At the Fillmore in January 1997, where Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers made their historic 20-night stand to reclaim their musical soul—and leave an indelible impression on their audience.
In January 1997, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers’ 20-show run at the Fillmore fostered a village, a sense of communion, and something even rarer in the hyper-connected 21st century—organic, word-of-mouth buzz and street chatter. For me, it was a sort of homecoming, too. By ’97, I was a voracious musical omnivore, feasting with the maniacal vigor only a 20-something can muster. But though I was weaned on the stuff, very little of my intake in those days could be filed under classic rock. Still, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers were dear to me. An older sister made me a fan, and the songs lived marrow-deep in my bones. When the band announced a run at the Fillmore, I pledged to go.
With Petty as host, the Fillmore show attendees were treated to a tour of American roots music, psychedelia, foundational rock ’n’ roll, and Heartbreakers’ hits and obscurities, plus guest appearances by Roger McGuinn, Carl Perks, and John Lee Hooker.
Photo by Steve Minor
Tickets disappeared fast, but my sister scored a few for a show early on in the run, and when the day came, we set up camp on Geary Boulevard sometime around mid-morning in hopes of a shot at the front row. We weren’t alone. Our day in line was hilarious in a beautiful, old San Francisco kind of way, which is to say full of randomness, bacchanalia, and various brands of benevolent psychosis. The new friends we met were capital “C” characters. The air was fragrant. And for several hours we partied together, ate fried chicken and mashed potatoes from the KFC down the block, traded concert stories, and talked about record collections. Standing in line, I noticed something else. If you could be bothered to be at the Fillmore preposterously early and spend hours of your life sitting on cold concrete at great risk of terrible disappointment, you had a shot at the 10-20 tickets the Fillmore kept in reserve. I took note, and thought that if the show was good I might give it a try another day.
I guess I wouldn’t be writing this now if that first show wasn’t pure joy. We did make it up to the front—well the second row, anyway. And for a few hours I stood right there at Tom and Mike Campbell’s feet. I had expected a special show, and that I would have a blast. But I went home that night buzzing. I felt the same the next day. And by the time the 20-show run was done, I’d seen four of them.
“Our day in line was hilarious in a beautiful, old San Francisco kind of way, which is to say full of randomness, bacchanalia, and various brands of benevolent psychosis.”
There is an inexplicable warmth and magic about the Fillmore. There are grander and prettier venues in the world. But few are as rich with ghosts and aura. It may look like a simple old dance hall, but the grand chandeliers, psychedelic posters, and red velvet always lend a sense of sanctuary. And when you imagine the figures that stood on that stage, and feel the weight of that history, it feels even more enveloping and spiritual. Up on stage, the Heartbreaker’s mountain of old equipment seemed at home amid the Fillmore’s gold and crimson glow. Tom and Mike’s blonde Fender Bassmans looked dusty and earthy. And if you squinted, the scene looked a little like the barn shot on the back of Neil Young’s Harvest recreated in a Victorian bordello.
One of the Heartbreaker’s motivations for the Fillmore was a desire to shed their showbiz sheen for a minute. Certainly, the Heartbreakers machine had taken on a kind of predictability in the years leading up to the Fillmore run. But whether they considered it or not, the Heartbreakers were also taking part in a great tradition of cultural dynamism and exchange—dating back decades to the migrations of the Byrds, CSNY, and, in a way, the Beats before them—that of shaking off the shackles and glitter fix of Hollywood and heading to the North Country to get loose. Not coincidentally, the atmosphere around the Fillmore shows had the uncanny feel of a Grateful Dead show. The environment was intensely positive and contagious, and the Fillmore hummed with the energy of a fantastic party, well before the Heartbreakers even took the stage.
The exterior of the Fillmore, with Geary Boulevard in front.
Photo courtesy of Wiki Commons
At each of the four shows I attended (each spent rapt, leaning on the stage at the feet of Mike Campbell), the band kicked off with a three-punch flurry of Chuck Berry’s “Around and Around” (in the fashion of the Stones version), the 1987 nugget “Jammin’ Me,” and “Runnin’ Down a Dream,” which was traditionally a set closer. It takes a very confident band, sitting on a mighty cache of tunes, to come out swinging that hard. And as the band got cooking over the course of those first three tunes, you felt a giddy momentum and sense of movement gather in the crowd. From there, each show took its own shape, and on most nights the sense of anticipation and surprise pivoted around the set switch-ups and the covers the band threw in so effortlessly: JJ Cale’s “Call Me the Breeze and “Crazy Mama,” Mike Campbell taking solo turns on Ventures tunes and the Goldfinger theme, a beautiful, moody take on Bill Withers’ “Ain’t No Sunshine,” the Zombies electric 12-string lament “I Want You Back Again,” and, in a nod to the creative conduit between L.A. and the Bay, the Grateful Dead’s “Friend of the Devil”
“The Fillmore hummed with the energy of a fantastic party, well before the Heartbreakers even took the stage.”
Then there were the guests. Roger McGuinn grinning as the band of assassins behind him summoned the amphetamine drive of “Eight Miles High” once again. Carl Perkins grinning even wider and devilishly, in real blue suede shoes, as he dazzled Campbell with his own very underrated and deadly picking. Guest turns can feel terribly contrived on big stages—just another showbiz move to get a few wows. But like so many other little moments at the Fillmore, these were peppered with spontaneity. I distinctly remember Mike Campbell laughingly waving away the clouds of pot smoke as Perkins, a classy gent and one of rock ‘n’ roll’s elder statesman, took the stage. And at one point during the McGuinn guest set, Campbell took the black Squier Telecaster he’d just used for “You Ain’t Goin’ Nowhere” and gifted it to one of the regulars from the line out on Geary. She hadn’t yet missed a show, another front-row lunatic told me. I suspect he hadn’t missed many himself.
If I am honest, when I listen to the Fillmore performances as they appear on the new release, they seem much smoother and more polished than anything I remember hearing on those four nights. Up in the front row, I was taking more than a little heat from Campbell’s Bassman and Kustom amps, not to mention a whole lot of drums and cymbal splash. It all sounded so incredibly raw and rambunctious. So, I can’t help but think about how cool it would be to have a go at that mix—to coax all the rowdy grit I heard from this weird Southern hippie amalgam of the Stones, Byrds, and Dead turned into a monster tavern cover band that growled, roared, laughed, and drove 1,300 souls to beaming happiness for 20 nights. Maybe I’m wrong, but I have a feeling my old buddies from that line outside the Fillmore would really love it.
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Bluegrass music is bigger than a genre. It’s become an entire world of ideas and feelings in the popular American imagination. And musician Jerry Douglas has been a key part of its celebration and revival over the past 30 years. “It's an old form of music that came from people in the south playing on the porch and became this juggernaut of a genre,” says Douglas. “It’s a character. It's a physical music.”
Douglas has racked up an impressive cabinet of accolades, including Grammys, American Music Association Awards, and International Bluegrass Music Association Awards. He’s been dubbed the CMA Awards’ Musician of the Year three times, and played with everyone from Allison Krauss and Elvis Costello to Bela Fleck and John Fogerty. He’s an encyclopedic guide to contemporary American roots music, and on this episode of Wong Notes, he walks Cory Wong through the most important moments in his 50-year career.
Tune in to hear Douglas’ assessment of bluegrass’ demanding nature (“Honestly, there's not so many genres nowadays that require as much technical facility as something like bluegrass”), what’s required of roots players (“Get it right, get it fast, make it hook”), and why the O Brother, Where Are Thou? soundtrack connected with so many listeners. Wondering how to get involved with session work? Douglas says there’s no one-size-fits-all answer, and what worked for him might not work today. The key is to be dynamic—and know when to keep your mouth shut.
There are plenty of gems in this interview, like Douglas’ thoughts on what makes a good solo, but the most significant might be Douglas’ big takeaway from decades of sitting in on communal roots-music sessions. “We can play in all genres,” says Douglas. “We just have to listen.”
Orangewood Juniper Live Acoustic Guitar
- Equipped with a high-output rail pickup (Alnico 5)
- Vintage-inspired design: trapeze tailpiece, double-bound body, 3-ply pickguard, and a cupcake knob
- Grover open-gear tuners for reliable performanceReinforced non-scalloped X bracing
- Headstock truss rod access, allowing for neck relief and adjustment
- Light gauge flatwound strings for added tonal textures
After decades of 250 road dates a year, Tab Benoit has earned a reputation for high-energy performances at clubs and festivals around the world.
On his new I Hear Thunder, Benoit still proudly plays the Fender Thinline Telecaster he purchased for $400 when he was making his debut album in Texas, 1992’s Nice & Warm. After that heralded release, his eclectic guitar work—which often echoes between classic blues-rock rumble-and-howl, the street-sweetened funk of New Orleans, and Memphis-fueled soul—helped Benoit win a long-term deal with Justice Records. But when the company folded in the late ’90s, his contract and catalog bounced from label to label.
Tab Benoit - "I Hear Thunder"
This bucked against Benoit’s strong desire to fully control his music—one reason he settled on the trio format early in his career. And although his 2011 album, Medicine, won three Blues Music Awards—the genre’s equivalent of Grammys—he stopped recording as a leader because he was bound by the stipulations of a record deal, now over, that he deemed untenable.
“I wanted to make records that reflected exactly how I sounded live and that were done as though we were playing a live concert,” Benoit says. “So, I formed my own label [Whiskey Bayou Records, with partner Reuben Williams] and signed artists whose music was, to me, the real deal, honest and straightforward. I couldn’t do anything on my own, but I could still continue putting out music that had a positive impact on the audience.”
Benoit’s new album, which includes Anders Osborne and George Porter Jr., was recorded in the studio at the guitarist’s home near the bayou in Houma, Louisiana.
Those artists include fellow rootsers Eric McFadden, Damon Fowler, Eric Johanson, Jeff McCarty, and Dash Rip Rock. Benoit also spent plenty of time pursuing his other passion: advocating for issues affecting Louisiana’s wetlands, including those around his native Houma. His 2004 album was titled Wetlands, and shortly after it was issued he founded the Voice of the Wetlands non-profit organization, and later assembled an all-star band that featured New Orleans-music MVPs Cyril Neville, Anders Osborne, George Porter Jr., Big Chief Monk Boudreaux, Johnny Vidacovich, Johnny Sansone, and Waylon Thibodeaux. This ensemble, the Voice of the Wetlands All-Stars, has released multiple CDs and toured.
Essentially, Benoit comes from the bayous, and when it’s time to record, he goes back to them, and to the studio he has in Houma, which he refers to as “the camp.” That’s where I Hear Thunder came to life. “George and Anders came to me and said, ‘Let’s go make some music,” Benoit offers. “So, we went out to the camp. They had some songs—and George and Anders and I go back so many years it was really a treat to put everything together. It only took us a couple of days to do everything we needed to do.”
“George Porter and Anders Osborne and I saw this alligator sitting around the boat where we were writing the entire time. I guess he really liked the song.”
I Hear Thunder has become his first number one on Billboard’s blues chart. Besides the fiery-yet-tight and disciplined guitar work of Benoit and Osborne, the latter also an esteemed songwriter, the album features his longtime rhythm section of bassist Corey Duplechin and drummer Terence Higgins. Bass legend Porter appears on two tracks, “Little Queenie” and “I’m a Write That Down.” Throughout the album, Benoit sings and plays with soul and tremendous energy, plus he handled engineering, mixing, and production.
Once again, that ascribed to his aesthetic. “My main reason for taking on those extra duties was I wanted to make sure that this recording gives the audience kind of a preview of how we’re going to sound live,” he declares. “That’s one of the things that I truly don’t like about a lot of current recordings. I listen to them and then see those guys live and it’s like, ‘Hey, that doesn't sound like what was on the album.’ Play it once or twice and let’s run with it. Don’t overdo it to the point you kill the honesty. All the guys that I love—Lightnin’ Hopkins, Albert King—they played it once, and you better have the tape machine running because they’re only going to give it to you that one time. That’s the spontaneity that you want and need.
“One of the reasons I don’t use a lot of pedals and effects is because I hate gimmicks,” he continues. “ I’m playing for the audience the way that I feel, and my attitude is ‘Let’s plug into the guitar and let it rip. If I make a mistake, so be it. I’m not using Auto-Tune to try and get somebody’s vocal to seem perfect. You think John Lee Hooker cared about Auto-Tune? You’re cheating the audience when you do that stuff.”
Tab Benoit’s Gear
Benoit in 2024 with his trusty 1972 Fender Thinline Telecaster, purchased in 1992 for $400. Note that Benoit is a fingerstyle player.
Photo by Doug Hardesty
Guitar
- 1972 Fender Telecaster Thinline
Amp
- Category 5 Tab Benoit 50-watt combo
Strings
- GHS Boomers (.011–.050)
The I Hear Thunder songs that particularly resonate include the explosive title track, the soulful “Why, Why” and the rollicking “Watching the Gators Roll In,” a song that directly reflected the album’s writing experience and environment. “George and Anders and I saw this alligator sitting around the boat where we were writing the entire time. I guess he really liked the song. He’d be swimming along and responding. That gave it some added punch.” As does Benoit and Osborne’s consistently dynamic guitar work. “I’m not one of these people who want to just run off a string of notes or do a lot of fast playing,” Benoit says. “It has to fit the song, the pace, and most of all, really express what I’m feeling at that particular moment. I think when the audience comes to a show and you play the songs off that album, you’ve got to make it real and make it honest.”
When asked whether he ever tires of touring, Benoit laughs and says, “Absolutely not. At every stop now I see a great mix of people who’ve been with us since the beginning, and then their children or sometimes even their grandchildren. When people come up to you and say how much they enjoy your music, it really does make you feel great. I’ve always seen the live concerts as a way of bringing some joy and happiness to people over a period of time, of helping them forget about whatever problems or issues they might have had coming in, and just to enjoy themselves. At the same time, I get a real thrill and joy from playing for them, and it’s something that I always want the band’s music to do—help bring some happiness and joy to everyone who hears our music.”
YouTube It
Hear Tab Benoit practice the art of slow, soulful, simmering blues on his new I Hear Thunder song “Overdue,” also featuring his well-worn 1972 Telecaster Thinline.