

     On one concert bill in June 1974 was Road Turkey as an opening act. The band included Stan Lynch, a future member of Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, and Marty Jourard, a future keyboardist and saxophonist for the Motels. 

     The Matheson History Museum, located at 513 E. University Ave. in Gainesville, hosted a 50th anniversary retrospective exhibit in 2023 and 2024 called “Return to Forever: Gainesville’s Great Southern Music Hall." To learn more about the exhibit's opening night, read this article from The Independent Florida Alligator:

https://www.alligator.org/article/2023/02/matheson-70s-gainesville-music-exhibit

Photo by Shawn Murphy

2212 SW 13th St, Gainesville, FL 32608

https://maps.app.goo.gl/5YoFwWsSJRzrfvkV6 

     During the summer of 1969, the Epics had a residency at a smoke-filled topless club, Trader’s South (2212 SW 13th St, Gainesville). Soon the band’s name morphed into Mudcrutch, during an era when other bands were picking different-sounding names. Tom Petty and Tom Leadon, and for a while Jim Lenahan, made up the lasting core of Mudcrutch.

   Road Turkey, which included future Heartbreaker Stan Lynch, also played at Trader’s South. (In this three-piece band were also Marty Jourard and Steve Soar). Lynch was still a high school student when he played here as Road Turkey’s drummer.

    “I worked there as a boy,” Lynch said during an interview promoting the self-titled debut album by The Speaker Wars, a band with Stan Lynch and Jon Christopher Davis at its core, which was released in 2025. “I had to put on a fake moustache because I wasn’t old enough to play there.”

    Lynch said he had three birthdays during his high school years at Trader’s South, which he said “was a dive, all the way.”

    As a teenager, he’d play in Road Turkey at Trader’s South until 2 a.m. on a school night, then go to school drowsy the next morning. (Lynch graduated in the class of 1973 from the the P.K. Yonge Developmental Research School, 1200 SW 6th St. in Gainesville).

    “I can’t even tell you how bad the place was, but it was a job,” Lynch said.

    To watch this interview, go to the following link and click play on the video embedded into the story. You will see Lynch talking about Trader’s South, the place and the song, from time stamp 19:37 until 22:46.

https://www.1033theeagle.com/entertainment/speaker-wars-stan-lynch-jon-christopher-davis-agree-making-good-music-starts-with-friendship/ZALY2FZRFZE6HBQ4CB4ZLN5CHQ/

    One of the songs on The Speaker Wars’ album is about Trader’s South, where its customers are referenced in the lyrics this way: 

    “Drifters and grifters, preachers and punks

    Handsome young cowboys, sad married drunks”

It is suitably titled “Trader’s South.”

   Trader’s South opened in 1968 as a bar that featured topless dancers and live music. It was otherwise known as Trader Tom’s, named after the colorful owner, Tom Henderson, who once told Petty to “turn the music down.” The Speaker Wars’ “Trader’s South” pays homage to Tom Henderson, about whom Lynch has fun with its lyrics in the first verse:

    “Tom was an outlaw a criminal man

    He won Trader’s South on a high poker hand 

    When his dancers needed music that's how l came to be

    Working his shithole back in ’73”

Later in the song there is a hint we should hoist our whiskey glasses as we sing along with its referent lyric: “Here’s to that bastard, Old Trader Tom.” 

    Tom Henderson died in 2019  at the age of 89. Joey Henderson, Tom’s youngest son, told a reporter from The Gainesville Sun that “the bar business was in his blood,” and that “when he went to work and from work, he carried a sawed-off double-barrel shotgun openly, to protect his money bags” because “that was his character.”

    Following Henderson’s death, Marty Jourard posted to Gainesville Rock History, a Facebook group his administers: “He was so funny. He used beer metaphors: ‘Hey, Road Turkey, I need a band next Friday, just calling to see if you boys are on tap.”

   To learn more about Henderson’s life and his bar businesses in Gainesville, read Kevin Brockway’s article from The Gainesville Sun, found here:

https://www.gainesville.com/story/news/local/2019/01/09/gainesville-bar-owner-trader-tom-henderson-dies/6336769007/

    If a paywall prevents you from reading it, and you don’t subscribe to the newspaper, this article can also be found in this post to Gainesville Rock History by Jourard:

https://www.facebook.com/groups/159046777481720/posts/2276061812446862/

     Trader’s South closed in 2006. The building was eventually leveled. As of December 2024, there was nothing but a vacant lot here.

   The last line of the song is, “I bought the sign.” In actuality, Stan Lynch did buy the large yellow Trader’s South sign that advertised the business from its parking lot. That sign now resides in a barn adjacent to Stan Lynch’s house near Melrose, Fla., 20 miles east of Gainesville. In the interview promoting the album, Lynch said about the sign, “ It’s really my diploma because that’s when I graduated high school.”

    To listen to “Trader’s South” by The Speaker Wars, you can stream it on South Cloud here:

https://soundcloud.com/thespeakerwars-music?id=1103228860

    Better yet, purchase the album. See the Merch tab at the band’s website, found here:

https://www.thespeakerwars.com/ 

    And to see Stan Lynch sing this song with The Speaker Wars on Heartwood Soundstage at the 2024 Tom Petty Weekend in Gainesville, find that video uploaded by Glenn Richards to Gainesville Rock History, a Facebook group, here: https://www.facebook.com/groups/159046777481720/posts/8618032534916393/ 

Photo from 2013 by Marty Jourard

809 W University Ave, Gainesville, FL 32601

https://maps.app.goo.gl/FhUhCj2iy82DjW8o9 

    Among what was once a cluster of local businesses along the south side of West University Avenue, there was in the late 1960s a dance club and concert venue located here called The Place. Teens Tom Petty and Tom Leadon came here to watch some of the shows by the many bands who performed here, as Leadon talked about in 2018 for Tom Petty Weekend when he recalled going here together as teens to see bands. But Petty and Leadon also performed on its stage with the Epics in 1969, shortly before the Epics morphed into a renamed band, Mudcrutch.

     Mike Campbell makes note of this in his 2025 Heartbreaker book when he talks about the two Toms, who were neighborhood friends, joining the Epics.

     "They played dances and teen clubs in Gainesville," Campbell wrote. "They got a regular gig at a place called The Place, a teen hangout, and a bar on the south side called Trader Tom's" (pg. 58).

    With street addresses of 807, 809 and 811 in this business cluster was once located The Place, the White Rabbit, and Rebel Lanes. All of them have since been razed, as I discovered in March 2025 during a website research trip to Gainesville, when I saw a large corner vacant lot.

    An article from The Gainesville Sun on July 22, 1967, written by Paul Ashdown, profiles The Place as an alcohol-free “teen-style night club” owned by A.D. Chambless and Charles Steeger. The article notes that Chambless wanted to have a place that his own teenager could safely go on weekend nights, so opened The Place with that in mind. The article notes that it had opened 3.5 months before it was published, which would have roughly been around the beginning of April 1967. So, it would have been sometime in the last few years of the sixties that Petty and Leadon went to The Place, on both the floor as paying customers and on its stage as part of a hired band.

    Ashdown’s article is rich in description of the music and clientele. His overview of the teen’s clothing in 1967 is a particular time capsule: “Boys with checked slacks, long hair and print shirts clustered in groups and talk with long-haired girls attired in various degrees of ultra-mod clothes suggested by ‘turned on’ London fashions.” To read this archived article (for which I thank Marty Jourard for unearthing), go here:

https://infoweb.newsbank.com/apps/news/document-view?p=AMNEWS&t=pubname%3A14CA26D12FE70B99%21Gainesville%2BSun%2Fdecade%3A1960%211960%2B-%2B1969&sort=YMD_date%3AD&hide_duplicates=2&fld-base-0=alltext&maxresults=60&val-base-0=Paul+Ashdown&nbid=T6CS5BCWMTQ2MTI1MTgxNy41NzE0NTc6MTo4OnJhLTUwNjU5&docref=image%2Fv2%3A14CA26D12FE70B99%40EANX-NB-180959B2466073C1%402439694-18070CC9762EFD80%4013-18070CC9762EFD80%40&fbclid=IwY2xjawJ65Z5leHRuA2FlbQIxMABicmlkETFYTUlKRU5jU0gxcDhvek9GAR6LK_e0QfQjbKsZWv8ir0XFUSbyrFRmD0kQpv316rcymeItYQcfYwt_kLuWOQ_aem_WLvjogIsrPtrI4wBk36njw

    An entry from an online database called “The Live Music Venues of Gainesville,” which was compiled by Marty Jourard while working on his 2016 book, Music Everywhere: The Rock and Roll Roots of a Southern Town, lists the following bands that performed here (make note of the Epics being among the bands listed):

     “Acts that played there included The Candymen, Billy Joe Royal, John Fred and the Playboy Band, The Tropics, The Swingin’ Medallions, The Epics (w/Tom Petty on bass), Ron and the Starfires, the Maundy Quintet, Gingerbread (w/Don Felder on guitar), The Classics IV, The Outsiders, The Night Crawlers, The Zombies.” (Note that the version of The Zombies that played here was not the actual band, which was part of some unscrupulous concert promoter at the time, according to a discussion thread on Gainesville Rock History, a Facebook page administered by Marty Jourard.)

    As an interesting footnote for The Place, one of my trusted sources on Facebook, David Hammer, shared the following: “My dad and his colleagues in the Department of Communicative Disorders in UF’s College of Health Related Professions published the first peer-reviewed journal article on the deleterious effects of loud rock music on teenagers’ hearing. Their data collection happened there, at The Place.”

Photo of vacant lot where once stood The Place and other business by Shawn Murphy, taken March 2025

1611 SW 13th St, Gainesville, FL 32609

https://maps.app.goo.gl/PbaPRr4z54iu7DZu8

     Long before there was a CVS drug store on the corner of SW 13th Street and 16th Avenue in Gainesville, there was the popular Big Daddy’s Cin City Lounge, a multi-level establishment from 1970 to 1973 that featured live music with local bands, among them Mudcrutch (with future Heartbreakers Tom Petty, Mike Campbell and Benmont Tench) and Road Turkey (with future Heartbreaker Stan Lynch), according to Marty Jourard’s compiled list of live music venues in Gainesville. 

    “The bar was very popular with the vast student population in the apartments lining 16th Avenue, an area known as ‘Sin City,’ which accurately described the combination of affordable student housing, swimming pool keg parties and cheap alcohol, such as the Tuesday Night ten-cent drink specials at Cin City, where a dollar could get you knee-walkin’, commode-huggin’ drunk,” Jourard wrote.

    To browse Jourard’s “The Live Music Venues of Gainesville” compilation, go here: http://gainesvillerockhistory.com/Venuesweb.htm#:~:text=The%20location%20at%20SW%2016,DJ%20named%20Rudi%20spinning%20records 

Photo of Mudcrutch performing at Big Daddy’s Cin City Lounge by Red Slater, courtesy of The Gainesville Sun

203 SW 16th Ave, Gainesville, FL 32601

https://maps.app.goo.gl/xDSUVvu4Q4RC7Z5f9

     Currently a vacant building, this was once a convenience store that was converted into a bar called The Keg here in 1972. From July 30 through Aug. 11, 1973, there was a 12-night residency by Mudcrutch (with future Heartbreakers Tom Petty, Mike Campbell and Benmont Tench), which had recorded "Up In Mississippi" and "Cause Is Understood" as a demo 45. Both songs were on their set lists.

     Joining Mudcrutch was Road Turkey (with future Heartbreaker Stan Lynch, along with Marty Jourard, later in the Motels). The two bands performed alternating nightly sets from 9 p.m. to 1 a.m., Monday through Saturday. 

     In June 1973, The Gainesville Sun profiled Mudcrutch. The reporter, John Bartosek, hangs out with the band in an apartment that seems to serve as the band's home base. Later in the article, he shadows them to a show at The Keg, where he describes what's happening on and off the stage. To read his article, you can find the original as a PDF along with the digitized version, thanks to The Petty Archives, here:

https://www.thepettyarchives.com/archives/newspapers/1970s/1973-06-24-gainesvillesun 

Photo by Shawn Murphy

2801 NW 13th St, Gainesville, FL 32609

https://maps.app.goo.gl/uRMzbVqGE75B1DfE7

     Currently the site of Rural King, a retail box store where one could purchase farm supplies and hunting gear. Yet, it was once the site of the Suburbia Triple Drive-In, according to Cinema Treasures:

https://cinematreasures.org/theaters/19505

     Known simply as the Suburbia, it is where, depending on the year, one could see the latest Hollywood blockbuster, a seedy X-rated film, or a concert -- including those held for two nights in September 1973 by Mudcrutch (with future Heartbreakers Tom Petty, Mike Campbell and Benmont Tench) and Road Turkey (with future Heartbreaker Stan Lynch). The Suburbia was open from 1952 until it was destroyed by a tornado in 1978. 

Photo by Shawn Murphy

1305 NW 5th Ave, Gainesville, FL 32603

https://maps.app.goo.gl/95g9dn3x5spLUqNK7

    Of the many bars, clubs and lounges on the Gainesville concert circuit in the early 1970s, the Longbranch Saloon was one of them. Performing here were many national as well as local acts – including Mudcrutch.

    In a Tom Petty Nation discussion thread on Facebook in October 2025 that recalled some of the places where Mudcrutch played, Andy Latimer remembered seeing them play at the Longbranch Saloon in either 1972 or 1973, which he said was “really cool” – and that he got to meet Tom Petty that night.

    The Longbranch Saloon featured an eclectic lineup of musical styles in the bands hired to perform. While leaning primarily toward rock and roll, also represented were musicians playing blues, jazz, country rock, country western, and bluegrass. Among the national acts who performed here were Ted Nugent and the Amboy Dukes, Freddie King, Pure Prairie League, Vassar Clements, John Hammond, and the Outlaws – at which Butch Trucks, the Allman Brothers Band drummer, sat in a couple nights.

    In May of 1974, the Independent Florida Alligator, the student-run newspaper at the University of Florida, dispatched a reporter, Doug Dial, to go to the Outlaws and Jam Factory show. As reported, at around 1 a.m., Butch Trucks stopped by and jammed with the bands on two extended songs until 2 a.m. Dial learned that Trucks was “in the area to see the family dentist in Jacksonville,” his home. “I gotta get a damn tooth fixed,” Trucks was reported to have said. Dial reported that Trucks was “drinking beer and Mateus” (wine) while there. And he noted that when he got the chance to meet him, “he was tired (and pretty loaded, too) but said he was ready to get down to some more boogying the next night.”

    In October of 1974, the Independent Florida Alligator reported that the Longbranch Saloon was up for sale after the owner, Jim Hines, said his business was losing too much money. In the article by David Perry, Hines cited several factors for the sluggish business. Among them was the national economic recession, competition from other bars that offered even cheaper drinks, the small size of the city and his venue to attract bigger-name artists, and finicky taste in music of its residents. “The turkey-ass musical people in Gainesville aren’t aware of what’s going down,” Hines was reported to have said. He maintained that his venue would stay open “come hell or high water” irrespective of its sale, although he acknowledged that he might need to cut down on his overhead by booking bands on weekends only.

    The Longbranch Saloon eventually evaporated into the hourglass of time.

    Google Street View photos shows that as of 2018 the building still stood, yet by 2023 the entire block had been leveled to make room for a five-story apartment building on the corner of NW 5th Avenue and NW 13th Street.

Photo by Shawn Murphy of apartment complex where the Longbranch Saloon used to be

1 NW 10th Ave, Gainesville, FL 32601

https://maps.app.goo.gl/XnwiStvuCQLj1rHz5 

    Among the many bars, lounges and clubs in Gainesville in the 1960s and 1970s that were part of a circuit of places to play for area bands was the Lamplighter, which opened in October 1964 as the Lamplighter Lounge. Billed in a Florida Alligator newspaper advertisement as “Gainesville’s newest, most beautiful cocktail bar and lounge,” it was one of a string of United Liquor Lounges in Florida. The Lamplighter eventually came under new management with the moniker of “Big Daddy,” which catered more to the college beer-drinking crowd than cocktail-sipping clientele. Also under the Big Daddy umbrella of bars in the early 1970s were the Alibi Lounge (3334 West University Ave.) and Cin City (1611 SW 13th St.), a multi-level establishment that also featured live music with local bands, among them Mudcrutch (with future Heartbreakers Tom Petty, Mike Campbell and Benmont Tench) and Road Turkey (with future Heartbreaker Stan Lynch). 

    Marty Jourard’s overview of the Lamplighter does well to capture its essence while a Big Daddy establishment on any given week.

    “The weekly schedule at the Lamplighter is demonstrative of Gainesville’s party environment and the competition among music venues to attract the college set: Local band Homer played throughout the week; Monday drinks were thirty-five to fifty cents; Wednesday had free hot dogs and twenty-five-cent beer; Thursday featured two free drinks for unescorted ladies; and Fridays and Saturdays brought happy hours,” wrote Jourard in his 2016 book Music Everywhere: The Rock and Roll Roots of a Southern Town. “Basically, listening to live music and getting drunk in Gainesville was cheap and convenient” (pgs. 138-139).

    The Lamplighter hosted many locally and regionally known bands, as well as some nationally known groups. Homer, Mr. Moose, Axe, Blackfoot and Kansas were reportedly a few of them.      Harry Michael remembers seeing Mudcrutch at many places on the circuit, including here at the Lamplighter.

    “We all got to see the band Mudcrutch almost every weekend, either at the Lamplighter, Dub’s, the Rathskeller, or parties, and grew familiar with their sets,” Michael told me.

    Years later, after Mudcrutch had left Gainesville for LA in 1974, after the band was dropped by Shelter Records, and after Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers formed in 1976 and struggled to gain a mass following in America, Benmont Tench found himself back in his hometown during a downtime for the band – when he went here to the Lamplighter. Jimmy Millsapps, who grew up as a peer to Bruce Petty, Tom’s younger brother, today is the drummer for the Mudpies, which has performed at every Tom Petty birthday celebration since its 2017 beginning. Millsapps has been in various bands over the years, but in the spring of 1977 he was in one called Beloved, a trio that then consisted of Amos “Buddy” Philman, Rhonda James and Millsapps. On the edge of 19, Millsapps and his new drum kit had been recently added to the lineup of the cover band. Beloved had a standing gig at Big Daddy’s Lamplighter Lounge. 

    “We did residency gigs there for three weeks at a time, five sets a night, five nights a week. We did covers from Fleetwood Mac, Donna Summer, Billy Holiday, a few rockers as well, like ‘Tush’ (by ZZ Top),” Millsapps told me.

    He recalled the night the Heartbreakers’ pianist sat in with Beloved at the Lamplighter – and how impressed he was of his talent. 

    “Benmont Tench came in on an off night and asked to sit in. He knew our band leader, Amos Philman. He played the Rhodes piano,” Millsapps said. “Although I did not speak to him, he smiled a lot at me while playing with him. I must have been playing OK! It was an unforgettable and very pleasant experience.”

    To hear a digitized tape recording of a 1974, pre-Millsapps, lineup of Beloved, playing “Blues of a Different Color,” go here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vnMEro7eqwQ

    The Lamplighter was adjacent to the Gainesville Shopping Center, where at the west end of the strip was once located Lipham Music (1010 N Main St.), where Tom Petty worked in 1967, Gainesville’s Don Felder (later a member of the Eagles), showed Petty how to work out songs on the piano, where Mudcrutch performed, where Stan Lynch got his first drum kit while he was in the band Styrophoam Soule, where Tom met Benmont Tench when he played on an organ the Beatles’ “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” album in its entirety, and where members of the Allman Brothers Band jammed in the parking lot in order to try out some guitars for free. Today the former Lipham’s storefront sits vacant after its recent occupant, Wiggo, a retailer of wigs, went out of business. And where the Lamplighter once stood is now the site of a Zaxby’s, a franchise of the fried chicken fast-food chain.

    Thank you to Jimmy Millsapps and Harry Michael for their collaboration in creating this trail stop.

Photo by Shawn Murphy

607 NE 1st St., Gainesville, FL 32601

https://maps.app.goo.gl/rDqNf3cRouCdYhMs8  

      Tom Petty, while he was in Mudcrutch in 1971, hired his first attorney. His name was Jeffrey Meldon, whose practice was at the time located at 607 NE 1st St., home today to the Primary Care Institute. Back then, the building was split into units for various businesses. Meldon’s law practice occupied a unit on the south side of the building, facing NE 6th Avenue. This is where the Mudcrutch band members at the time would go to meet with their lawyer.

    Fresh out of law school in the class of 1969, Meldon in 1970 moved to Gainesville from Cleveland, where his enterprising grandfather and father had established successful businesses. The following year he opened the law practice that remains today, yet in a different location. At 703 North Main St., you will find Meldon Law – that sports a logo with the notation that the firm “won’t back down.”

    Before Meldon passed the Florida Bar and started his law firm in 1971, becoming Petty’s first attorney, he came into Mudcrutch’s orbit in 1970 by facilitating donations from local businesses for a free food service at Mudcrutch Farm festivals. Closely aligned with Gainesville’s hippie culture, the legal-minded Meldon was able to negotiate working relationships with government officials and business owners. 

    Meldon told me during an interview in March 2025 that Tommy Petty and Tommy Leadon “worked in tandem” at sponsoring the Mudcrutch Farm festivals. As for the Mudcrutch band members and the festival attendees, Meldon, a hippie himself who was six years older than Petty, called them all “middle class hippies.”

    Meldon shared with me his memories and thoughts about Tommy Petty during the time that he represented him and the band. Petty told Meldon that Mudcrutch wanted to play and record their own music, that they wanted to retain the rights to it, and they wanted to be a well-known band.

    “He was one of the most determined, focused young men,” Meldon told me. “He was a serious, focused musician.”

    Now, about the enterprising Jeffrey Meldon and the Candle People…

    “In the early seventies, Jeffrey Meldon was one of several liberal activists who collectively called themselves the Candle People and whose interaction with Gainesville’s music scene stemmed from their desire to contribute to local counterculture through community involvement and organization,” wrote Marty Jourard in his 2016 book, Music Everywhere: The Rock and Roll Roots of a Southern Town. 

    Meldon and a group of friends, the Candle People, as they called themselves, lived at the Candle Farm, as they called it, which consisted of “a riding stable with about two hundred acres of wood and a rundown cabin.” Meldon told Jourard: “We’d buy giant blocks of wax from the Gulf Oil Company, buy crayons from Toyland, and we’d make hippie candles, over a fire. Then we’d go to the college campus and sit outside the girls’ dorms and flirt with the girls, put our candles on a picnic blanket, and sell them.”

   They then organized the Hogtown Food Co-op, which provided for those attending the free Mudcrutch Farm festivals free food from area organic farmers. In addition, they organized an alternative newspaper. And they started an unstructured high school, the Windsor Learning Community, at the old Baird House (305 SE 7th St.). 

    Eventually, Meldon, who had experience booking bands while a college student who served as his fraternity’s social director, started helping Mudcrutch book shows. Meldon told me he collaborated with Rose Community Center, a concert production enterprise formed by Bruce Nearon and Charles Ramirez, eventually assisted by Jeff Goldstein, which produced many concerts with local and national acts in and around Gainesville during the early 1970s. Meldon said they worked together to book concerts at the Plaza of the Americas and the University Auditorium at UF, as well as at the original Santa Fe Junior College (note that these venues are already mapped at the Tom Petty Trail website).

    When Meldon passed the bar in the fall of 1971, he informed Petty and Leadon that he was now a lawyer, so he could represent them. Around this time, Meldon told me that he had been reading about the law in the entertainment business, and he was thinking about being a music lawyer. Perhaps it was in the blood, as his father had once owned a successful jazz and blues club in Cleveland (614 Prospect Ave.) where were booked local acts as well as a who’s who of national acts, such as Dizzy Gillespie, Lionel Hampton, Billie Holiday and Charlie Parker.

    To learn about the Loop Lounge, go here to read this Cleveland State University’s Center for Public History citation:

https://greenbookcleveland.org/locations/loop-lounge/ 

    “I got my law license in November of 1971. At that point Mudcrutch was still trying to get dates, play places, so I started working with Mudcrutch in my law office. They’d come in every week or so, and we’d talk about where they could play,” Meldon told Jourard.

    Meldon lined up Mudcrutch residency in Lake City at the Holiday Inn. And he tried to line up shows in Miami and elsewhere, although hit roadblocks in the form of “the roster rule” in which booking agents and venues – and sometimes record labels – worked in cahoots to book and promote only the bands that were on their “roster.”

    “I was their booking agent for some gigs, and I was a lawyer, so they came to me for advice,” Meldon told Jourard.

    In 2023, Meldon was interviewed on WIND-FM in Gainesville about the annual Tom Petty Weekends, of which he is a supporter – and not just because he’s “a fan of his songs.” He recalled his impressions of Tom Petty when he first met the 20 year old.

    “He was an amazingly focused young man,” Meldon said. “He was very serious about where he was heading.”

    This radio interview with Meldon can be heard here:

https://windfm.com/2023/10/jeffrey-meldon-talks-about-tom-petty/

    Meldon eventually opened his own concert venue with a fellow investor. They bought the shuttered Florida Theater (233 W. University Ave.). This was the same theater where, in the late 1950s and early 1960s, Tom Petty and his neighborhood friend Keith Harben would go on Saturdays to watch movies. It was also here that the movie theater showed local newsreels produced by Tom Petty’s uncle, Earl Jernigan, who ran Jernigan’s Motion Picture Service for half a century – and who introduced Tom Petty to Elvis Presley. To read more about that encounter, find that Tom Petty Trail stop here:

https://tompettytrail.com/buried-treasure 

    But once Meldon and his partner purchased the shuttered Florida Theater, it was rehabbed into a concert hall named the Great Southern Music Hall. Opened April 7, 1974, it featured live music by diverse national and regional artists through the late 1970s. To learn more about this Tom Petty Trail stop, go here:

https://tompettytrail.com/dreamville-ghosts

    Mudcrutch never played on the GSMH stage, though, since the band had already left town to drive across the country to pursue a record contract. It had driven out of Gainesville six days before, on April Fools Day.

    Jeffrey Meldon’s profile on the Meldon Law website can be found here:

https://www.meldonlaw.com/member/jeffrey-meldon/

    Meldon told me that he hoped to one day write his autobiography, which would cover his forebears' lives as well as his, both of which were intriguing for me to hear about. But since everything I heard did not have a connection to Tom Petty, that material was left on the cutting room floor. If Meldon’s book is ever published, it will be worth reading. I think you will be as fascinated as I was hearing the stories.

Photo of former law office of Jeffrey Meldon by Shawn Murphy

1618 NW 1st Ave, Gainesville, FL 32603

https://maps.app.goo.gl/DDnhkEGcjLqDkmrRA 

     While today you will find a modern four-story apartment complex at 1618 NW 1st Ave. in Gainesville, this was where once stood a not-so-modern two-story building in which the top floor was an apartment and the ground floor was a business named Gator Groomer where one could get their hair cut and/or launder dirty clothes. For a while in the early 1970s Tom Petty and girlfriend Jane Benyo lived in the apartment, where they would host friends. 

    One of the invited friends was Mike Campbell, who wrote about it in his 2025 autobiography, Heartbreaker. Campbell writes about going here after Benmont Tench joined Mudcrutch, which was in 1973. He recalled being here when Petty first played “Don’t Do Me Like That,” a song that both Mudcrutch as well as Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers would later record.

    “I used to go over to their apartment above the Gator Groomers all the time, Everybody did. Everybody they let, anyway. They were quite exclusive. Tom had this cool old Zenith record player and tons of records. Tom would play records, hosting, and we would all smoke weed and listen and talk about the band, talk about music,” Campbell wrote.

    “During the day I would go over and he would play me songs he liked. I would listen and play along. I brought my Wollensak (recorder) once and he made me a tape of all our favorites, because I couldn’t afford to buy the records. 

    “I remember sitting at the kitchen table with him one hazy, sunny afternoon when he started playing a new song he was working on. It was very simple, but it bounced and swung as it stopped and started from G to F to C to D. He sang the chorus as he played the changes. 

    “‘Don’t do me like that. Don’t do me like that.’” 

    “I thought that was one of the best songs I had ever heard. He read the look on my face. He waved it away.

    “‘That’s my dad’s line. That’s what he always says to me.’

    “‘I’d give my right arm if I could write a song like that.’

    “‘Well, you couldn’t play guitar then.’ 

    “I laughed” (pgs. 122-123).

        About the song, Petty told Paul Zollo for the 2005 book Conversations With Tom Petty: “That was something my dad used to say, ‘Don’t do me like that.’ I always thought it was a humorous thing to say” (pg. 230).

    To listen to the Mudcrutch version of “Don’t Do Me Like That,” go here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vuEdZVX4B-8

    To listen to the Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers version of “Don’t Do Me Like That,” go here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EFkJ_BOz88E

    In an interview that Tom Leadon did with Marty Jourard for his 2016 book, Music Everywhere: The Rock and Roll Roots of a Southern Town, he mentions the Gator Groomer apartment, although his timeline is different than that of Mike Campbell. 

    “We spent the spring and summer of 1971 in Earleton, then we moved back to town in the fall of ’71 and that’s when Tom and Jane got the place above the Gator Groomer and I met my girlfriend there and moved with her into what they called the Celebration House, over by Steak ‘n’ Shake on SW 13th Street. Celebration had moved out and there were a group of students living there, one of them was my girlfriend, and Mike Campbell lived there above us, so we lived there during the fall of ’71 to May of ’72 and then I got a house over near the university on NW 7th Terrace, a kind of U-shaped street there, and Tom had moved out and got an apartment somewhere near Dub’s and we started playing Dub’s again.”

    Jourard shares the Leadon interview transcript here on his Gainesville Rock History website, should you wish to read it:

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

    Note that when Leadon mentions Earleton, he is referring to the waterfront cottage at Lake Santa Fe that served as Mudcrutch’s home base for a while. That Tom Petty Trail stop can be found in the Buried Treasure section here: https://tompettytrail.com/buried-treasure .

    Jean Sullivan (now Jean Porter), Randall Marsh’s girlfriend who lived at Mudcrutch Farm (2203 NW 45th Ave.; https://tompettytrail.com/teen%2B-years ) and at the Lake Santa Fe cottage, recalled for me being at the Gator Groomer apartment while Tom Petty had something to eat and the band talked about music.

    “One thing T.P. loved was a McDonald’s hamburger – no fancy one, just a plain burger, large fries, and a Coke,” she notes. “When Jane lived over Gator Groomer she would go over to McDonald’s on 13th Street and get this lunch or dinner for him. I can so clearly see him stuffing a fist full of fries in his mouth, while talking music with Mike or Randall.”   

    For the Jan. 28, 1990, issue of The Gainesville Sun, Bill DeYoung reported on the Gainesville homecoming of Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, during which Mayor Cynthia Chestnut gave Petty a key to the city before the band’s performance at the Stephen C. O’Connell Center on the University of Florida campus. During the concert, Petty put things into perspective, saying: “I never dreamed when I was living over the Gator Groomer that one day I’d be sitting down talking to the mayor. People ask me how does it feel to be back in Gainesville. Well, it feels really good.”

    To read this Sun article, you can find it here at The Petty Archives:

https://www.thepettyarchives.com/archives/newspapers/1990s/1990-01-28-gainesvillesun

    The 1971 Polk’s Directory, which lists business information, notes that Gator Groomer Barber Shop and Gator Groomer, the self-service laundromat, both had the same street address and the same phone number. Over the years, businesses naturally changed. As for the building itself, Google Earth satellite time-lapse images show the change to this property in recent years. An image from September 2019 shows the one-story business part of the building still facing NW 1st Avenue and the connected two-story apartment behind it, with a dirt parking lot behind it, along NW 2nd Avenue. But by January 2021 nearly a whole block was leveled and construction was underway for the large apartment complex that currently is located in the footprint of Gator Groomer and the surrounding property.

    Thank you to Steve Fasnacht for initially reaching out to try to help figure out where Gator Groomer was located. Steve was helpful in providing June 2019 Google Street View photos of the view from the front and back of 1618 NW 1st Ave. And thanks to Library West at the University of Florida Libraries, where a team of reference librarians were able to nail down its location by unearthing a 1971 Polk’s Directory. 

Photo by Shawn Murphy

1976 NW 2nd St, Gainesville, FL 32609

https://maps.app.goo.gl/3XVoqhfn8o5vJLCK7 

    One of the places in which Tom Petty resided in the early 1970s, while Tom was the bass guitarist in Mudcrutch, is here, according to Marty McKnew and Scott Monroe. McKnew told me they lived in the back apartment for a short while. At the time, he served as Mudcrutch’s  “unpaid roadie,” utilizing a van from his job at a downtown flower shop, toting the band and its equipment to various gigs in and around Gainesville.  Monroe, who was part of an extended friend-group, recalls hanging out here prior to shows across town at The Keg.   

   “We had a lot of fun at their apartment,” Monroe told me. “We’d all meet there and then head out from there to The Keg.”

   The Keg (203 SW 16th Ave.), a convenience store that was converted into a bar in 1972, was on the Mudcrutch circuit. This included a 12-night residency in late July and early August 1973. Joining Mudcrutch for that residency was Road Turkey (with future Heartbreaker Stan Lynch, along with Marty Jourard, later in the Motels). The two bands performed alternating nightly sets for four hours. While the building still stands, it is currently a vacant building. To see the trail stop for The Keg, go here:

https://tompettytrail.com/dreamville-ghosts 

     In late June 1973, The Gainesville Sun profiled Mudcrutch in a feature story showcased in the Sunday paper. The reporter, John Bartosek, hangs out with the band in this apartment, which is presented as its home base. Later in the article, he shadows them to a show at The Keg, where he describes what’s happening on and off the stage. The profile was written at a time when Mudcrutch had established a name for itself in Gainesville, across Florida and elsewhere in the Deep South, and toured extensively throughout this circuit. But this regional fame had not yielded the fortune that comes with national fame. Bartosek hangs out with the band in a “standard two-bedroom apartment on the northwest edge of the city.”    

   Bartosek’s story is a time capsule. It is a fascinating fly-on-the-wall piece that combines overheard conversations and observations of the band members off and on the stage. He introduces us to the band, which then consisted of Tom Petty, Mike Campbell, Benmont Tench (although the article misspells the first name as Ben Mont), Randall Marsh and Danny Roberts. It’s clear from the story’s lead that Tom Petty is the band’s leader:

“Tom Petty has a one-track mind. It’s on music.

    Bass guitarist for ‘Mudcrutch,’ that seemingly eternal Gainesville rock and roll band, Tom talks about everything. But somehow it all gets back to music.

    ‘It's our life,’ he says quietly.’”

    To read his article, you can find the original as a PDF along with the digitized version, thanks to The Petty Archives, here:

https://www.thepettyarchives.com/archives/newspapers/1970s/1973-06-24-gainesvillesun 

    Nine months later, in early April 1973, a Mudcrutch entourage left Gainesville to drive to California, focused on landing a record contract.

   Just 2/10ths of a mile south of this apartment, a five-minute walk, is located Sidney Lanier Elementary School, where Tom Petty was a pupil.  Today you will find the “you belong among the wildflowers” sunburst mural on the side of the school. It is located on the end of one of the buildings, facing east – along NW 2nd Street. To see the trail stop for this mural, go here:

https://tompettytrail.com/tributes-%26-troves 

   Should you go to see this apartment, remember that this private home, located in a residential neighborhood, so must be treated with respect for the property owner, its occupants, and the neighbors. That includes no trespassing on private property!

Photo by Shawn Murphy 

1007 SW 13th St, Gainesville, FL 32601

https://maps.app.goo.gl/cKRky9dza8Yf2eqV6

    While the apartment complex here today post-dates Tom Petty's footprint in Gainesville, it is fittingly named Wildflower, although perhaps coincidently. That's because Petty once resided here, and because his band at the time, Mudcrutch, performed here.

    Lots of woods and two houses once comprised this five-acre property. In one of them, Petty lived in 1972. The house would have been located adjacent to the railroad bridge (now an elevated bike path) at SW 13th St., according to this Gainesville Sun article by fellow musician Marty Jourard: https://www.gainesville.com/story/news/local/2018/09/29/gainesville-where-tom-pettys-dreams-began/9740920007/ 

    Entering the heavily wooden property down its tree-lined driveway was the first house, where Petty lived in the attic. Prior to him, residing here were members of the band Cowboy, who once played a free concert here.

    The second house on the property had stonework on the outside, thus taking the name Stone Castle, a casual way to refer to the property as a whole. One of the occupants of this house at the time was David T. “Lefty” Wright, who in January 1971 at the WUFT studios on the campus of the University of Florida videorecorded what is believed to be the earliest known film of Mudcrutch. The video was shot on Super 8 film using a silent film camera, which Wright borrowed from his friend Jim Lenahan, a founding member of Mudcrutch and later a Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers’ tour lighting director as well as a director of some of the iconic music videos in the 1980s. (To watch this video and learn more, see the mapped Trail Stop on the Tom Petty Trail here: https://tompettytrail.com/uf-early-years )

    In Jourard's 2016 book, Music Everywhere: The Rock and Roll Roots of a Southern Town, he notes that Mudcrutch once played a concert here.

Photo of Stone Castle courtesy of David T. Wright

221 SE 7th St, Gainesville, FL 32601

https://maps.app.goo.gl/QHFENPAfzbRTz7cf7       

     Now an upscale bed and breakfast on SE 7th St. where there are other upscale places to say, The Laurel Oak Inn was once a modest two-story, four-apartment building in a partying section of the city called “Hippie Hill." This building is where Tom Petty was reported to have once lived with "another member of Mudcrutch” around 1969, according to this 2023 article in The Independent Florida Alligator (note that it doesn't state who this other Mudcrutch musician was): https://www.alligator.org/article/2023/09/gainesvillesbedandbreakfastdistrict      

     Petty was said to have lived in an apartment that is now the inn’s kitchen, according to this 2017 article in The Palm Beach Post: https://www.palmbeachpost.com/story/entertainment/local/2017/10/03/tom-petty-rip-his-florida/7129426007/ 

Photo by Shawn Murphy

404 NW 14th Ave, Gainesville, FL 32601

https://maps.app.goo.gl/wadaAMUQu9RxJjVTA 

    The North Central Baptist Church was the church of Tom Petty’s family. It is where the family worshipped, where his parents taught Sunday school, where he and his brother played outdoors on church grounds while visiting their maternal grandmother at her house across the street, and where funeral services were held for Petty family members.

    This Baptist church was originally located here. It has since relocated to a newer, larger building on the west side of the city, near I-75. Today at the old Baptist church location you will find the Ignite Life Center, a non-denominational church.

Days after Tom Petty’s death in October of 2017, The Gainesville Sun published an article that featured remembrances from those who knew him when he lived in Gainesville. Close friend Keith Harben, first cousin Sadie Darnell and Bruce Petty were all interviewed by reporter Andrew Caplan, as were first cousin Rod Guynn and second cousin P.J. Fancher. In this article, Bruce recalled that he and Tom “often played at Northeast Park, the Duck Pond, Devil’s Millhopper and behind North Central Baptist Church.”

    Northeast Park (today’s Tom Petty Park, 400 NE 16th Ave.), the Duck Pond in the Duckpond neighborhood (alongside NE Blvd., between NE 6th Ave. and NE 5th Ave.), Devil’s Millhopper (4732 Millhopper Road), and this church are all mapped trail stops at the Tom Petty Trail website, where you can read about what happened there.

    North Central Baptist Church happened to be located across the street from a house where Tom and Bruce Petty’s maternal grandmother, Troas Avery, lived (1415 NW 4th St.). Grandma Troas helped raise Tom, as well as eventually his brother Bruce, who was eight years younger, while Kitty worked for many years at the Alachua County government building in downtown Gainesville (22 SE 1st St.) and Earl was either running a store in Gainesville (Petty’s Wholesale Dry Goods Co., 1105 SE 4th St.), driving around the region selling items to area convenience stores, or working as a salesman for National Standard Life Insurance Co. (1418 NW 6th St.). Grandma Troas saw Tom a lot since she watched him after school at Sidney Lanier Elementary (312 NW 16th Ave.), which was 1.5 blocks north of her house, and all day during the summer. As a result, they developed a bond, a closeness, which was noted to me by both first cousins Norma and Sadie Darnell and close friend Keith Harben, who remembers Tom calling Grandma Troas “Mom.” Since the grounds of the church property were across the street from Grandma Troas, it was a handy playground.

     At North Central Baptist Church, Tom’s father, Earl, “was a deacon and a Sunday school teacher,” according to his Dec. 12, 1999, obituary in The Gainesville Sun.

     To read Earl’s obit, go here:

https://www.thepettyarchives.com/archives/newspapers/1990s/1999-12-12-gainesvillesun

    And at this same church, Tom’s mother, Kitty, taught Sunday school, according to a column by Jennifer Tragash in the Oct. 10, 2007, issue of The Gainesville Sun.

    “I attended North Central Baptist Church, where Tom Petty’s mother, Mrs. Kitty Petty, was one of my Sunday School teachers,” Tragash wrote. “I remember Mrs. Petty as a loving, kind, and patient woman and teacher. She gave me my first Bible.”

    To read Tragash’s column, you can find it at these two locations:

https://www.gainesville.com/story/news/2007/10/10/pettys-long-term-impact/31539121007/

https://www.thepettyarchives.com/archives/newspapers/2000s/2007-10-10-gainesvillesun 

    North Central Baptist Church is also where the funeral service for Kitty Petty was held in 1980 and for Earl Petty in 1999, according to Norma and Sadie Darnell, Kitty and Earl’s nieces, who I interviewed in November 2025. 

    Tom Petty visited his mother in the hospital a few months before her October 1980 death, but did not attend her funeral, as he told Warren Zanes for the 2015 book, Petty: The Biography (pgs. 156-158). One morning Petty and Alan Weidel (known as “Bugs,” he served as the Heartbreakers’ equipment manager and guitar technician for the band’s entire career) managed to get to and into the Gainesville hospital without drawing a crowd, and the handful of people who did notice Tom gave a respectful zone of privacy. Upon arrival in Kitty’s hospital room, Tom saw his mother in a hospital bed. Spread across her blankets were clippings of stories and photos about him as a famous musician.

    “Someone had laid all these magazines with pictures of me on my mother. On her chest and across her body,” Petty told Zanes (pg. 157). “She was just lying there, beneath these clippings from magazines and newspapers. It was the strangest thing. I thought, ‘Even this moment, even this, someone had to corrupt with some reaction to fame, or whatever this was.’”

    Upon questioning, Tom learned that a nurse had it in her mind that this would be a thoughtful gesture to do prior to his arrival. Tom asked the nurse to remove the clippings, then spent time with his mother in private.

    A few months later, Kitty passed – on Oct. 21, 1980, one day after Tom’s 30th birthday. She was 53. Funeral plans were in the works.

    “You come here and it’s going to be a zoo,” Tom Petty told Zanes that his brother Bruce advised him after their mother died. “‘The whole town’s already gearing up for when you’re going to arrive. They all think you’re coming’” (pg. 158). Petty then decided not to return to Gainesville for the funeral. “I’m not going to let this be about me,” he told Zanes was his thinking at the time. “I can’t deal with that.” As time went on, Petty confided in Zanes: “The truth is that I’ve always felt conflicted about whether I should have gone or not. I think it’s hard for anyone to understand, to see what an extreme position I would have been in. They were absolutely crazy in Gainesville.”

    Tom did attend his father’s service and funeral, along with Grandma Troas Avery and the Jernigans, the aunt and uncle who introduced 10-year-old Tom to Elvis Presley in the summer of 1961 on a film set in Ocala. Tom departed the service quickly after a paternal aunt hounded him for autographs, as he explained to Zanes (pgs. 267-268). Prior to Earl’s death, Tom and Earl, who had a strained father-and-son relationship for most of their lives, had a reconciliation of sorts.

    Weeks prior to Earl’s death, father and son spoke on the telephone. 

    “He called me one night,” Tom told Zanes (pg. 268). “And it was the last conversation I would have with him there at the end of his life, right before he died. He said, ‘I’m calling you because I don’t think I’ve got a lot of time left, and there are issues to work out with the will.’ I said, ‘Look, I don’t want anything. Give it all to my brother. Thanks for speaking to me about it, but I don’t want anything.’ Then he went on and said, ‘I just had to tell you, I’m really proud of the way things have gone for you.’ He goes, ‘It always just sounded… I couldn’t hear anything in what you were doing. It always just sounded really out there to me. But you must have done it really good, because you’ve done so well.’ He said, ‘I remember you telling me when you were a teenager that if I’d just leave you alone, you’d be a millionaire before you were thirty. Damn if you weren’t.’ Then he said, ‘So it kind of proves that you were right and I was wrong. And I love you. I just wanted to say that.’”

    Petty told Zanes that it was the only time in his life that he could remember his father saying the L-word to him, which Tom said was “kind of a touching moment.”

    Getting word of his father’s passing in December 1999 at age 75, “I went back there, Bugs was with me,” Tom told Zanes (pg. 267). “He drove me over to the funeral home. It was either a funeral home or a church. I can’t remember. I met my brother there. We went in, saw Earl there in the box, checked him out. He looked peaceful. We’d picked some music for them to play, some music that Earl liked. We didn’t stay long. Gainesville could be tricky to navigate,” he said regarding how people would react to his fame.

    “After things had gone well enough, and we were getting ready to leave, Earl’s twin sister, Pearl, shows up. And she just lets out this huge scream, like, ‘Nobody told me you were going to be here! Come here, come here!’ And I was like, ‘No, we’re leaving right now.’ And she’s grabbing my arm, insisting, ‘No, you can’t leave – I got stuff ya’ll gotta sign!’ I mean, I’m walking away from my dad’s coffin. It’s a hundred feet away from us, right? I’m thinking, ‘He’s your brother, for Christ’s sake, and you’re looking for autographs at a funeral?’ I’m just shaking my head. So we get in the car kind of quick as we can, and we start to back out, and she’s at the window, banging on the window. And she gets her hand on the door handle of the car, trying to open the door. I just said, ‘Bugs, go.’ And we took off, with this screaming woman in the background. That was my father’s funeral.”

    To read an obituary for Pearl (Petty) Guynn, go here:

https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/32070952/pearl_elizabeth-guynn 

    Kitty and Earl Petty were buried at Forest Meadows Cemetery-East (3700 SE Hawthorne Road). Troas Avery, Kitty’s mother, is also buried there, near the Pettys.

     If you are to visit the church or the cemetery, be sure to show reverence. And do not desecrate these public-private spaces. 

Photo by Shawn Murphy

3700 SE Hawthorne Rd, Gainesville, FL 32641

https://maps.app.goo.gl/Pw3fHnGfo49aW9zn7

    Forest Meadows Cemetery-East is the site of gravestones for Tom Petty's parents and maternal grandmother (found in the southwest portion of the cemetery).

    Father Earl Alvin Petty: https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/7936151/earl_alvin_petty

    Mother Katherine Johney (Avery) Petty, known as "Kitty": https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/29479496/katherine_johney_petty

    Maternal grandmother Troas Frances (Hale) Avery: https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/174013512/troas_frances_avery

    In Warren Zanes' 2015 book, Petty: A Biography, it is noted that Troas did not like Earl (p. 16).

    If you are to visit this site, be sure to show reverence. And never, ever desecrate a gravesite! 

Photo by Shawn Murphy

Azalea Section, 401 SE 21st Ave, Gainesville, FL 32641 

https://maps.app.goo.gl/JepeRZPfvMunR54PA

     Located in the sprawling Gainesville-owned Evergreen Cemetery, which is billed as “this wondrous place,” there are some graves with a connection to Tom Petty. There is the grave of Harry Green, a fellow student at Gainesville High School who died in a car crash in 1966 and who would become the subject of a Tom Petty song. There is the grave of Tom Leadon, the guitarist from the Epics and Mudcrutch. There are the graves of three generations of Benmont Tench’s family, including Judge Tench, who Petty persuaded to allow his son to pursue a music career rather than return to college at Tulane University. And there are the graves of Tom Petty’s maternal aunt and uncle – the person who introduced him to Elvis Presley and inspired him to be a musician.

    Evelyn Louise (Avery) Jernigan is one of two sisters of Katherine “Kitty” (Avery) Petty, Tom Petty’s mother. According to her obituary, for 20 years she worked for the state DMV. In a separate Tom Petty Trail stop on the website, it is noted and mapped that Kitty Petty also worked for many years in the downtown Gainesville government complex where is located the Alachua County Tax Collector’s office and the Driver License and Motor Vehicles Service Center, along with other county administrative offices (22 SE 1st St.). Evelyn’s obit also notes that she was a bookkeeper for Jernigan’s Motion Picture Service. Another Tom Petty Trail stop on the website pinpoints where this was located in Gainesville and gives background information about it.

     To read Evelyn Jernigan’s obituary and to learn more about the family genealogy, consult this Find a Grave entry:

https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/92498205/evelyn_louise_jernigan

    Evelyn was married to Earl Ramon Jernigan, who Tom called Uncle Jernigan. Earl Jernigan ran for decades a successful film production business, Jernigan’s Motion Picture Service, out of a nondescript building in the northeast quadrant of Gainesville (3019 NE 20th Way). The company, Jernigan’s Motion Picture Service, took on many videography projects over its 49 years in business (1938 to 1987), including to help scout filming locations for Hollywood movies – one of which was “Follow That Dream,” which starred Elvis Presley. The movie was shot on location throughout Florida, including downtown Ocala at the then-named Commercial Bank & Trust Co. (203 East Silver Springs Blvd.), where 10-year-old Petty met Presley – and sparked his interest in living a musical life.

   Uncle Jernigan invited Tom to go to Ocala one day in the summer of 1961 to watch filming and to meet Elvis. When Jernigan introduced Tom to him, Elvis briefly nodded and shook his little hand. Tom stood still, stunned and speechless, yet smiling. Petty told Warren Zanes for the 2015 book Petty: The Biography: “I caught the fever that day, and I never got rid of it. That’s what kicked off my love of music. And I never thought much about rock ‘n’ roll until that moment.” 

    To learn more about Earl Jernigan, who died in 1998, read this Gainesville Sun article (paywall fee may apply):

https://www.gainesville.com/story/news/2004/05/26/lights-camera-history/31666625007/ 

    To learn more about Earl Jernigan’s family genealogy, consult this Find a Grave entry:

https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/92498070/earl_ramon_jernigan

    In Evergreen Cemetery, you will find the Jernigan family buried in Section EG 5, Block N6E, Space 3, on the north side of the cemetery. To navigate here, follow these directions: Starting from 901 SE 21st Ave., which is essentially where you will find the entrance gates for the cemetery, drive in on Magnolia, then take first left onto Azalea, a short thoroughfare that ends at Olive when it turns to the right. The Jernigan family gravesites are in the middle of Azalea on the left. The fence that borders the cemetery is nearby.

    If you have a smartphone, you can use these mapped directions using Google Maps:

https://maps.app.goo.gl/JepeRZPfvMunR54PA 

    Alternatively, you can use Evergreen Cemetery’s website to navigate here. To do that, go to their website, found here: 

https://www.thiswondrousplace.org/ 

    Then click Burial Search in the upper right of the screen. Then type in the name of the person you are searching for.

If you are to visit this site, be sure to show reverence. And never, ever desecrate a gravesite! 

Photo by Shawn Murphy

Evergreen Four, 401 SE 21st Ave, Gainesville, FL 32641 

https://maps.app.goo.gl/xNmBvxFyF3GzuouL6  

     Located in the vast Evergreen Cemetery in Gainesville are gravesites with a Tom Petty connection. There is the grave of Tom Petty’s maternal uncle who introduced him to Elvis Presley, which inspired him to become a musician. There is the grave of Tom Leadon, the guitarist from the Epics and Mudcrutch. There are the graves of three generations of Benmont Tench’s family, including Judge Tench, who Petty persuaded to allow his son to pursue a music career rather than return to college at Tulane University. And there is the grave of Harry Green, a fellow student at Gainesville High School who died in a car crash in 1966 and who would become the subject of a Tom Petty song.

    Harris Harding Green was the inspiration for Petty’s biographical song “Harry Green,” which was recorded in 1994 during the sessions for the “Wildflowers” album yet not released until 2020 in the ‘Wildflowers & All the Rest’ box set. Petty’s GHS peer died in a car crash Nov. 7, 1966, at age 16, the same age as Tom. 

     Here are excerpts of that song lyric: 

“Harry Green was my old friend 

We met in Spanish class 

Helped me out of a spot I was in 

He stopped a redneck from kickin’ my ass...

Harry Green was strong and tall 

Played on the football team... 

Well, them high school halls can sure get rough 

when you ain’t like everyone else... 

Sounded like rumor or lie 

Pontiac wrapped around an old oak tree

Vehicular suicide, Harry Green had died

Sometimes I wish I was still a boy 

With life ahead of me 

One day I’ll go back and say 

a few words over Harry Green... 

Harry Green was alright with me 

Harry Green was alright by me”      

    To listen to the song, go here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DEv2RsXo6qY 

    The gravemarker gives his full name, Harris Harding Green Jr., along with the birth and death dates. And Harry’s parents inscribed this onto the tombstone: “To Our Beloved Son Little Harry.” They are buried next to each other.

    In Evergreen Cemetery, you will find the Green family buried in Section EG 4, Block 67NE, Space 1, under a large weeping willow tree. To navigate here, follow these directions: Starting from 901 SE 21st Ave., which is essentially where you will find the entrance gates for the cemetery, drive in on Magnolia, then take first left onto Azalea, a short thoroughfare that you follow to the end, then turn right onto Olive when it turns to the right. Follow Olive until you reach the intersections of Hibiscus and then Lily. The Harris family gravemarkers are on the left side of Olive, clustered near the weeping willow. 

    If you have a smartphone, you can use these mapped directions using Google Maps:

https://maps.app.goo.gl/aRvmhBn62VtiX9Y7A

    Alternatively, you can use Evergreen Cemetery’s website to navigate here. To do that, go to their website, found here:

https://www.thiswondrousplace.org/

     Then click Burial Search in the upper right of the screen. Then type in the name of the person you are searching for.

If you are to visit this site, be sure to show reverence. And never, ever desecrate a gravesite! 

Photo by Shawn Murphy 

Old Yard section, 401 SE 21st Ave, Gainesville, FL 32641 

https://maps.app.goo.gl/noYyUYFHEjKnKLhW8 

     Located in the vast city-owned Evergreen Cemetery in Gainesville are gravesites with a Tom Petty connection. There is the grave of Tom Leadon, the guitarist from the Epics and Mudcrutch. There is the grave of Tom Petty’s maternal uncle who introduced him to Elvis Presley, which inspired him to become a musician. There is the grave of Harry Green, a fellow student at Gainesville High School who died in a car crash in 1966 and who would become the subject of a Tom Petty song. And there are the graves of three generations of the family of Benjamin Montmorency Tench III, or Benmont, the keyboardist for Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers and Mudcrutch. This includes Judge Tench, Benmont’s father, who Petty persuaded to allow his son to pursue a music career rather than return to college at Tulane University. 

     Benmont’s father, Benjamin Montmorency Tench II, an attorney and circuit court judge for nearly 50 years, was buried here in 2005. To learn more about his life, read the obituary from The Gainesville Sun, found at this Find a Grave website: https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/91200655/benjamin-montmorency-tench 

    Benmont’s mother, Mary Catherine McInnis “Katie” Tench, an “avid painter,” was also buried in this cemetery, in 2003. To learn more about her life, read the obituary from The Gainesville Sun, found at this Find a Grave website: https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/91200580/mary_catherine_tench  

     Benmont’s paternal grandfather, Benjamin Montmorenci Tench Sr. (note difference in spelling of middle name with his offspring), was buried here in 1956. To see his place in the family tree, peruse the Tench genealogy here at the Find a Grave website:

https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/27360650/benjamin_montmoranci_tench

    Benmont’s paternal grandmother, Frances (Darby) Tench, was buried here in 1974. See her in the Tench family tree here at the Find a Grave website:

https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/91200714/frances_tench

    Benmont’s paternal great-grandfather, John Walter Tench, was buried here in 1926. A Georgia native, he rose to the rank of Major during the Civil War before moving to Gainesville where he would spend the second half of his life. To learn more about him, see the obituary in a newspaper clipping from the Gainesville Daily Sun, found at this Find a Grave website:

https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/27232371/john_walter_tench

    Benmont’s paternal great-grandmother, Nancy Elizabeth (Dawkins) Tench, was buried here in 1928. To learn a bit about her, see the obituary in a newspaper clipping from the Gainesville Daily Sun, found at this Find a Grave website:

https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/27360578/nancy_elizabeth_tench

    In Evergreen Cemetery, you will find the Tench family plots in the Old Yard section. Among the 16 designated plots, you will find Benmont’s parents, paternal grandparents, and paternal great-grandparents, as well as other relatives. You will find them in Section OY, Block B.M. Tench, located close to the southern border of the cemetery. To navigate here, follow these directions: Starting from 901 SE 21st Ave., which is essentially where you will find the entrance gates for the cemetery, drive in on Magnolia, then take first right onto Azalea, a short thoroughfare that you follow to the end, then turn left onto Holly. Continue driving straight as you head toward the cemetery’s southern border. Once Holly crosses Rose, know that you are close to your destination. About two-thirds of the way down Holly on the left, you will find the Tench family gravesites among many older trees.    

If you have a smartphone, you can use these mapped directions using Google Maps:

https://maps.app.goo.gl/76wLbWUUzLMCd1MD9 

    Alternatively, you can use Evergreen Cemetery’s website to navigate here. To do that, go to their website, found here:

https://www.thiswondrousplace.org/ 

    Then click Burial Search in the upper right of the screen. Then type in the name of the person you are searching for.

     If you are to visit here, be sure to show reverence. And never, ever desecrate a gravesite! 

Photo of the gravesite for Benmont Tench's father by Shawn Murphy

Evergreen 3 section, 901 SE 21st Ave, Gainesville, FL 32641 

https://maps.app.goo.gl/TDhNJ6DMLqb1AXCQA

     Located in Gainesville’s Evergreen Cemetery are graves with a connection to Tom Petty. There are the graves of Tom Petty’s maternal aunt and uncle – the person who introduced him to Elvis Presley and inspired him to be a musician. There is the grave of Harry Green, a fellow student at Gainesville High School who died in a car crash in 1966 and who would become the subject of a Tom Petty song. There are the graves of three generations of Benmont Tench’s family, including Judge Tench, who Petty persuaded to allow his son to pursue a music career rather than return to college at Tulane University. And there is the grave of Tom Leadon, a close childhood friend of Tom Petty who was in the Epics and Mudcrutch with Petty. 

    The Leadon family home (412 NE 13th Ave.) is four-tenths of a mile via streets to the Petty family home (1715 NE 6th Terrace), although it's likely half that distance when Leadon cut across Northeast Park (renamed Tom Petty Park in 2018). Tom and Tom met after the Leadons moved from California to Florida so that the father, Bernard, could start his job as an aerospace professor at the University of Florida. 

    The introduction came via his older brother Bernie (later a member of the Eagles), who had been in a band back in California with high school friend Chris Hillman (later a member of the Byrds). Bernie helped teach Tom to play guitar; he proved to be a quick study. One day after school, Bernie invited home two of his friends, Ricky and Rodney Rucker. While there, the 17-year-old Ruckers heard 13-year-old Tom Leadon playing. Impressed, they asked him to join the Epics. Tom got permission to do so from his parents, yet had to take a hiatus until his slipping grades rebounded. It was during this time that the Ruckers got 15-year-old Tom Petty to join the Epics. By then, Petty had made a name for himself as the bass player in the Sundowners, his first band.

    The two Toms first met at the Petty home when Leadon walked there one day on summer vacation. In a backyard wooden warehouse attached to the house, the Epics were practicing the Byrds’ song “I’ll Feel a Whole Lot Better,” which he had learned from brother Bernie. On break, while Tom Petty was working out the song with drummer Dicky Underwood, Ricky Rucker requested that Tom Leadon help him perfect the chord progression. This led to Dicky and Ricky making the initial introduction of Leadon and Petty.

    The next day, Leadon cut across the park to the Petty house in an attempt to get to know each other better. They wound up smoking cigarettes and listening to records on an enclosed porch. They continued to create a bond of friendship over music as they got together the next day, and on every day after that. On one of these days, Tom Petty persuaded his new friend to rejoin the Epics, which he did (presumably Leadon’s grades had improved by then so that he had his parents’ blessing). 

    “I was fascinated with Petty,” Leadon wrote in an overview of his upbringing in Gainesville and the city’s music scene at the time, which you can read in full here: http://www.gainesvillerockhistory.com/TLeadon.htm 

    For Warren Zanes’ 2015 book, Petty: A Biography, Leadon talked about his friendship with Petty. Leadon recalled that during their teen years he would often go along with Petty and his date to the movies. And when Leadon couldn’t make it that night, Petty would fill Leadon in on what he missed.

   “He’d sit there and spend an hour, tell me the whole movie. The dialogue, the scenes in detail. He did it several times. I was amazed that he could remember it all. I think it was real to him in a way. Like he was experiencing it…” Leadon said. “And he had a way of looking you right in the eye, like he wanted to make sure you were getting it” (pg. 66).

   At the time of Tom Petty’s death on Oct. 2, 2017, Leadon wrote an emotional remembrance song called “My Best Old Friend,” which he sang and posted on YouTube. He wrote most of the lyrics on the night that Petty died. Here are lyrical excerpts:

“Angels came and took you away

Much too soon, I have to say.

We should have had many more years

And many more songs…

How I wish we could hang out once more

Just like we did a thousand times before…

But you live on inside my heart

My best old friend…

Spread your wings to the clear blue sky

And fly up to the mighty god on high…”

  To hear the full song, watch this video here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2LhjB8jA6OQ 

    At the time of Tom Leadon’s death, Mike Campbell, who was also in Mudcrutch, tweeted this: “Tom Leadon was my deepest guitar soul brother, we spent countless hours playing acoustic guitars and teaching each other things. A kinder soul never walked the earth. I will always miss his spirit and generosity. Sleep peacefully my old friend.”   

    Thomas J. Leadon died March 22, 2023, at the age of 70. He is buried alongside his parents and one of his nine siblings. At this Find a Grave website entry you can learn more about the family genealogy and read his obituary that was published in The Gainesville Sun:

https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/266282617/thomas-j-leadon 

    In February 2025, the city-owned cemetery unveiled its Burial Search mapping portal so that anyone can search for someone interred here. There was extensive news media coverage about this at the time, including this report from WCJB, an ABC affiliate:

https://www.wcjb.com/2025/02/23/evergreen-cemetery-is-adding-major-transformations/

    To utilize this search feature promoted by Evergreen Cemetery, go to their website, found here:

https://www.thiswondrousplace.org/ 

   Then click Burial Search in the upper right of the screen. Then type in the name of the person you are searching for – such as Thomas Leadon, who we are informed is buried in Section EG3, Block C19, Space 4. This is the Evergreen 3 section. 

To navigate here, follow these directions: Starting from 901 SE 21st Ave., which is essentially where you will find the entrance gates for the cemetery, drive in on Magnolia, then take first right onto Azalea, which you follow until its end, then turn left onto Holly, which you take nearly to the south end of the property. Once you cross Lily, know that you are close. The Leadon family gravesites are on the left, in between Lily and Rose.

    If you have a smartphone, you can use these mapped directions using Google Maps:

https://maps.app.goo.gl/TV7VNV3NRLu98aLY7 

 If you are to visit this site, be sure to show reverence. And never, ever desecrate a gravesite! 

Photo by Shawn Murphy (taken March 2025)

412 NE 13th Ave, Gainesville, FL 32601

https://maps.app.goo.gl/aTf9gxpHW3Y3Wp6e8     

     The childhood home of Bernie Leadon, later of the Eagles, and Tom Leadon, later of the Epics and Mudcrutch with Tom Petty, is hidden from street view along NE 13th Avenue, tucked behind a smaller house and lots of trees. The property abuts Tom Petty Park.

     For Warren Zanes’ 2015 book, Petty: A Biography, Tom Leadon talked about his friendship with Petty. Leadon recalled that during their teen years he would often go along with Petty and his date to the movies. And when Leadon couldn’t make it that night, Petty would fill Leadon in on what he missed.

     “He’d sit there and spend an hour, tell me the whole movie. The dialogue, the scenes in detail. He did it several times. I was amazed that he could remember it all. I think it was real to him in a way. Like he was experiencing it…” Leadon said. “And he had a way of looking you right in the eye, like he wanted to make sure you were getting it” (pg. 66).

     At the time of Tom Petty’s death in 2017, Leadon wrote an emotional remembrance song called “My Best Old Friend,” which he sang and posted on YouTube. He wrote most of the lyrics on the night that Petty died. Here are lyrical excerpts:

“Angels came and took you away

Much too soon, I have to say.

We should have had many more years

And many more songs…

How I wish we could hang out once more

Just like we did a thousand times before…

But you live on inside my heart

My best old friend…

Spread your wings to the clear blue sky

And fly up to the mighty god on high…”

    To hear the full song, watch this video here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2LhjB8jA6OQ 

    Tom Leadon died March 22, 2023, at the age of 70. His gravesite is in Evergreen Cemetery in Gainesville.

  Should you go here, remember that private property must be treated with respect, so do not trespass. 

Photo courtesy of Google Earth