Tom Petty plays with the Heartbreakers at the groups only tour stop in Florida, at the St. Pete Times Forum, in Tampa, Sept. 16, 2010. [Brad McClenny/File photo]

Rockin' around 'Depot Street'

From Oct. 17 to 20, music festivals will celebrate Tom Petty along Depot Avenue in Gainesville

Before Tom Petty left Gainesville in 1974 to find his rock ’n’ roll destiny, he was known locally for leading his Mudcrutch bandmates through five nights a week at bars like Dub’s, staging legendary festivals at the Mudcrutch Farm and for penning early songs dotted with local references.

Petty changed the name of Depot Avenue, south of downtown, to “Depot Street” in his Mudcrutch song by that title.

And while Petty was still in Gainesville, early performances of the song became an inspiration to other local musicians — including some who will perform next weekend at two music festivals along Depot Avenue honoring Petty.

“We definitely want to honor Tom because he kind of paved the way,” said Allan Lowe, singer of the Dixie Desperados, which is reuniting for its first performance in nearly five years as part of the Tom Petty Birthday Bash on Oct. 20.

Lowe said he first heard “Depot Street” at a performance by Petty and company at the University of Florida’s Rathskeller around 1971 or ’72.

“I remember going to see him and all of a sudden I’m hearing ‘Depot Street,’ and that kind of planted a seed in me and us as a band, that ‘Yeah, we’ve got to play some covers, but hey, we can play some of our songs too,’” Lowe said.

“So really, his influence on a lot of younger local musicians was pretty profound.”

Fittingly, the song’s namesake, Depot Avenue, will return to the spotlight next weekend as the literal street linking two large-scale music events saluting Gainesville’s favorite musical son: Tom Petty Weekend at Heartwood Soundstage and the Tom Petty Birthday Bash at Depot Park.

Held to honor the late Rock & Roll Hall of Famer on what would have been his 69th birthday weekend (on Oct. 20), both festival locations are literally across Depot Avenue from each other.

This year’s Tom Petty Weekend, which will run Thursday through Saturday, Oct. 17-19, at Heartwood Soundstage, 619 S. Main St., will feature 32 musical performers and storytellers on Heartwood’s indoor stage all three days and on a larger, outdoor stage Friday and Saturday including Tom Petty’s protege group The Shelters on Friday, and the Nashville-based Tom Petty tribute group Southern Accents on Saturday.

The festival also features an outdoor performance by the recently reunited Gainesville band Morningbell among others on Friday, and will mark a return appearance by Mudcrutch member Tom Leadon, whose band The Bayjacks performed last year and will be among the outdoor performances on Oct. 19.

“If you have someone as famous as Tom, who has meant so much to so many people, you’ve got to pay respect to him from where he came from,” said Dan Spiess, producer of Tom Petty Weekend.

“He always remembered (his hometown), ‘I’m from Gainesville, Florida,’ and so I just think it’s so important that we do that.”

This year’s Tom Petty Birthday Bash, which will run Friday through Sunday, Oct. 18-20 at nearby Depot Park, 200 SE Depot Ave., will feature 20 performers over three days on a large main stage including the Gainesville Tom Petty tribute band Heavy Petty as headliners on Oct. 20 and the nationally known Philadelphia band Low Cut Connie on Oct. 19.

The festival also will feature a special “Happy Birthday” singalong to Petty after the reuniting performance by The Dixie Desperados on Oct. 20 along with a host of acoustic performers on a smaller stage to be announced.

“Tom Petty didn’t spend most of his life here but he was born here, he did grow up here and he got inspired by this place,” said Jason Hedges, front man of Heavy Petty and creator of Tom Petty Birthday Bash. “And we have a chance to showcase that.

“Almost every album (by Petty) sounds like Gainesville to me. There’s something in it. The feeling is still there, and the fact that great musicians are coming is like the old Mudcrutch Farm days, in a sense; it’s these bands coming from all around and they’ve got something to show everyone.”

TOM PETTY WEEKEND AT HEARTWOOD SOUNDSTAGE

Beginning at 5 p.m. Thursday and continuing through midnight Saturday, Tom Petty Weekend at Heartwood Soundstage will feature 32 national, international and regional performers on its outdoor and indoor stages along with six storytellers.

The Shelters, this year’s headliners, are a Los Angeles band that had become proteges of Petty’s before his untimely death at age 66 on Oct. 2, 2017, said Dan Spiess, producer of Tom Petty Weekend.

After learning of the band, Petty spent a lot of the time with the group, helping its members refine its vintage '60s and '70s sound played with a modern spin and co-producing the band’s self-titled, debut album in 2016.

“He decided that he was going to get them through the system, so he brought them into a recording studio and taught them how to record,” Spiess said. Petty also had the band open 21 dates on a reformed Mudcrutch tour and invited its members to be around and even contribute while the Heartbreakers recorded their 2014 album, “Hypnotic Eye.”

The band will close Friday’s festival lineup with a performance starting at 10:40 p.m., following an hour-long set by the recently reformed Gainesville psychedelic group Morningbell, starting at 9:20 p.m.

Saturday, the festival will spotlight the Nashville-based Tom Petty tribute band Southern Accents, which will perform at 10:10 p.m., following a set by The Bayjacks, the group led by Mudcrutch guitarist Tom Leadon, at 8:30 p.m. Saturday.

Performing at 7:30 p.m. Saturday will be Trigger City, a new group featuring former Blackfoot guitarist Charlie Hargrett.

Others appearing in this year’s lineup range from the Gainesville jazz band Mindwalk and the acoustic vocal group Other Voices, to Beatles tribute band The Imposters, the Gainesville rock band The Shambles and the Woodstock-era '60s group The Relics.

Returning to play a longer set this year are The Mudpies, the local band known for performing Mudcrutch songs that features original Mudcrutch singer and guitarist Danny Roberts, along with singer/guitarist Mike Boulware and others.

Boulware said The Mudpies’ set, which will begin at 7:20 p.m. Friday on the outdoor stage, will include songs from the 1974 demo that Mudcrutch recorded in Leon Russell’s studio in Tulsa, Oklahoma, as well as a song that was recorded in the living room of the home owned by Benmont Tench’s parents.

“We want to make sure everybody knows what the original demos sounded like,” said Boulware, who attended Howard Bishop Middle School and Gainesville High School together with Petty and lived not far from the home Petty grew up in.

“Danny Roberts sings that stuff great, and we’ve got his sister, Gail Roberts, here to sing the harmony,” Boulware said. “So, it’s fun and the songs are good. You look back and they’re of the same piece of cloth; they’re from that period.”

Spiess said most of the tunes played by most of the bands will be Tom Petty songs, with many of the acts offering unique interpretations of songs from throughout Petty’s career.

“Danny Roberts and Mike Boulware are actually in another band called Fodderwing, which is kind of outlaw country, so we’re having a group that does outlaw country do Tom Petty songs,” Spiess said.

Heartwood’s indoor stage will feature acoustic performances over the three days with performers including Sam Pacetti, Mark and Monica Leadon, The Derivatives and Sue Ballingall, an English musician who plays Tom Petty songs in her adopted country of Denmark, Spiess said.

The Derivatives features Jeff Sims, a guitarist from Dixie Desperados, and Connie Brashear, lead singer of The Shambles, Spiess said. “They’re going to play, among their songs, some songs that Jeff co-wrote with Stan Lynch,” he said.

Another Tom Petty Weekend feature is the inclusion of storytellers, who will recount their connections with Petty in appearances on Heartwood’s indoor stage as well. “We’re very heavy into storytellers and we have some great ones,” Spiess said.

This year’s six storytellers include Paul Zollo, author of “Conversations with Tom Petty,” which will be reissued with expanded material early next year; Danny Roberts, the former singer and guitarist with Mudcrutch; Keith Harben, Petty’s lifelong friend from Gainesville; and Jon Scott, author of “Tom Petty and Me,” which recounts the record company promotions man who convinced ABC Records not to drop Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers after their first album initially scored little airplay and sales.

“Without Jon Scott, there wouldn’t have been a Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers,” Spiess said.

To keep the performances between the outdoor and indoor stages seamless and continuous for all, the indoor and outdoor performances will be staggered so that when one ends on the outdoor stage, another will begin on the indoor stage and vice versa.

In addition, a large TV will be installed by the outdoor stage so that festivalgoers sitting outside will be able to view the inside performances without having to leave their seats, Spiess said. “If you’re outside, it’ll be continuous music from 2 p.m. to midnight” on Friday and Saturday.”

Festivalgoers also will notice another change: Mike Boulware’s retail guitar store, B Side Vintage, is moving to the Heartwood grounds, and will feature a display of Petty memorabilia.

“We’re gonna have Tom Petty’s first good amp, a Fender Bass Man that he played in Mudcrutch there on display, and the guitar that Danny played on the demo and his amp will be there,” Boulware said.

“Keith Harben’s going to bring a bunch of his memorabilia down, and I think that includes stuff like the Valentine card Tom sent to Keith’s sister when he was 5, stuff like that,” he said.

“We’re also going to have the big 12-foot outdoor sign from Lipham Music set over a stage and a P.A. system and all these amplifiers and guitars set up for people who are not performing to come in and get a chance to play and hear and touch because otherwise, they’d never get to see that stuff.”

General admission tickets for Tom Petty Weekend are $50 and include access to the outdoor stage, vendors and food trucks for all three days. Gold tickets for Tom Petty Weekend, which are $100, include outdoor stage access as well as access to a raised shaded deck and limited inside stage access among other extras. Both are available at tompettyweekend.com.

Added Spiess about the entire Tom Petty Weekend: “Tom Petty’s one of the true heroes in rock ’n’ roll, and we just feel honored to be able to coordinate an event that pays respect and honor to him and to his fans.”

TOM PETTY BIRTHDAY BASH AT DEPOT PARK

Beginning Friday and running through Sunday at Depot Park, this year’s Tom Petty Birthday Bash will showcase more than 20 local and national acts on two stages, including the Gainesville Tom Petty tribute band, Heavy Petty, the Philadelphia rock group Low Cut Connie, the first performance in almost 5 years by Gainesville’s Dixie Desperados and others.

As part of celebrating Tom Petty’s birthday on Oct. 20, a major new moment of the festival will come between Sunday night’s final two sets, between the Dixie Desperados and Heavy Petty.

At 8 p.m. Sunday, the festival will invite the crowd to join in a “Happy Birthday” singalong to Petty, marking what would have been his 69th birthday.

“Sunday is the big day because it’s his actual birthday and it won’t be on a weekend for another five years,” said Jason Hedges, frontman of Heavy Petty and creator of the Tom Petty Birthday Bash, who adds that he hopes the event may become the largest singalong of “Happy Birthday” to the Gainesville native in history.

The singalong will also be part of World Singing Day, an annual event in which communities globally will stage singalongs as a display of shared humanity around the world.

“That’s going to be like thousands of people singing in the park, and we’re going to make history hopefully,” Hedges said.

The singalong will be followed by Heavy Petty’s two-hour headlining set which also will feature special guests and close the festival in a climactic fashion, Hedges said.

Heavy Petty got its start about 10 years ago, when it performed a special Valentine’s Day show at Common Grounds and received such a strong reaction that the group has continued ever since, drawing ever-growing crowds and becoming a staple of such popular entities as the Free Fridays Concert Series at Bo Diddley Plaza.

“It was supposed to be one show and then it turned into 10 years, and at one point, we were going to try and call it quits and we did that for like a year or something,” Hedges said. “Then it was, ‘OK, that’s too much fun. Let’s do it again.’”

Other acts on this year’s Birthday Bash lineup include such well-known area performers as Scott Free, the singer-guitarist who leads the band Fast Lane and performed for years with the late Bo Diddley, who will play at 7:30 p.m. Friday, and the Dixie Desperados, who will take the stage at 7:10 p.m. Sunday, just before the “Happy Birthday” singalong.

Formed in 1976, the Dixie Desperados first played a mix of covers and originals but in its second year switched to all originals and won fans with its own brand of Southern country rock, touring the Southeast and sharing bills with acts like the Allman Brothers Band, Molly Hatchet, Johnny Winter, Three Dog Night and others.

After disbanding in the '80s, the band regrouped starting in 2011 and released a self-titled album in 2013 produced by former Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers drummer Stan Lynch. Desperados guitarist Jeff Sims had grown up with Lynch and the latter has remained friends with both Sims and the band through the years, said Desperados lead singer and acoustic guitarist Allan Lowe.

For its first full performance since April 2015, the Desperados will play a number of songs with ties to the Gainesville man of honor.

“Our connection is going to be songs that Stan (Lynch) either produced or co-wrote with Jeff and I, and then we’re going to do ‘Learning to Fly’ and we’re going to open our set with the song that Mudcrutch opened a lot of their evenings with,” Lowe said. “It’s a Chuck Berry song covered by Johnny Winter, ‘Johnny B. Goode.’”

Closing the main stage on Saturday with a 9:30 p.m. set will be the Philadelphia-based rock band Low Cut Connie. “A couple of people who played on their first album are from Gainesville, so they have Gainesville connections,” Hedges said. “But they’re a solid rock ’n’ roll band.

“They are Elton John’s favorite band and one of ex-President Obama’s favorite bands. Obama had them on his Spotify playlist and then Elton John came out with a live video of him calling Low Cut Connie his favorite band.”

A host of other bands from around the country will perform on the main stage as well, Hedges said. “We have amazing bands from Nashville like Tristen, Sunkat and Andrew Leahey & the Homestead.

“And we have so many great female artists this year,” he added. “Almost every band has a female artist and some of them are primarily female artists. So, we’re kind of theming it as the ‘American Girl Year.’”

All of the bands will play some Tom Petty songs, Hedges said. “And then, of course, we want to hear their original music. We think they’re great bands and we want to give them an opportunity to showcase their stuff and also do their takes on Tom Petty songs.”

And in sort of a reverse full-circle, Hedge’s band also will perform Friday’s closing set on the main stage, at 9:40 p.m. Billed as Heavycrutch, the group will play Mudcrutch songs as well as deep Tom Petty tracks, said Hedges.

The festival’s acoustic stage, which will be at the Boxcar Wine & Beer Garden, 201 SE Depot Ave., will feature a lineup of acoustic acts to be announced for Saturday and Sunday. The Boxcar also will house a collection of Petty memorabilia through the weekend including handwritten lyrics and notes to some of his biggest songs, Hedges said, as well as a guitar strap once owned by Petty that Hedges wore during last year’s Birthday Bash.

While Friday will be more of a soft-opening day, with four acts performing on the main stage from 6:30 p.m. to 10:30 p.m., Saturday and Sunday will feature performers starting at 1:10 p.m. Saturday and 2 p.m. Sunday, with a variety of food trucks and vendors on site both days, and beer and wine sold throughout Depot Park as well, Hedges said.

Though admission to the Birthday Bash is free, four VIP packages are available from $49 to $189 offering a range of extras, with three packages including a special viewing lounge for the main stage as well as a private bar; two packages also including access to a Friday night Kickoff Party from 5-7 p.m. at the Boxcar; and one that also will include premium parking. For tickets, visit tompettybirthdaybash.com

Proceeds from the packages will benefit UF Health Shands Arts in Medicine, for which Hedges serves as a musician-in-residence, regularly performing for patients receiving care in the UF Health system.

The entire festival will be a fitting way to salute the Gainesville-born Petty in his hometown on his birthday, Hedges said.

“That was the whole idea behind it, celebrating in his birth town on his birthday. People, I guess, for whatever reason, love it because they're coming in from all around the world,” he said.

“There's just some connection, not just with us here locally but globally.”