Trail Tunes

Lillian’s Music Store, where Tom Petty did buy acoustic guitar strings as a child: “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”; Glen Springs Pool, where Tom Petty did swim as a child: “Ridin’ with my mama to Glen Springs Pool … when I think of her it makes me smile.” Related Trail Stops found on these pages:

https://tompettytrail.com/childhood-years 

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

Tom Petty’s hometown becomes a song: “Gainesville was a big town … long ago and far away, another time, another day.” Related Trail Stop found on this page: https://tompettytrail.com/lyrical-threads-vol-1  

This version, recorded live in Gainesville on the campus of the University of Florida, seem particularly poignant as he recalls his beloved mom, Kitty: “There’s a dream I keep having where my mama comes to me and kneels down over by the window and says a prayer for me.” Connected Trail Stop to concert venue found on this page: https://tompettytrail.com/uf-later-years  

Based on real-life Gainesville High School friend who protected Tom Petty from being bullied, yet unfortunately would die in a car crash: “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 alright by me.” Trail Stop found on this page: https://tompettytrail.com/teen-years 

Cypress Lounge (now Munegin’s on 13th) and Interstate-75 backstory from the “Live Anthology” version. There are other backstories about this bar in other recorded live renditions of this song, one of which is shared at the Trail Stop found on this page: https://tompettytrail.com/lyrical-threads-vol-1 

Inspired by a crush on a real-life junior high school girl, based on actual events: “We smoked cigarettes and we stared at the moon and I showed you stars you never could see … two cars parked on the overpass, rocks hit the water like broken glass.” Related Trail Stop found on this page: https://tompettytrail.com/childhood-years 

Inspired by the crush with the same real-life junior high school girl, wondering what became of her: “Wherever you are tonight, I wish you the best of everything in the world, and honey, I hope you found, whatever you were looking for.” Trail Stop found on this page: https://tompettytrail.com/childhood-years  

Something that Tom Petty’s abusive father said to him as a child, according to Warren Zanes’ biography; Tom took ownership of that line and changed its meaning in this song, originally done by Mudcrutch. Childhood home Trail Stop found on this page: https://tompettytrail.com/childhood-years  

Mentions an actual roadway that runs north to south through the central and eastern side of the Florida peninsula, including Gainesville: “She stood alone on her balcony, yeah, she could hear the cars rolls by out on 441 like waves crashin’ on the beach.” Trail Stop found on this page: https://tompettytrail.com/lyrical-threads-vol-1 

A suitable song to cue up outside of the gymnasium at Gainesville High School: “I’ll be the boy in the corduroy pants, you be the girl at the high school dance.” Trail Stop found on this page: https://tompettytrail.com/teen-years 

Since 2017, the singalong anthem played at all Gator football home games. Trail Stop found on this page: https://tompettytrail.com/uf-later-years  

Actual roadway that runs north to south through the western side of the Florida peninsula, including through Archer just west of Gainesville, which was home to Tom Petty’s musical inspiration and friend, Bo Diddley, for the last two decades of his life: “I need a drink of water, get out of the sun, burnin’ up to make that wage on U.S. 41.” Trail Stop found on this page: https://tompettytrail.com/lyrical-threads-vol-3  

Names two towns near Gainesville: “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.” Also includes Tom Petty’s middle name, Earl, in the lyrics. Trail Stop found on this page: https://tompettytrail.com/lyrical-threads-vol-1  

Names two locations in Florida: “I was flying half-mast on the 4th of July, in a bar in Lake City with a western tie, I was thinkin’ hard about changin’ my name and headed for Miami when the daylight came.” Trail Stop found on this page: https://tompettytrail.com/lyrical-threads-vol-3 

Names Tampa and the Everglades, includes reference to historical figure, Osceola, connected to St. Augustine: “I’m waiting for the bus to Tampa Bay, there’s a map of Osceola and his Raiders, fighting off the Everglades invaders, he burnt them down, he left them for the gators, and there’s maybe something better down the road.” Trail Stop found on this page: https://tompettytrail.com/lyrical-threads-vol-3  

Based on a real-life trip to a town in Central Florida, Cassadaga, a spiritualist community: “The moon pulls the tide and tide brings the night, but night is more than just night in Casa Dega … tonight in Casa Dega I hang on every word that she said to me as she holds my hand and reads the lines of a stranger, she knows my name, she knows my plan – in the past, in the present and for the future.” Trail Stop found on this page: https://tompettytrail.com/lyrical-threads-vol-1   

A real town and river along Florida’s Gulf Coast, where there is a National Wildlife Refuge called the Manatee Capital of the World: “I’m dreamin’, dreamin’ where the water’s wide, Crystal River, got a woman on the other side and nothin’ can touch me here.” Trail Stop found on this page: https://tompettytrail.com/lyrical-threads-vol-3  

Names Daytona Beach: “Rickey rolled a number, Dickey raised the hood, time we hit Daytona, I was feeling pretty good.” Trail Stop found on this page: https://tompettytrail.com/lyrical-threads-vol-1  

Actual roadway on the southern Gulf Coast of Florida: “Good fortune comes our way and we’ll ride down the Kings Highway.” Trail Stop found on this page: https://tompettytrail.com/lyrical-threads-vol-3 

Names actual county in Florida: “I’m through with Clay County, you never done a thing for me.” Trail Stop found on this page: https://tompettytrail.com/lyrical-threads-vol-3   

Many Tom Petty songs include Southern imagery, including this one: “Create myself down south, impress all the women, pretend I’m Samuel Clemens, wear seersucker and white linens … Spanish moss down south, find the heroes of my childhood who can do me no good, carve their names in dogwood.”  

A song full of Southern references, among them this lyric: “I was born a rebel, down in Dixie on a Sunday morning.” 

More Southern imagery: “Her lips were as warm as that wet southern night, her eyes were as black as the sky.”   

Surveys the South from the sky: “I’m passing sleeping cities fading by degrees … I’m flyin’ over backyards, country homes and ranches, watching life between the branches below.” 

Names two Southern states and a city: “Louisiana rain is falling at my feet … is soaking through my shoes, I may never be the same when I reach Baton Rouge … South Carolina put out its arms for me, right up until everything went black somewhere on Lonely Street.” 

Mudcrutch’s first single, recorded in 1973 in Miami, includes a Southern state in its title and lyrics: “Sally’s up in Mississippi tonight with a man she hardly knows, wearin’ brand new clothes … I hope she alright up in Mississippi tonight.” Trail Stop for recording studio found on this page: https://tompettytrail.com/buried-treasure 

Mudcrutch’s cover of a Byrds song, it drips with Southern imagery: “Catfish pie in a gris gris bag, I’m the lover of the bayou … I was raised and swam with the crocodile, snake-eye taught me the mojo style, sucked and weaned on chicken bile … I cooked a bat in a gumbo can, I drank the blood from a rusty can, turned me into the Hunger Man, I’m the lover of the bayou.” 

While the 7-Eleven and interstate cited in the lyrics could be anywhere, it has a Southern feel, perhaps recalling actual events in his Gainesville years: “She took a rolled-up twenty out of her pocket and paid for my cigarettes, we were friends at first sight in the 7-Eleven light, she said here let me cover it and I rode shotgun all that night, she drove and never made a sound, when I asked if there was anything wrong she said nothin’ worth talking about, it's a blue Sunday down the interstate … blue with shades of gray.”  

Another song that could be anywhere, but this has the feel of a hot, humid Southern setting: “You’re barefoot in the grass and you’re chewing sugarcane, you got a little buzz-on, you’re kissing in the rain, and if a day like this don’t ever come again, well, that’s good enough.”   

Includes a Southern state in its title and lyrics: “Look at them peaches down in Georgia, red clay peaches hangin’ on a tree.”   

Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers’ cover of the J.J. Cale song names a Southern state and several cities: “Thirteen days on a gig down South, but we had enough dope to keep us all around … Birmingham, Mobile and up to Baton Rouge, we’re smokin’ cigarettes and reefer, drinkin’ coffee and booze, we see the sun go down in Georgia, come up in New Orleans now we got to know a waitress, I tried to get in her jeans.” 

Recorded by Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers for the “Southern Accents” album, yet released only as a B side to “Don’t Come Around Here No More” and included in the Playback box set, it was also recorded by Mudcrutch, which is the version on the playlist. While the location could be anywhere, it seems inspired by Tom Petty’s Southern upbringing and observations: “She graduated high school, I bought her a trailer in a little park by the side of the road, I could’ve had the army, I could’ve had the navy, but no, I had to go for the mobile home … man, we used to dance to Lynyrd Skynyrd, boy, she used to look so good at times.”   

While this Mudcrutch cover of a traditional folk ballad from Appalachia, likely Kentucky, it’s a song with that Southern feel: “I wish I had a big fine horse and corn to feed him on, and Shady Grove to stay at home and feed him while I’m gone.”

Names a Southern state and city in its lyrics, as well as is centered around a destructive hurricane: “An orphan of the storm, she moved to Houston to live below that copper-colored sky, Louisiana girl, born into losing, the skyline of the city made her cry … the hurricane blew her back to Houston, had to give into the devil’s howling wind.”  

Names a Southern state: “Moonlight on the interstate, she was across the Georgia line, looked out the window, feeling great.”    

Seems like a suitable song to listen to in the hometown of Tom Petty, who might have once had the blues as he dreamed about life beyond a one story town: “Tryin’ to make the best of the hometown blues.” 

Early Mudcrutch song, written by Benmont Tench, that Tom Petty sang in the original 1973 recording at the Tench family home in Gainesville. This live version by Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers from the Fillmore in 1997 has Benmont sing it. 

Another song that could be anywhere on a moonlit night, yet it has an unmistakable mysterious Southern vibe to it: “White light cut a scar in the sky, thin line of silver, night was all clouded with dreams, wind made me shiver, black and yellow pools of light outside my window, Luna come to me tonight, I am a prisoner, Luna glide down from the moon.” 

While there are 6th Avenues practically anywhere, it’s possible this lyric was inspired by a real person on any of the 6th Avenues in the various sections of Gainesville on a particular Sunday afternoon: “There goes Angela down 6th Avenue, goin’ to the store, Sunday afternoon.”  

Another song that could be set anywhere, including the South: “You got ruby lipstick, rose petal rouge and dime store jewelry, cheap perfume, I don’t mind, take my hand, I wanna be your mystery man.” 

This Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers’ cover of the Thunderclap Newman song was recorded live in Gainesville on the campus of the University of Florida. Connected Trail Stop to concert venue found on this page: https://tompettytrail.com/uf-later-years   

Recorded live in Gainesville on the campus of the University of Florida. Connected Trail Stop to concert venue found on this page: https://tompettytrail.com/uf-later-years  

This Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers’ cover of the Spencer Davis Group song, written by Steve Winwood, was recorded live in Gainesville on the campus of the University of Florida. Connected Trail Stop to concert venue found on this page: https://tompettytrail.com/uf-later-years 

Recorded live in Gainesville on the campus of the University of Florida. Connected Trail Stop to concert venue found on this page: https://tompettytrail.com/uf-later-years   

Recorded live in Gainesville on the campus of the University of Florida. Connected Trail Stop to concert venue found on this page: https://tompettytrail.com/uf-later-years 

Recorded live in Gainesville on the campus of the University of Florida. Connected Trail Stop to concert venue found on this page: https://tompettytrail.com/uf-later-years   

This Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers’ cover of the Bob Dylan song weighs heavily, especially since his death on Oct. 2, 2017. But it had to be on this playlist, coming full circle back to his start in life.     

A song that is timeless and placeless, yet seems like the right song to hear while touring Tom Petty’s Gainesville and Florida: “Wherever that wind might go, wherever that river rolls, you know I will go with you … just you and me, and the road ahead.”