Mudcrutch

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.