We Ain't Petty, Ultimate Tribute To Tom Petty

Tom Petty, of Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, The Travelling Wilburys, and Mudcrutch (who’s heard of that one?), died on Monday of reported cardiac arrest.

The world will now figure out how to say goodbye to one of those artists whose greatest hits albums would have toiled on the audio players of fathers and sons, mothers and daughters, rock and rollers, pop lovers, clubgoers, and yes, those who knew how to just chill out.

Petty was a musician who crossed so many barriers and touched so many lives that his death will be talked about and mourned for some time — his life, and work, will be immortalized.

And today, all of those ripples on the pond exist in Bolton.

“I have a feeling it will definitely have a completely different meaning for me. In the past, we were paying tribute to great music, and now we’re paying tribute to an artist, someone who meant so much to so many people. Someone I’ve been living with for 40 years now. Your heroes always seem to be immortal; when they do pass, it really hits you.” — Barry Davis
Former Sportsnet broadcaster Barry Davis is enjoying a second career as the leader of a band, as well as broadcaster. While Davis has focused his broadcasting talent to a successful podcast (Outta The Park) and media ventures, management of his own time allowed him to pursue one of his passions as well, music.

And that passion took physical form in We Ain’t Petty, Davis’ Tom Petty tribute band.

“One of the first albums I remember having as a kid was Damn the Torpedoes (the third album of the Heartbreakers),” Davis said. “I remember my older brother playing it over and over again, all of those songs became ingrained in my brain. And as I grew older, I started to have a deep appreciation for anything Tom Petty did in his career.”

For Davis, the first thing that stood out with Petty was the songwriting talent. But as a musician, he said, playing his music has been a journey in itself. As a fan, he said, you enjoy the simplicity of a Petty tune.

“The lyrics are pretty easy to figure out, the melodies are catchy,” he said. But as a musician, Davis added, you learned even more about the genius behind the songs.

“When you start learning how to play the songs as a musician, you hear them in a completely different way,” Davis said. “Those melodies are not so simple as I thought they were. The arrangements of the songs are pretty deep and pretty interesting. To sit and listen to the music is one thing, but it’s deceptively challenging to play and perform.”

The way he heard the news was strange enough, he said. Processing it and playing the music may hit him as well, he said.

“We (the band) had taken the month of September off,” he said. “I had just lined up a gig for our band. So yesterday, I had picked up my guitar for first time in weeks, and started going through his songs again. I was sitting in my basement, guitar in hand, hearing myself in headphones singing a Tom Petty song, at the exact moment a tweet came into me, asking if I had heard the news?

“It hit me like a ton of bricks.”

While he never met the man he plays tribute to, he said it’s going to be unique to get up on that stage the next time.

“I have a feeling it will definitely have a completely different meaning for me. In the past, we were paying tribute to great music, and now we’re paying tribute to an artist, someone who meant so much to so many people. Someone I’ve been living with for 40 years now. Your heroes always seem to be immortal; when they do pass, it really hits you.”

If you want to enjoy a little bit more of that signature sound with a local flair, follow Davis and NSR media on Facebook for information on shows and broadcasts. - Caledon Enterprise