Mudcrutch makes tracks
Mudcrutch is either the quickest working band in john Rock ’n’ roll up or the slowest.
Turkey cock Petit larceny and a few of his Gainesville, Fla., buddies conjured their 14-track debut, “Mudcrutch,” in a mere 10 days. Impressive. Unless you count the fact that the set was founded in 1970 and is only now getting around to releasing its outset album.
Until latterly Mudcrutch was a footer in Petty’s history: the first band that he and future tense Heartbreakers guitar player Mike Joseph Campbell and keyboardist Benmont Tench played in. Long-forgotten were their Mudcrutch alums, singer/guitarist Uncle Tom Leadon and drummer Randall Marsh, as well as the band’s stomps through the swamps of FL between ’70 and ’75.
Only last summer, Petit larceny phoned Leadon and Ngaio Marsh and asked if they were interested in a reunion.
“I thought he was joking,” Leadon said from Calif., where Mudcrutch is finish a legal brief West Coast circuit to promote its album, released last week. “I thinking it wasn’t even Tom merely person pull my leg.”
But it was the real Tomcat. And he was real serious.
In August of finish class, Petit larceny invited Leadon and Reginald Marsh to impede at his place studio. To a lesser extent than 2 weeks later on the quintet had a record of land rock, bayou blues and one 9-minute psychedelic hippy close up (“Crystal River”).
“We determine up in a lot with simply the survive monitors and played and sang everything live together in one room,” said Leadon. “We got ‘Shady Grove’ in about trey takes. Everything sounded great and Tom turkey and Microphone said, ‘Well, that’s the criminal record.’
“I was like, ‘What? Are you certainly?’ But it worked and we did deuce or trey more songs that first day.”
“We started to have into a menstruation,” added Campbell. “Nearly of the stuff is fresh written and saucily played. Tom (Petty) went home every night and would come back the next clarence Shepard Day Jr. with a new song.”
The band worked out the arrangements to sometimes hours-old songs on the storey together. No headphones; no sequestering each musician in split sound booths. Petit larceny played bass and panax quinquefolius at the lapplander time, delivering un-self-conscious, unrefined vocals (best appreciated on the Heartbreakers-like “Bootleg Flyer”) a great deal paired with Leadon’s on the fly harmonies.
The sessions had an free energy, urgency and spontaneity Campbell said he hasn’t experienced since the betimes Heartbreakers albums.
“We wanted it to feel like it was back in the daytime,” he said. “It was form of a risk and we didn’t know if it would influence.”
But it did - and brilliantly. Especially for the brimming-with-emotion Leadon.
Friends since high school, Leadon and Petit larceny began their careers together. Just in mid-’70s, Leadon followed his older brother, Flying Burrito Brother and Eagles cofounder Bernie Leadon, to Calif. in pursuit of his country-rock muse. Over the years, as Petty larceny transitioned from bar ring crooner to icon, the deuce felled seam come out of touch.
“I didn’t need to hemipteron him too much,” said Leadon. “But I very missed him. We were as close, closer and then most brothers, and that’s division of what’s so nice about this. This unit thing has been truly special for me emotionally.”
