Why?
It's a fair question. Mudcrutch broke up some 35 years ago, just another regional
band that had moved to LA in hopes of making it in the music business. And
when they did break up, the world didn't notice or care. It was just another
beautiful day in Los Angeles, and no one was going to give it back in the name
of Mudcrutch. The band didn't leave any full-length recordings behind them
or release any singles that made a dent. So, yeah, why? And why now? It really
is a fair question. And Tom Petty has what is perhaps the most reasonable answer
a musician can offer: "I guess I started thinking that we left some music back
there, and it was time to go and get it."
This meant making a few phone calls. Two Mudcrutch members, Mike Campbell
and Benmont Tench, had already heard mention of the idea. Granted, they had
some doubt as to whether Tom Petty would actually follow through on it - it
was a weird one, this idea--but they'd been following his lead for a couple
decades now with pretty solid results. Wait it out, they figured. Then Petty
called Randall Marsh and Tom Leadon to run the idea past them. That's when
it started to get real. Petty was going to put Mudcrutch back together to make
their debut recording.
Before we go on, let's consider what we're talking about
here. As everyone knows, bands reform all the time. Jimmy Page reformed Led
Zeppelin just recently. Eric Clapton reformed Cream. So wouldn't it follow
that Tom Petty would reform . . . Mudcrutch? May the gods remember Tom Petty
as a guy that kept us guessing.
Back
to Randall Marsh and Tom Leadon. Now, Leadon has been giving guitar lessons
for the past several years. Marsh plays in bar bands. They'd both done what
they could to get something going on a bigger scale, but nothing took in any
kind of lasting way. Over the years they'd had opportunities to see Tom Petty
and the Heartbreakers play. More to the point, Marsh and Leadon had watched
it all go down. Being gentlemen, they were glad for their old friends from
Gainesville. But there's another side to it--not envy, but something like a
sliver of melancholy that comes when you're having a good conversation with
someone at the 7-11, where you get your coffee each morning, and suddenly you
hear your old bandmates on the radio, playing another one of their top ten
hits. What do you do? You get your coffee and you go to work. But show me the
man who wouldn't have a couple feelings.
So Petty has the idea and makes the
calls. They all find a time they can get together. Tom Leadon and Randall Marsh
come into town and stay at Tom Petty's house in Malibu. The Heartbreaker crew
builds a recording studio in the band's rehearsal space. It happened fast.
And, without a doubt, this was not guaranteed to work. None of it. But it did.
All of it.
The self-titled Mudcrutch debut
is a revelation. For all the great unknown bands that never deserved to die,
Mudcrutch has rolled back the stone and sauntered out into the daylight like
they had this on their calendars. Recorded live, no overdubs, Mudcrutch is
the sound of a five-piece band playing together. There's a purity to it. Petty
wanted it that way: "I made a commitment at the beginning of the project that
I wanted this to be Mudcrutch, done as it was back in the day. I really wanted
it to be that band."
That band had a few folks stepping up to take the lead vocals. That band
might have a song written by Tom Leadon or Benmont Tench or Mike Campbell.
That band had Tom Petty on bass. That band mixed bluegrass tunes into their
set. And it all happens again on Mudcrutch.
Perhaps most striking is the way in which Tom Leadon, brother of former Eagle
and Flying Burrito Brother Bernie Leadon, emerges as a remarkably sympathetic
partner and foil to both Petty and Campbell. Top to bottom, Leadon and Campbell
are in one of the most interesting conversations on guitar since the Rolling
Stones made Some Girls. Whether egging each other on in songs like "Bootleg
Flyer" or wrapping their parts around one another"s on the album's stunning
centerpiece, "Crystal River," the two players sound throughout like a connection
is being made. For Petty, Leadon brings something equally powerful - and it's
the sound of a harmony singer with whom Petty grew up singing.
"Tom Leadon and I were together when we learned to sing. We were very young.
He was probably fourteen, and I was sixteen. We lived close to each other.
There was a city park between our houses where we'd go and hang out when we
weren't at one another's houses. We'd just sit around and sing, trying to learn
harmonies and stuff, playing our guitars. And Tom is a natural harmony singer.
There's a sweetness and vulnerability in his voice that I like."
Petty and Leadon share lead vocal duty on the beautiful album opener, "Shady
Grove," a song from the 18th century that is a staple to the bluegrass songbag.
As Petty tells it, "Mudcrutch used to learn bluegrass songs on acoustic instruments
then play them in our sets using electric instruments. I always thought it
was a sound I didn't hear too much. You hear it on "Shady Grove" but also on
"June Apple," where you've got Benmont's Hammond organ playing bluegrass. It's
an unconventional approach but a sound that was pretty unique to Mudcrutch
back in the day."
If the country part of the Mudcrutch aesthetic emerges most conspicuously on
the band's cover of Dave Dudley's classic "Six Days on the Road," Petty originals
including the gorgeous "Orphan of the Storm" and "House of Stone" and Leadon's
"Queen of the Go-Go Girls" all reveal the band's musical connection to the
first groups who were bringing country into the rock and roll context. Petty
explains:
"Early on with Mudcrutch, Tom Leadon gave us a big dose of what would
come to be called country rock. It's hard to imagine a time before that music
got big with groups like the Eagles, but when we were first doing it it was
very fresh, very new. Tom's brother Bernie was in the Flying Burrito Brothers
and, before that, this group with Gene Clark [of the Byrds] and Doug Dillard
called Dillard and Clark. We tried to assimilate it all as best we knew how.
In fact, we tried to play the real country bars at one point. We auditioned
at one place - and the guy actually liked us - but we were told, 'You know
I like the way you sound, but looking the way you look, I wouldn't feel good
about having you in here'."
No matter all the musical ingredients thrown in the Mudcrutch caldron, Mudcrutch
is ultimately about a band sound, a sound that was just too good to leave back
there. A few members came and went [see below for Petty's personal rundown
on the band's history], but the key factors in the Mudcrutch chemistry are
best represented in this lineup. Randall Marsh is a drummer who moves easily
between the band's many territories, whether the up-tempo groove of the infectious
"Topanga Cowgirl," the shuffle on what surely ranks as one of Petty's most
perfect ballads, "Oh, Maria," or the pure energy of Campbell/Petty co-write
"Bootleg Flyer." Benmont Tench is Benmont Tench - and like Campbell, he sounds
like he's having a busman's holiday like no other. Frankly, his contribution,
"This Is a Good Street," will be enough reason for many people to buy this
recording. Like his writing for other artists, the song is a short sharp thing,
built smart, balancing the pathos with a humor all its own.
It was all a strange idea. Too strange to be categorized as a mid-life crisis
and absolutely too strange to be viewed as a career move. And, as Petty is
quite willing to admit, it could have been an awkward high school reunion.
But Petty is a man whose instincts have taken him to some interesting parties.
I see no reason not to follow him when he goes, wherever he goes.
TP on Mudcrutch
History
Let me tell you how it went: Mudcrutch, when it first existed, was simply
the Epics with a new name. That was probably 1968 or 1969. The lineup included
Dickie Underwood on the drums, Rodney Rucker as lead singer, Ricky Rucker on
the guitar, me on bass, and Tom Leadon on guitar. Then, very quickly, by late
1969 or early 1970, everybody left but me and Leadon. So we joined up with
Jim Lenehan, who was going to be the lead singer. That version of the band
didn't really work because there were only three of us. We played a coffee
house or two, but that was it.
Then we ran into Randall Marsh, who had a roommate
named Mike Campbell. That was quite a package deal. By, I think, '72, Tom Leadon
left and moved out to California. Of course Jim Lenehan had already left -
I think he only stayed for two months or so. He wasn't there very long at all.
Now Benmont comes on the scene, I think, a few shows before Leadon left. But
he would go back and forth to college. While Ben was in school we played as
a three-piece for a while. We were always waiting on Benmont.
Then we met Danny
Roberts, and he came in - sometime in late '72 or early '73 - and was with
the band, on guitar and bass, until we came out to California. We came to California
in April of '74. Danny stuck around for a few months, maybe a little longer
while we were out there and then just split. He didn't think we were going
to make it. He left, and we never heard from him again until recently.
So then
we had another version of the band, with just Mike, Randall, Benmont, and myself.
Then, two months before the band breaks up, we brought in a fellow to play
the bass. We decided I'd switch over to the guitar, and Charlie Souza came
in - and he was there only for a couple months before the band called it a
day.
