{"id":7025,"date":"2017-10-11T17:36:45","date_gmt":"2017-10-11T22:36:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.michaelgaither.com\/home\/?p=7025"},"modified":"2018-01-28T20:10:59","modified_gmt":"2018-01-29T01:10:59","slug":"new-song-always-a-friend-of-mine-for-tom-petty","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.michaelgaither.com\/home\/new-song-always-a-friend-of-mine-for-tom-petty\/","title":{"rendered":"&#8220;Always a Friend of Mine&#8221; (for Tom Petty)&#8221;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>When we got the news the we lost Tom Petty last week, I listened to <a href=\"http:\/\/www.coffisbrothers.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Jamie Coffis<\/a> on <a href=\"http:\/\/www.coffisbrothers.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">KPIG Radio<\/a> that evening. Jamie did an awesome show, played four hours of Petty and threw in lots of live and obscure things&#8230;every one of them a treasure. Over on Facebook, my old high school bud Robert said losing Tom Petty made him feel like his best friend died. After Jamie&#8217;s show, I ran with that and wrote &#8220;Always a Friend of Mine,&#8221; intentionally riffing on the melody to &#8220;Won&#8217;t Back Down&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p><center><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/MP_f_Njc97w\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><br \/>\n<strong>&#8220;Always a Friend of Mine (for Tom Petty)&#8221; performed live on <a href=\"kpig.com\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\">KPIG Radio<\/strong><\/a><br \/>\n<\/center><\/p>\n<p>Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers was on my life soundtrack from practically the time I started buying records. Loved his first two records, then came <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Damn_the_Torpedoes_(album)\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">&#8220;Damn the Torpedos,&#8221;<\/a> the monumentally classic rock album, right around my sophomore year in high school.<\/p>\n<p>The years rolled along. And Petty just kept releasing one great record after another, through sidetrips to <a href=\"http:\/\/www.travelingwilburys.com\/history\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">The Traveling Wilburys<\/a> and solo projects (which always featured most of the Heartbreakers anyway), to a couple of memorable sidetrips with his original band, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.michaelgaither.com\/home\/the_return_of_mudcrutch\/\">Mudcrutch &#8211; whom we were fortunate to see at the Santa Cruz Civic<\/a>, and finally to <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Hypnotic_Eye\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">&#8220;Hypnotic Eye,&#8221;<\/a> his final full-band album a few years back &#8211; a record that I argue belongs somewhere in the top three or four TP records.<\/p>\n<p>Somewhere in the middle of that forty year run, he released <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Full_Moon_Fever\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">&#8220;Full Moon Fever&#8221;<\/a>. It made me want to start playing guitar. Then came <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Wildflowers_(Tom_Petty_album)\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">&#8220;Wildflowers&#8221;<\/a>. It made me want to write.<\/p>\n<iframe src=\"http:\/\/www.facebook.com\/plugins\/like.php?href=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.michaelgaither.com%2Fhome%2Fnew-song-always-a-friend-of-mine-for-tom-petty%2F&amp;layout=standard&amp;&amp;width=800&amp;action=like&amp;colorscheme=light\" scrolling=\"no\" frameborder=\"0\" allowTransparency=\"true\" style=\"border:none; overflow:hidden; width:800px;height:30px;margin-top:5px;\"><\/iframe>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>When we got the news the we lost Tom Petty last week, I listened to Jamie Coffis on KPIG Radio [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7025","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog","category-video"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.michaelgaither.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7025","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.michaelgaither.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.michaelgaither.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.michaelgaither.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.michaelgaither.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7025"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/www.michaelgaither.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7025\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7104,"href":"https:\/\/www.michaelgaither.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7025\/revisions\/7104"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.michaelgaither.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7025"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.michaelgaither.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7025"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.michaelgaither.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7025"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}