The Tom Petty Project

byKevin Brown

InterviewsHistoryMusicCommentary

This is the weekly podcast that digs into the entire Tom Petty catalog song by song, album by album and includes conversations with musicians, fans, and people connected with Tom along the way.Follow me on social media:Twitter: https://twitter.com/TomPettyProjectFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/thetompettyprojectInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/thetompettyproject/Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@thetompettyprojectThreads: https://www.threads.net/@thetompettyproject(This podcast is in no way affiliated with the Tom Petty estate.)Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/the-tom-petty-project. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Episodes(40 episodes)

Season 14 - Episode 10

Damaged by Love

“There's rain on the road And the faithful have gone. In a crowd all alone, Walking 'round in a song”. It’s a great little snapshot or vignette, as Tom so often gives us, of perhaps a wedding or some other celebration at a small roadside church. That feeling of being alone in a crowd is beautifully phrased by changing the order of the words; rather than All alone in a crowd, “in a crowd all alone” feels more poetic and more deliberately focusing on the alone part rather than the crowd part. And, we have to tip our hat to Dan...

Published: May 13, 2026Duration: 20m 59s

Season 14 - Episode 9

Night Driver is one of those perfect album tracks that you always want to hear on great records. There’s something to be said for albums where any song could basically be a single, but I tend to gravitate more towards albums that are very carefully curated around a central idea and Highway Companion is definitely one of those. This track sits on the second half of the record, coming after the euphoric Big Weekend, as a mood piece and a moment in time for the central character on the album. It’s a wonderfully restrained and melodically comfortable song...

Published: May 6, 2026Duration: 24m 14s

Season 14 - Episode 8

The first verse contains one of my all time favourite lyrics. Not just one of my very favourite Tom Petty lyrics, just one of my favourite lyrics full stop. And it’s not a superb piece of word play or a huge emotionally charge line. It’s not a cuttingly brilliant philosophically brilliant observation - we get that later in the song - nor is it a playfully subversive line. It’s this line; “They live in a brick house, painted white and brown.” And specifically the last half of the line; “Painted white and brown.” I know that line probably...

Published: Apr 15, 2026Duration: 25m 55s

Season 14 - Episode 7

Anything That's Rock 'n' Roll (Revisited)

“Some friends of mine and me stayed up all through the night, Rockin' pretty steady 'til the sky went light And didn't go to bed, Didn't go to work. I picked up the telephone, Told the boss he was a jerk”. Come on. You don’t find better rock n roll lyrics than those. They come from a guy who’s done the time. Worked crummy jobs, worked crummy bars playing to uninteresting punters who want to see the strippers. He’s lived this life and the way he’s singing about it, it’s real. Sure, it’s also a pastiche...

Published: Apr 8, 2026Duration: 25m 59s

Season 14 - Episode 6

Turn This Car Around

In my mind’s eye, I see a younger couple, maybe mid to late twenties, driving an old cadillac along a dark desert highway... A kid, about 7 or 8 years is in the back seat having a bad dream: not exactly a nightmare but one of those dreams that feels you feeling really unsettled for the rest of the day once you wake up and you can’t quite remember it only, the feeling it’s left you with. The verses are the phases of the dream in which unseen forces threaten to harm the kid. The choruses are their intern...

Published: Apr 1, 2026Duration: 25m 58s

Season 14 - Episode 5

Jack is a peculiar song. It doesn’t have a typical structure and it’s much more a mood piece. As I said, I sort of consider this one to be a chance encounter on the Highway Tom is taking us down. We don’t spend any quality time with this character but we’re left with a slightly gnawing, maybe slightly uneasy feeling about bumping into him. He’s gonna get his baby back and we’re not really sure whether she wants to be got!Song : https://youtu.be/j60LIOgHbtYREFERENCED I...

Published: Mar 25, 2026Duration: 27m 42s

Season 14 - Episode 4

Every now and then I try to think about my top ten Tom Petty deep cuts. There are so many that I love and that I’ve discovered, rediscovered, or come to appreciate so much more as I’ve been on this podcast journey, but Down South is at the very top table for me in that regard. Going down south for the first time to the Tom Petty Weekend last year made this song resonate doubly with me. Not only does it tap into that connection I have with going home myself, but heading to Gainesville and feeling the...

Published: Mar 18, 2026Duration: 26m 48s

Season 14 - Episode 3

Flirting with Time

“You’re flirting with time”, Tom sings. And I like that idea of not fully committing to time, just flirting with it. That’s definitely how life feels when you’re in your twenties and thirties. You don’t really have to enter into a serious relationship with time because there’s so much of it still ahead. You can mess around on it and you know it will always be there when you get home. There’s an implicit transience to that title line that I absolutely love.Song : https://youtu.be/DSt4jArJo7M REFERENC...

Published: Mar 4, 2026Duration: 26m 11s

Season 14 - Episode 2

Saving Grace is the work of a middle-aged man who fully knows himself and knows how to articulate the past and the present in three very vivid dimensions. Critical to retaining the song’s pathos though, Tom doesn’t project a future down this new path. It’s important that Square One is here and now. It’s important that being present in a moment and recognizing that every day and every minute is a chance for rebirth and reinvention is unconstrained by a prescribed destination. It’s the ultimate expression of freedom.Song : https://youtu.be/Ux-RDvS...

Published: Feb 25, 2026Duration: 22m 27s

Season 14 - Episode 1

“You keep running for another place To find that saving grace” probably doesn’t hit in the same place for most Pettyheads as “Most things I worry about never happen anyway” but I think there’s a comparable profundity to it. That search for spiritual, or social, or emotional redemption is a journey and one that can often feel just out of reach and unattainable, but you run on anyway. Maybe it isn’t given equal billing with the sensational line in Crawling Back to You because this song is more of an uptempo rocker rather than a baleful mid tempo ball...

Published: Feb 18, 2026Duration: 26m 20s

Hitting the Highway

There’s a languidity that floats through a lot of this record; Square One, Night Driver, Turn this Car Around, This Old Down, and The Golden Rose... These are songs to cruise to. They’re songs to be chewed on and savoured rather than hastily gulped down. You can feel the evening sun warming your skin as you drive, with the top down, listening to this album before arriving at a house in the woods, where you the songs become much more a cellar aged cognac in front of the fire than they are a light beer on the pati...

Published: Feb 11, 2026Duration: 12m 2s

Season 13 - Episode 33

The Last DJ (with John Paulsen)

The wonderful John Paulsen is back to talk all things Last DJ! John actually saw one of the two dates at the Olympic, so I get to ask him about that, we dive into the potential reasons why we've never had any previously unreleased tracks surface from this album (including the mysterious Maggie song!), and why half a concept album might not have landed with a wider listening audience. As always, this was an incredibly enjoyable chat and I hope you dig it as much as I did!Don't forget to follow me on social media...

Published: Feb 4, 2026Duration: 1h 7m 1s

Season 13 - Episode 32

Can't Stop the Sun

Everything about this song appeals to me. The soft-loud dynamic of the verse and chorus, coupled with the 4/4 3/4 switch from verse to chorus, along with the minor to major switch. It’s just perfectly internally oppositional. The bridge is one of my very favourites that we have in the entire catalogue with that swinging half funk groove and that outro is just absolutely fire. Can’t Stop the Sun brings in all the conflict and anger that Tom has projected through parts of this album and turns it against itself by becoming a final statement of resolve and indestructible self...

Published: Jan 28, 2026Duration: 23m 17s

Season 13 - Episode 31

Vinyl Review 2025

It’s that time of year for me to look back at what I was listening to in the past twelve months and give you some recommendations! I’ve listened to a ton of music in the past year, plenty of which was new to me. Gainesville exposed me to a ton of new indie artists, some of whom I’ve had the good fortune to speak to. I did decide to limit this to only vinyl albums I bought this year, rather than being albums that were released this year. Also, I should call out the Live Anthology RSD re...

Published: Jan 14, 2026Duration: 39m 22s

Season 13 - Episode 30

10 Questions with Steve Ursell

Steve Ursell is back to run through my ten questions and give me his thoughts on his favourite album, which version of Walls he prefers, and which song he'd want to cover with the Heartbreakers. Steve picks a fantastic British artist to cover a Tom Petty song, he picks a great gig to want to go back to see, and a certain autobiography may have coloured his choice for favourite Heartbreaker, other than Tom. Follow me on social media, like, subscribe, and please, leave a rating if you like the show.Facebook: https...

Published: Jan 9, 2026Duration: 40m 41s

Season 13 - Episode 29

This week, before we wrap up the last song from The Last DJ, I’m sharing a conversation that I had with an English gent that I met through my Queen podcast and someone I’ve gotten to know a little over the last two or three years named Steve Ursell. Steve has kinda been discovering Tom’s catalogue in real time through this podcast, so I thought it would be really interesting to talk to someone who wasn’t a Pettyhead three years ago but has come to love the Heartbreakers in a fairly short space of...

Published: Jan 7, 2026Duration: 1h 4m 51s

Season 13 - Episode 28

10 Questions with Robin Vincent

Robin Vincent is back to give me her answers to my ten questions. You wouldn't necessarily think that World of Warcraft would play a significant role in defining Robin's favourite album, she drops a bombshell on me about a couple of singers she just doesn't jive with and her answer to my question about which song she'd join Tom and the boys on stage for is perhaps the best answer anyone's given yet to any question I've asked! Oh and Robin divulges a daring escapade which brought her in direct contact with one of Mike's Telecasters....

Published: Jan 4, 2026Duration: 31m 59s

Season 13 - Episode 27

Today’s bonus episode is a fantastic chat with another artist I was very fortunate to see perform down at the Tom Petty Weekend in Gainesville. Robin Vincent, whose band, Robin Shakedown was one of the most vibrant, energetic and very very cool acts from the weekend. I had to reach out to see if she’d be willing to talk to me about her love for Tom and his music and subsequently, found and fell in love with her latest EP, Floor Goddess, which is an epic roller coaster of melody, hooks, emotion, and righteous anger. We...

Published: Jan 3, 2026Duration: 1h 22m 18s

Season 13 - Episode 26

Have Love, Will Travel

The DJ comes back and the ditch he’s digging, to keep the flames from the temple, are the songs and the culture he’s trying to build around his freeform station to stop outside corporate influence from burning down his integrity and his artistic vision, which are his temple. He’s the Last DJ: he’s digging this ditch around rock and roll to protect it from the superficial and the formulaic and he’s digging this ditch for all of us!Song and links:Song : https://youtu.be/tMxLxPk97GA Three Men i...

Published: Dec 31, 2025Duration: 24m 11s

Season 13 - Episode 25

10 Questions with Matt Burke

Ten questions, ten answers. Matt Burke is back to let me know which artists he'd most like to see open for Tom and the Heartbreakers and he throws a little love Joe Walsh's way while he's at it! His cover song is an interesting choice and he wonders if subconsciously he picked it because it's already happened and we sign off with three VERY good words to describe Tom Petty!Don't forget to check out the new Voyager Golden EP from Have Gun, Will Travel and follow Matt and the boys all over social media! <...

Published: Dec 27, 2025Duration: 24m 32s