Mudcrutch Review

Tom Petty has described re-forming his pre-fame, early-'70s outfit Mudcrutch as...''crazy.'' To which we say, ''Piffle!'' As last year's rock doc Runnin' Down a Dream: Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers showed, the group was pretty good. Indeed, keyboardist Benmont Tench and guitarist Mike Campbell went on to play in Petty's band the Heartbreakers. They are joined on this debut release — which comes three decades after their split — by guitarist Tom Leadon, who later backed Linda Ronstadt, and drummer Randall Marsh, a music teacher.
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I t’s a name that’ll be instantly familiar to hardcore Tom Petty fans, but to everyone else, Mudcrutch sounds like something that’s uncomfortably close to what happens when you combine too much Mexican food and too much beer, so here’s a little background info: comprised of Petty on bass, keyboardist Benmont Tench, Mike Campbell and Tom “Bernie’s brother” Leadon on guitar, and drummer Randall Marsh, Mudcrutch was Petty’s pre-Heartbreakers band, a motley crew of Byrds-loving kids who traveled from Florida to L.A., only to wilt under the steely glare of an unsympathetic record industry. Petty drafted Tench and Campbell to form the nucleus of the Heartbreakers, and the rest was history.
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Even a dude with a track record as golden as Tom Petty's needs to reflect on paths not taken. Mudcrutch, Petty's pre-Heartbreakers band, released a single and little else in the mid-Seventies. And that's too bad, since they reunite here for a hot country-rock set that clearly aspires to, and gets within spitting distance of, genre classics like Sweetheart of the Rodeo, The Gilded Palace of Sin and American Beauty. If the Heartbreakers had never happened, this band would have worked out just fine.
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