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Tom Petty

Tom Petty: Highway Companion (American Recordings/Warner Bros.)

It’s not unheard of for a major, established bandleader like Tom Petty to release a solo record where he plays nearly every instrument himself. John Fogerty (who appears at Darien Lake Performing Arts Center this Sunday with Willie Nelson) played every instrument on his 1972 Blue Ridge Rangers album and again on his big comeback Centerfield in 1985, of which he said, “I’m a pretty good bar band.” When an artist has both the vision and the skill to do it, the end result is arguably as close to the sound he had in his head as a fixed recording in a tangible medium can ever come to be. If that’s the case, then Highway Companion (American Recordings/Warner Brothers) is proof that Petty’s head is still buzzing with great music. These 12 new tunes, on which he sings, plays guitar, harmonica, some bass, keyboards—even drums and lead guitar—have a more stripped-down feel than his previous solo releases, Wildflowers and Full Moon Fever. He does get help from Heartbreaker Mike Campbell and Traveling Wilbury Jeff Lynne—who also gets primary producer credit while avoiding his glossy Electric Light Orchestra treatment. “Saving Grace” finds Petty’s inimitable voice laying down this image on a riff borrowed from John Lee Hooker: “I’m passing sleeping cities/Fading by degrees/Not believing all I see to be so.” Petty is a master of these trippy little ambiguous observations. Couple that with his deadly ear for a hook and you get the irresistible “Flirting With Time,” a jangly meditation that builds to a chorus that’s at once funny and haunting: “You’re flirting with time, baby/Flirting with time, and maybe/ Time, baby/Is catching up with you.” “Big Weekend,” a blow-out-the-tubes road trip anthem, advances the truism: “If you don’t run you rust.” Nearly every song here involves travel of some kind—leaving home, returning home, searching for a home or bidding farewell. Petty’s been through some stressful times in the past decade, including a difficult divorce, a flareup with corporate radio over his last CD, The Last DJ and the loss of close friends and collaborators George Harrison and bassist Howie Epstein, who died of a drug overdose. This album is an affirmation that life is often filled with detours and dead ends, but that, if you keep going, it’s possible to arrive back at “Square One”—a tender ballad about coming full-circle to a place where your slate is clear and your future again feels great and wide open. On the clichéd road of life, it’s still good to know you can have a companion like T. P. riding shotgun.

Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers play Darien Lake Performing Arts Center this Tuesday, August 15 at 7pm, with very special guest the Allman Brothers.