Trail Stops

Gainesville, FL 32601

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     Tom Petty's hometown is a song title of this Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers recording from 1998 that was not released until the 2018 posthumous box set "An American Treasure." Here is a lyric from "Gainesville": 

"Good times roll and then move on 

Long ago and far away, 

another time, another day 

Gainesville was a big town." 

     You can watch the nostalgic video for it here: 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E6NxbUzNM5U 

     Note that at 33 North Main St. in downtown Gainesville you will find the office for the Alachua County Visitors and Convention Bureau, otherwise known as Visit Gainesville, where you can learn about all there is to see and do in the Gainesville region. Or you can browse its website, found here: https://www.visitgainesville.com/ 

Photo courtesy of Visit Gainesville

112 SE 1st St, Gainesville, FL 32601

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     Today this is a bar called Lillian's Music Store, but it once was an actual music store frequented by Tom Petty in his youth. The historic sign and the business name remain, despite it now being a bar. 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" 

     You can listen to the song here:

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

      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 Tom's mother, who was on her way to work downtown (one block to the north: Alachua County Tax Collector’s office and the Driver License and Motor Vehicles Service Center, 22 SE 1st St.), drove them to Lillian's Music Store that day. After getting the guitar strings, Tom and Keith would walk the mile and a half back home. 

     Tom would later strum these strings on his acoustic guitar. And much later would pen the nostalgic song lyrics.

Photo by Shawn Murphy

2424 NW 23rd Blvd, Gainesville, FL 32605

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     "Dreamville" from the 2002 album "The Last DJ" recalls a childhood trip Tom Petty made with his mother, Kitty, to Glen Springs Pool. The public pool, which closed in 1970, is today located behind the privately owned Elks Lodge No. 990. Here is that lyric:

"Ridin' with my mama 

To Glen Springs Pool 

The water was cold 

My lips were blue 

There was rock and roll 

Across the dial 

When I think of her 

It makes me smile 

Like it was Dreamville 

A long time ago 

A million miles away 

All the trees were green 

In Dreamville." 

     Here you can listen to the song:

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

      Keith Harben, Tom's neighborhood friend, told me that Tom would typically go to the pool with him because his mother didn't have a job during the week while Tom's mother did. The Harben family had a pass for the pool, which was especially popular in the broiling hot summer months. While one could wonder whether the year-round 72-degree water was so cold it could turn lips blue, Keith noted that it was possible for some people since the air was so hot and humid. And for Tom Petty, Keith said it most certainly did turn his lips blue one day. Keith recalls Tom, thin as a rail with pale white skin, standing in a white bathing suit with a towel wrapped around him, shivering while his lips turned blue.

Glen Springs Pool postcard, circa late 1940s, courtesy of  the University of Florida Digital Collections

 1605 NE 6th Terrace, Gainesville, FL 32609

https://maps.app.goo.gl/PAdM1GCv2A4mAjzg6 

    Ever wonder who’s the title character in the Tom Petty song “There Goes Angela (Dream Away)”? The song, a recording during the sessions for the 1994 “Wildflowers” album yet not released until 2020 in the “Wildflowers & All the Rest” box set, quite possibly stemmed from childhood play with neighborhood friends, including Angelia Sapp, who lived here during the 1950s when Tom Petty lived three doors from her to the north, surmises Tom’s childhood friend Keith Harben.      

     While Tom Petty’s lyrics leave us wondering who he’s writing about and what’s going on, and he certainly takes creative liberties in doing so, it’s probable that he begins with a real person in a real place, doing real things – all centered around nostalgic memories. 

     The Petty family lived on NE 6th Terrace in Gainesville (No. 1715), as did the Sapp family (No. 1605), whose patriarch, entomologist Dempsey Sapp, started the successful Florida Pest Control & Chemical Company. But the Sapp home is on the corner of NE 16th Avenue. In the song, Petty envisions, or recalls, “Angela” walking “down 16th Avenue,” presumably enroute to real-life places where they played. A block west from the Sapp home down NE 16th Avenue would have been the woods where they played (now a church school), which is across the street from the park where they played (now Tom Petty Park).

    Petty’s lyric about “Tarzan in the trees, cowboys in the yard” recalls childhood memories of playing games with a group of friends in the neighborhood, Angelia and others, among them Keith Harben. They would often climb trees along the densely wooded street, Keith told me, or they would play “cowboys and Indians” in the woods just to the west of this street (where today is located the St. Patrick Interparish School, across NE 16th Ave. from Tom Petty Park).

    For Paul Zollo’s 2005 book Conversations with Tom Petty, Petty remembered this sort of childplay in the woods, including with his younger brother, Bruce, when he was old enough to do so.

    “We’d just bum around the neighborhood. Back in those days, people just let their kids out till dark. We’d just bum around with other kids. We lived near a big city park called Northeast Park, in Gainesville (today’s Tom Petty Park, renamed in 2018; 501 NE 16th Ave.). It bordered a small, wooded forest. We ran around, my brother and I, and we played a lot of cowboys and Indians. That was the big game back then. We had a lot of cowboy stuff. A lot of cap pistols. We did that when we were really young” (pg. 8).

    Here are part of the song lyrics for “There Goes Angela (Dream Away)”:

“There goes Angela

Down 16th Avenue

Goin’ to the store

Sunday afternoon…

Tarzan in the trees

Cowboys in the yard

Didn’t know they’d be afraid

Didn’t know life was hard…

One day I’ll be back

One day I’ll be home

Right now I’ve got some things

To do out on the road.

But dream away my love

Let your heart be free

And if ever someone should break your will

Have a dream on me”

    You can listen to the song here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0oobETX0IIo

    The Tom Petty Trail stop for Angelia Sapp’s childhood home can be found on this page:

https://tompettytrail.com/lyrical-threads-vol-1 

    And the Tom Petty Trail stop for the Petty family home can be found on this page:

https://tompettytrail.com/childhood-years 

     Should you go to the homes where the Sapps or the Pettys lived, remember that these are private homes, located in a residential neighborhood, so must be treated with respect for the property owner and neighbors. This includes not trespassing on private property! 

     Thank you to Keith Harben for giving me the grand tour while sharing memories and stories. 

Photo by Shawn Murphy

874 SE 4th St, Gainesville, FL 32601

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     Once a regional railroad hub, the old train station now anchors Depot Park, a public park that has been a site of Tom Petty Gathering concerts. To the north of this public park is Depot Avenue, which perhaps was the inspiration for Mudcrutch’s first single “Depot Street” from 1975. Here is part of that lyric: "Down on Depot Street 

I'm gonna see my baby

Depot Street I'm gonna see my girl... 

We ain't got no money

We don't have no car

We stay down

On Depot Street

Just dancin' in the park." 

     You can listen to the song here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wHPe2yPAQYY 

Photo by Shawn Murphy

4005 NW 13th St, Gainesville, FL 32609

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     Currently a bar named "Munegin’s on 13th," it once was the Cypress Lounge, where Mudcrutch performed. It later became part of the background story told in the introduction to the live version of Tom Petty and the Hearbreakers' song “Spike." In the 2012 Estero, Fla., concert recording, Tom sets up the song by calling the Cypress Lounge "the meanest, nastiest bar in the whole state of Florida." In crafting the tale of the character Spike, Tom expands: 

     "There were hippie-killers in the Cypress Lounge...it was scary in there. There were robbers, and muggers, and retired shrimp boat captains in there. There were guitar thieves in there."  

     This live version can be watched here:

https://youtu.be/1u2fgGEgaPo

     And to read more about the song and its live versions, read this piece, titled "The Devil and Tom Petty," by author John Griswold in "The Common Reader: Journal of the Essay": https://commonreader.wustl.edu/the-devil-and-tom-petty/ 

Photo by Shawn Murphy

4565 NW 13th St, Gainesville, FL 32609

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     This convenience store and gas station is a good place to park because it is across NW 13th St. from the former location of Dub's Steer Room where Mudcrutch was the house band for months in the early 1970s (after Dub's was razed, a Social Security administration building was erected).  

     This spot is also where one can reflect on an essential song of the Tom Petty song catalog -- "American Girl." NW 13th St., which runs vertically through Gainesville, is part of U.S. 441, a route that runs south to north from Kissimmee to High Springs. The route became part of the "American Girl" lyric on the 1976 debut album by Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers. Here is part of that lyric about the girl "raised on promises": 

"She was an American girl... 

She stood alone on her balcony

Yeah, she could hear the cars roll by

Out on 441

Like waves crashin' on the beach" 

     Here you can watch a video of Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers performing this song in 2002 for their induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame:

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

Photo by Shawn Murphy

Brooker, FL 32622

https://maps.app.goo.gl/uFQtsnKRa9q5Lrdd9

     Tom Petty used the town's name in "A Mind With a Heart of Its Own," a song from Tom Petty's 1989's "Full Moon Fever" album. Here is that lyric:

"Well I've been to Brooker, 

and I've been to Micanopy

I've been to St. Louis too, 

I've been all around the world

I've been over to your house

And you've been over sometimes to my house

I've slept in your tree house

My middle name is Earl

A mind with a heart of its own"

     You can listen to the song here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QwZwJPbb__g

Photo by Shawn Murphy

Micanopy, FL  32667 

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     Micanopy (pronounced mi-kuh-no-pee), named after Seminole Chief Micanopy, is the oldest inland town in Florida. Sometimes referred to  today as the "Town That Time Forgot," it is  where Tom and Jane Petty would periodically shop in one of its several antique shops. 

   Later, he would use the town's name in "A Mind With a Heart of Its Own," a song from Tom Petty's 1989's "Full Moon Fever" album. Here is that lyric:

"Well I've been to Brooker, 

and I've been to Micanopy

I've been to St. Louis too, 

I've been all around the world

I've been over to your house

And you've been over sometimes to my house

I've slept in your tree house

My middle name is Earl

A mind with a heart of its own"

     You can listen to the song here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QwZwJPbb__g

Photo by Shawn Murphy

2010 N Main St, Gainesville, FL 32609

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     The Clock restaurant is where Tom Petty's father, Earl, would have his morning breakfast in his later years. If you wish, ask a waiter to point out Earl's table.

     One can only wonder whether Tom had this in mind for the song "You Don't Know How It Feels" from the 1994 "Wildflowers" album, which include this lyric:

"My old man was born to rock

He's still tryin' to beat the clock"

     You can watch the video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9TlBTPITo1I

Photo by Shawn Murphy

100 Savannah Blvd, Micanopy, FL 32667

https://maps.app.goo.gl/p2bTsQMynE64xj2q9

     Rumored to have been the landscape vista that inspired the song "Into the Great Wide Open" from the 1991 album of the same name -- despite that there is no topical connection to this 22,000-acre Paynes Prairie Preserve State Park, a savannah where bison and horses roam freely, located just south of Gainesville. 

     You can watch the video here: https://youtu.be/xqmFxgEGKH0 

Photo courtesy of Florida State Parks

Daytona Beach, FL 32114

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     Daytona Beach was where in 1956 that Tom Petty's family spent a bright sunny day with their Gainesville neighbors and family relations, the Darnells. Thanks to Tom's longtime neighborhood friend Keith Harben, I was able to watch a home movie that was given to him by the Darnell twin sisters, Sadie and Norma, Tom's cousins (their mother was the sister of Tom's mother, Kitty). In the color video, you can see 1950s-era cars parked on the wide sandy beach that is sandwiched between hotels and the ocean. On that beach you see Tom and Bruce Petty playing in the water and on the sand with Sadie and Norma, as well as the Petty and Darnell parents. In once scene, Tom's father, Earl, is running around with the children, much to their and his amusement.

     To learn more about this home movie, see the Duckpond Trail Stop here:

https://tompettytrail.com/childhood-years 

     Unrelated to this Daytona Beach family outing, Tom would, many years later, name Daytona in "About to Give Out," a song from Tom Petty and the Heartbreaker's 1999's "Echo" album. Here is that lyric:

"Rickey and Dickey

Standing in the sun

Out there on that highway and the dog wouldn't run

Rickey rolled a number

Dickey raised the hood

Time we hit Daytona I was feeling pretty good

Oh, mama I'm about to give out

Oh, mama I'm about to give out

I'm Davey Crockett in a coonskin town"

     You can listen to that song here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jerrKK0LRS0

     As a side note, there is either incidental or purposeful rhyming wordplay in the "Rickey and Dickey" lyric. It is possible that Tom Petty intended to give a shout-out to Ricky Rucker and Dickie Underwood in the Epics, his second band from Gainesville.

Photo courtesy of Florida Memories Facebook page