The Tom Petty Project

Kevin Brown

1 Creator

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.

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Twitter: https://twitter.com/TomPettyProject

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(This podcast is in no way affiliated with the Tom Petty estate.)

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Top 10 The Tom Petty Project Episodes

Goodpods has curated a list of the 10 best The Tom Petty Project episodes, ranked by the number of listens and likes each episode have garnered from our listeners. If you are listening to The Tom Petty Project for the first time, there's no better place to start than with one of these standout episodes. If you are a fan of the show, vote for your favorite The Tom Petty Project episode by adding your comments to the episode page.

Into the Great Wide Open (with John Paulsen)

The Tom Petty Project

02/14/24 • 96 min

Another long one this season folks! But again there's so much to talk about with this album and we felt we needed to talk about each individual track. John and I had a good discussion about the background to the recording of this album and where this sits in the evolution of Tom's songwriting. We also didn't have a "producer for the day" discussion because we agreed that the album is sequenced pretty much flawlessly.

Do check out www.4for4.com if you're into fantasy football and follow John on Twitter at @4for4_John

Don't forget to follow me on social media, like, subscribe, and please, leave a rating if you like the show:

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thetompettyproject

Twitter: https://twitter.com/TomPettyProject

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thetompettyproject/

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCt6BLRWuuAR43zHpNKIirOw

All music, including the theme song, provided by my very best friend Randy Woods. Check him out at https://www.randywoodsband.com/

Logo provided Ed Booth, who you can find here: https://edboothart.com/

The Tom Petty Project is not affiliated with the Tom Petty estate in any way and when you’re looking for Tom’s music, please visit the official YouTube channel first and go to tompetty.com for official merchandise.

A last very special thanks to Paul Zollo. Without his book, Conversations with Tom Petty, this podcast wouldn't be nearly as much fun to research.

Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/the-tom-petty-project.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

1 Listener

Free Girl Now

The Tom Petty Project

04/16/25 • 22 min

The song is a powerful push back against an abusive relationship on behalf of the woman Tom loved. The way the lyrics are organized, with the verses describing the abuse in the past tense and the uplifting chorus being in the present tense really drives home that idea that “No longer will you be a slave. No longer will you have to crawl”. It’s a celebration of liberation and freedom that is specific to a personal situation but again has that anthemic universality that would make a stadium full of people who might not know its origins sing along in full-throated support!

If you want to listen to the song before you listen to the episode, you can find it here : https://youtu.be/vxfQun7sfok

And if you want to hear the live version from the Fillmore in '99, you can find that here : https://youtu.be/1p7e5MgqkcI

Don't forget to follow me on social media, like, subscribe, and please, leave a rating if you like the show.

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thetompettyproject

Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/tompettyproject.bsky.social

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thetompettyproject

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@thetompettyproject

Threads: https://www.threads.net/@thetompettyproject

All music, including the theme song, provided by my very best friend Randy Woods. Check him out at https://www.randywoodsband.com

A last very special thanks to Paul Zollo. Without his book, "Conversations with Tom Petty", this podcast wouldn't be nearly as much fun to research. And further thanks to Warren Zanes for his outstanding book "Petty, the Biography".

Producer: Kevin Brown

Executive Producer: Paul Roberts

Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/the-tom-petty-project.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

1 Listener

Lonesome Sundown

The Tom Petty Project

04/25/25 • 18 min

I love the line “She’s a sweet young thing. Brings me dreams in a box she made for me”. That’s a very Petty-esque little piece of imagery that he throws in early to add to the very dreamy quality of the piece. In Conversations with Tom Petty, Tom tells author Paul Zollo that “The words changed several times in that song. But I finally got it to where I liked it. I think I worked on that one a lot more than any of the others.” And where we were talking about Free Girl Now sounding much more spontaneous lyrically, this one does have that quality of being a more considered lyric. I don’t think many people would come up with “Brings me dreams in a box she made for me” off the cuff.

If you want to listen to the track before listening to the episode, you can find it here: https://youtu.be/-IIX0nGyfyA

You can find my appearance on the Booked on Rock podcast here: https://youtu.be/Gkea4Xc_2uQ

You can find Megan Volpert's wonderful book, "Why Alanis Morissette Matters" here: https://utpress.utexas.edu/9781477330876/

Don't forget to follow me on social media, like, subscribe, and please, leave a rating if you like the show.

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thetompettyproject

Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/tompettyproject.bsky.social

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thetompettyproject

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@thetompettyproject

Threads: https://www.threads.net/@thetompettyproject

All music, including the theme song, provided by my very best friend Randy Woods. Check him out at https://www.randywoodsband.com

Producer: Kevin Brown

Executive Producer: Paul Roberts

Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/the-tom-petty-project.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

1 Listener

Swingin'

The Tom Petty Project

04/30/25 • 24 min

Lyrically, we get this short story, in typical Tom fashion where he’s just giving us the outlines and parts of a narrative. We start out standing by the highway in boots and silver spurs. And we end on the interstate across the Georgia line, which is maybe a teeny nod back to Tweeter and the Monkey Man. In fact, here’s an idea, maybe the protagonist of this song is actually Jan! I can imagine her heading south after the fiasco in Jersey, but it sounds like she found trouble again in Nevada and headed back east! It’s an incredible lyric to come up with on the spot, as I say and it’s obviously gone on to be a lesser known single that is adored by Pettyheads. It’s a song that lends itself well to themes of not going down without a fight while at the same time depicting a somewhat desperate character who is going down anyway! Fabulous writing. Or in this case, ad-libbing!

Song: https://youtu.be/ew6Cg6pUApE

Official Video: https://youtu.be/I4vJM4L2D2U

Links mentioned:

Red Hot Chili Peppers - A Face In The Crowd (Live) : https://youtu.be/qD37E7rtxbs

Sammy Davis Jr drums : https://youtu.be/i3FqyPeUaDE

Refugee (album version) : https://youtu.be/YbWDV72oQlo?t=50

Refugee (live version, 2012) : https://youtu.be/2sW4msX2q_E?t=114

Don't forget to follow me on social media, like, subscribe, and please, leave a rating if you like the show.

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thetompettyproject

Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/tompettyproject.bsky.social

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thetompettyproject

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@thetompettyproject

Threads: https://www.threads.net/@thetompettyproject

All music, including the theme song, provided by my very best friend Randy Woods. Check him out at https://www.randywoodsband.com

Producer: Kevin Brown

Executive Producer: Paul Roberts

Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/the-tom-petty-project.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

1 Listener

Songs and Music from She's The One (with John Paulsen)

The Tom Petty Project

03/19/25 • 61 min

After a little bit of a false start, John and Kevin settle into a fun chat about soundtrack composition, how Ed Burn managed to lock in Wildflowers era-Tom Petty to be his musical director, why Tom took over the project wholesale and why this may just be the most underappreciated album in Tom's catalogue! Do we need two versions of two different songs? What about the covers? Tune in to find out!

Don't forget to follow me on social media, like, subscribe, and please, leave a rating if you like the show.

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thetompettyproject

Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/tompettyproject.bsky.social

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thetompettyproject

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@thetompettyproject

Threads: https://www.threads.net/@thetompettyproject

All music, including the theme song, provided by my very best friend Randy Woods. Check him out at https://www.randywoodsband.com

Producer: Kevin Brown

Executive Producer: Paul Roberts

Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/the-tom-petty-project.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

1 Listener

The Same Sad Echo

The Tom Petty Project

03/27/25 • 10 min

Like Songs and Music for She’s The One, somewhere around half of the songs on Echo were never played live. Tom tells Paul Zollo “I was kind of glad to get to another place after Echo. I was kind of glad to get somewhere else. I don’t know why, but I kind of felt like we came back into the sun after that.”

And this idea of a darkness hovering over this period in Tom’s life definitely permeates through elements of this record.

Don't forget to follow me on social media, like, subscribe, and please, leave a rating if you like the show.

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thetompettyproject

Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/tompettyproject.bsky.social

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thetompettyproject

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@thetompettyproject

Threads: https://www.threads.net/@thetompettyproject

All music, including the theme song, provided by my very best friend Randy Woods. Check him out at https://www.randywoodsband.com

Producer: Kevin Brown

Executive Producer: Paul Roberts

Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/the-tom-petty-project.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

1 Listener

Room at the Top

The Tom Petty Project

04/02/25 • 22 min

I, along with I’m sure many of you Pettyheads, consider this one of Tom’s finest works. It’s an absolute masterpiece in songwriting, lyrical precision, and arrangement. As Tom tells Paul Zollo, “It was a great example of The Heartbreakers at work. On my own I would have never arrived at that arrangement of the song. But they really took it somewhere that I would have never got to by myself.” The mixture of light and shade the contrast of hope and despondency, of cynicism and vulnerability make this track a powerhouse of pure emotion. It’s one of those where every single note is placed to perfection, every musical decision supports the construction and delivery of the song and the sum of its incredible parts gels into this perfect five minutes of music that moves me as much today as it did the first time I listened to it!

If you want to listen to the song before you listen to the episode, you can find it here: https://youtu.be/nQFCF9KESic

And make sure you check out Richard Hearn's brilliant website Paragraph Planet here: https://www.paragraphplanet.com

Don't forget to follow me on social media, like, subscribe, and please, leave a rating if you like the show.

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thetompettyproject

Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/tompettyproject.bsky.social

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thetompettyproject

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@thetompettyproject

Threads: https://www.threads.net/@thetompettyproject

All music, including the theme song, provided by my very best friend Randy Woods. Check him out at https://www.randywoodsband.com

Producer: Kevin Brown

Executive Producer: Paul Roberts

Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/the-tom-petty-project.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

1 Listener

Echo

The Tom Petty Project

05/14/25 • 27 min

This is a very grown up song and as we discussed on Wildflowers, it’s a song that wouldn’t resonate as much with a person in their teens or early twenties as it would with someone who has lived and lost. You need that weight of experience to truly feel the bone-weariness that Tom projects at times and the hesitant accusations he ends with. It’s a collage of emotions and narrative dissonance that perfectly fleshes out what a broken relationship feels like even when a new, healthy one is coming into focus.

Song: https://youtu.be/OjC1Idf9w_4

Live at the Fillmore '99: https://tinyurl.com/2wtkm3jd

This episode is dedicated to the memory of Margaret "Cookie" Donnelly Obituary. You can read her full obituary here: https://tinyurl.com/28dr58p7

Don't forget to follow me on social media, like, subscribe, and please, leave a rating if you like the show.

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thetompettyproject

Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/tompettyproject.bsky.social

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thetompettyproject

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@thetompettyproject

Threads: https://www.threads.net/@thetompettyproject

All music, including the theme song, provided by my very best friend Randy Woods. Check him out at https://www.randywoodsband.com

Producer: Kevin Brown

Executive Producer: Paul Roberts

Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/the-tom-petty-project.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

1 Listener

The Petty 8ight with Ian Winick

The Tom Petty Project

10/09/24 • 101 min

This week's episode is the fourth installment The Petty 8ight!

I love talking to Pettyheads, musicians, and other people who have been influenced by Tom or his music in myriad ways, but I thought it would be neat to see what non-fans, or non-hardcore fans think of Tom's music if I threw deeper cuts at them.

My latest #Petty8ight guest is the wonderful Ian Winick, who has been an incredibly supportive and engaged listener of one of my other podcasts, Seaside Pod Review. We share a love of Queen, Marillion, and a lot of the same comedy, as well as a love of words and of the art and craft of songwriting. It was an absolute joy to spend a couple and a half hours in Ian's company and I know you're going to love his first-listen insights into these eight deeper cuts from Tom's catalogue.

If you want to listen to Ian's fantastic album that he released with John Loves Julie, you can find that here: https://soundcloud.com/johnlovesjulie and you can find the song "Lucky You" here: https://soundcloud.com/johnlovesjulie/lucky-you

If you want to find his equally brilliant, and very very funny, podcast "Lord of Adders Black" which he co-hosts with the marvelous Michael Smith, you can find that here!

Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/lord-of-adders-black/id1753002260

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/2Ly39A9IrwNlfCcALAAk2V?si=f59e268304d24edf

NOTE: There is some profanity during my conversation with Ian.

The Tom Petty Project is a proud member of The Deep Dive Podcast Network, which you can find on Twitter: https://twitter.com/deepdivepodnet

Don't forget to follow me on social media, like, subscribe, and please, leave a rating if you like the show:

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thetompettyproject

Twitter: https://twitter.com/TomPettyProject

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thetompettyproject/

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCt6BLRWuuAR43zHpNKIirOw

All music, including the theme song, provided by my very best friend Randy Woods. Check him out at https://www.randywoodsband.com

Producer: Kevin Brown

Executive Producer: Paul Roberts

Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/the-tom-petty-project.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

1 Listener

Counting on You

The Tom Petty Project

04/09/25 • 21 min

Sonically, you could definitely hear this one sitting happily on Mojo. But I also sometimes feel that this is the most Wildflowers-sounding of all the songs on Echo. If you found out that it was another of the songs that hadn’t been included on that album, it wouldn’t really surprise you. In Conversations With Tom Petty, the only thing that Tom tells author Paul Zollo about this song is that “That’s great. That should have been a single. I don’t know why they didn’t put that out as a single”.

If you want to listen to the song before you listen to the episode, you can find it here: https://youtu.be/eA7YT103Ocw

Don't forget to follow me on social media, like, subscribe, and please, leave a rating if you like the show.

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thetompettyproject

Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/tompettyproject.bsky.social

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thetompettyproject

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@thetompettyproject

Threads: https://www.threads.net/@thetompettyproject

All music, including the theme song, provided by my very best friend Randy Woods. Check him out at https://www.randywoodsband.com

Producer: Kevin Brown

Executive Producer: Paul Roberts

Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/the-tom-petty-project.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.