The new tribute album to the late Tom Petty, Petty Country: A Country Music Celebration of Tom Petty, is out now, and Petty’s Heartbreakers guitarist Mike Campbell is 100 percent behind it.
“I’m so proud of all those artists, and I know that Tom would really be proud and happy that all these artists honored his songs,” Campbell tells ABC Audio. “I just want his memory and the legacy that we built together, I’m very proud of it, and anything that illuminates it is good for me.”
Campbell even appears on the album, joining Margo Price for her cover of “Ways to Be Wicked.” Campbell says it was written for Petty and the Heartbreakers’ second album, 1978’s You’re Gonna Get It!, but “has been collecting dust all these decades.”
“It’s, like, perfect for her, you know, a woman’s point of view and the way she belts it,” Campbell says, “and then she cut it and asked me to join in, and I put some guitar, little harmony on there. I call it a Lazarus song. It came back from the dead.”
Campbell says some of his favorite covers on the album include Dolly Parton’s take on “Southern Accents” and Chris Stapleton’s cover of “I Should Have Known It,” but he notes, “I like them all.”
“I think Tom would have liked it,” he says. “It’s nice to get the songs out there and keep them alive, keep people aware that, you know, Tom was real and he’s still with us with the music.”
Campbell, who recently released Vagabonds, Virgins & Misfits, a new album with his band The Dirty Knobs, is currently on tour. He and the band play Kansas City, Missouri, on June 24. A complete list of dates can be found at thedirtyknobs.com.
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