"Rebels, Southern Accents, Spike, and Dogs on the Run all feel connected by a sonic thread that sits slightly outside the dynamics of each of those four tracks. In its nostalgic wistfulness, it shares part of its soul with Southern Accents. In terms of tempo and feel, it shares its it’s skin and bones with Rebels, and in terms of its narrative form, it dovetails with the preceding Spike nicely and yet it rings with a sort of Kerouac-infused wanderlust that never lets you settle into one snapshot of one place, or one time."
Check out the song here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JV5F1C2NLdI
(* Note - the transcript is as-written before recording. I usually change a few sentences or words here and there on the hoof as I'm speaking.)
Good morning, good afternoon, or good evening, my fine friends. Welcome to the eleventh episode of season six of the Tom Petty Project Podcast! I am your host, Kevin Brown. This is the weekly podcast that digs into the entire Tom Petty catalog song by song, album by album and includes conversations with musicians, fans, and people connected with Tom along the way.
Before we dig into this week’s song, I wanted to shout out a couple more people who’ve been in touch on social media in the past week. First off, the ever-insightful and utterly wonderful Pete Nestor from the Honest and Unmerciful Record Review podcast made a great observation about the line “Hey Spike whaddya like”. I’d always kinda ascribed the good old boy who’s giving Spike a hard time, questioning any manner of his preferences. But Pete brought up a really interesting narrative potential in that it could be the bartender hollering that. This would sort of flip the narrative on its head that Spike isn’t the name of our protagonist. So that new dimension has me thinking in full colour, full 3D about this song in another new way. It’s a tale that you can dive really deeply into and still not necessarily reach its full depth. And as Pete also points out, this is in one of Tom’s more seemingly jokey, frivolous songs yet it still slots effortlessly into the Southern Accents original concept. I quote “even in Tom’s “slight” compositions, he often had a higher purpose, and tying this one more directly into the (somewhat truncated) concept of the album, I can appreciate this beloved song even more”. So it’s nice to be able to prompt people to think about a song like Spike in a way they maybe hadn’t before. Especially an excellent musical ear like Pete who is a superb podcaster and music analyst himself. Yeh it’s fun, yeh it’s quirky, but that masterful way Tom had of crafting his lyrics in such a way as to leave all this open to our imagination makes it a fun sandbox to kick around in. Another song that would be a brilliant candidate for a short film, or an episode in the Tom Petty Extended Universe! Maybe Spike is working on Something Big, Who knows!
And I thought I’d answer a question that my pal Daniel Roberts had. He wondered which album I’m going to be heading into next, for season seven. Whether I’d be diving straight into Let Me Up (I’ve Had Enough) or would be covering Pack up the Plantation first. So here’s the thing. When I had the idea for this podcast, I wasn’t nearly the die hard Pettyhead that I have since become. A combination of learning so much about Tom and developing such an appreciation for his work, combined with engaging with one of the best fan bases in rock n roll has really made me a much, much bigger fan, to the point that the Heartbreakers are now in that very top tier of bands for me along with my all time untouchables, like The Beatles and Queen. I digress. My original plan was to cover the sixteen Heartbreakers and studio albums in sequence. Because I didn’t even know about Pack up the Plantation, or Playback, or An American Treasure, or Live Anthology. You see where I’m going. So I’m sticking to that initial plan. After that, I’m going to go back and do all the B-sides and unreleased tracks in sequence. Then I want to also cover the two Mudcrutch and the two Wilburys albums. Thrown in between these somewhere, I do also want to cover select live songs, some that are great versions of studio songs and some that are live only, like the great covers. I’m also hoping that my co-host John Paulsen and I will cover the live albums and all the boxsets at some point and go through them as packages of songs in some sort of order. All this to say, that I don’t really see an endpoint for this project for at least 6 or 7 years! If you stick with me til the end, I’ll maybe buy you a beer, but you’ll have to come to Saskatoon to collect!
OK, that’s enough of that. Today’s episode covers the third song from the second side of Southern Accents, the enigmatically wonderful Dogs on the Run.
Dogs on the Run is really the fourth track that you suspect survived from the original Southern Accents concept. Rebels, Southern Accents, Spike, and Dogs on the Run all feel connected by a sonic thread that sits slightly outside the dynamics of each of those four tracks. In its nostalgic wistfulness, it shares part of its soul with Southern Accents. In terms of tempo and feel, it shares its it’s skin and bones with Rebels, and in terms of its narrative form, it dovetails with the preceding Spike nicely and yet it rings with a sort of Kerouac-infused wanderlust that never lets you settle into one snapshot of one place, or one time. In that way, it almost feels like a little of the aching restlessness of Straight Into Darkness bled over into this album and found a home in the soul of this song.
I’m definitely going to touch base with Paul Zollo at some point to ask about the conversations he had with Tom about this album, because, like some of the other songs on Southern Accents, not much ink was spilled talking about this song in Conversations with Tom Petty. It’s the only track from the album co-written with Mike Campbell and when Paul asks about this collaboration, Tom simply says “I think he had some of the chords and I wrote some of the chords.” Of course it would be difficult so many years after the fact to be able to remember details about every single song and the circumstances under which Southern Accents was written and recorded would certainly make recollection a little more difficult, but Tom goes on to say “I liked it a lot. Not one of our more well-known songs.” I think this is likely true but I suspect that this would rank fairly highly among deep cuts with hardcore fans. It was only really played live to any real degree on the Southern Accents tour, with a couple of outings in 2014, 2015. I don’t know if a really good live recording of this one exists though as it’s never been on an official release. It’s one that would definitely lend itself well to live performance though so it’s a little surprising that it never came up here and there. Maybe one that might have been dusted off during the Fillmore run had the Heartbreakers not dug back so heavily into their repertoire of covers. Not that I’m complaining about that mind you!
This one opens with a very similar feel to Rebels yet with a beautiful organ-drenched background colour that gives it a degree of separation. Where the staccato chop of Mike’s guitar on Rebels has a sharp edge to it, here it’s much warmer and feels like a setting July sun. The A - E- A - D chord progression on guitar sits underneath Benmont playing a straight, descending broken A chord, starting at the fifth. So the notes are E, Db, A, E over and over. SO as the chords change to E and to D, those same notes become suspended in those different chords. Another simple but really effective songwriting trick and they sound absolutely beautiful over top of that final D chord. I don’t remember Benmont playing that type of static arpeggio in a song before but I’ll have to cast my mind back at some point to see if I’m right!
That opening note is accompanied by a big kick drum, crash cymbal hit too and Howie pounding out that low A. Stan then backs off along with Howie’s bass to give that interwoven organ and guitar line centre stage. Howie then plays a very Ron Blair esque lick into the second four bars of this eight bar intro and Stan is keeping time on the hats and a reverb-heavy sidestick clack on the snare. This sparse arrangement, with the palm-muted chug of the rhythm guitar and that organ line, continues until what I’m gonna call the pre-chorus, because again, this song plays a little with form. Tom doesn’t play any electric guitar on this one so it’s Mike again adding those little accent fills here and there. In the second eight bars of this first verse, Stan starts to add in some kick drum and a couple of Tom hits, which starts to build the song a little into the main riff.
So at this point this is where I’ll talk about song structure again. I’d call those first four lines, “Well we come with what was on our backs” through to “When we laid our blankets on the ground” the verse. From “Well I woke up cold and hungry” to “dog on the run” I’d say is the pre-chorus and then the E D E D chord progression with Mike’s lick (sing it) over top, well that’s where the chorus would usually be in my mind. So the song has three sections to that verse, pre chorus, chorus, or you could even think of them as three verses with no chorus at all. In this chorus section there’s now a double time tambourine keeping time too and according to the album liner notes, that part is being played by percussionist Bobbye Hall, who played on tracks by artists ranging Pink Floyd to Jerry Garcia, from Stevie Nicks to the Doobie Brothers. This tambourine persists then through the rest of the song. Trust me, to keep time that well for that long on percussion is a lot harder than it might sound and maybe that’s why they brought in an expert. Or, perhaps she was just one of the many people who were around at the time and ended up playing on this album, or hanging out while it was being recorded.
That vocal line leading into the second verse is one of my favourites on the whole album. I fell overboard. It’s a wonderful four note descending run that matches the words that it’s framing. The notes fall overboard, but they do so gently. You don’t feel like this is cold water. Again, you have more of a sense of the Florida keys and the rest of this verse goes further into this visual with “and washed up on the beach”. Again though, the way this is presented, it doesn’t sound like a perilous near-death type of thing, but almost a giving in to the world, a letting go of something, a release that isn’t fatalistic or negative, but almost euphoric.
The second verse builds up all those interplaying notes between the guitar parts, with Tom adding in that 12 string guitar, which is mixed really low. We also get some really cool, crystal clear licks from Mike here. If you listen to the lead into the line “some of us are different” and through that line and “it’s just something in our blood”. This second verse/prechorus then ends on the title line “it’s just dogs on the run” before leading into a very typical tasty, but not face-melting Mike Campbell solo. There’s also a second part and I think that might actually be Tom on the Twelve string, if it’s not Mike double-tracking this part. We then get the chorus progression which leads up back into the last verse, where we get a little more sonic breathing room, before Tom builds us frenetically back into full swing with that fantastic belted line “Yeh she would laugh”.
Alright folks, It’s time for some Petty Trivia!
Your question from last week was this: The Heartbreakers performed a killer live version of Spike for Farm Aid 2 in 1986. The event was held at Manor Downs, Texas, but the Heartbreakers set, along with those of the Grateful Dead and Bob Dylan, were broadcast via satellite from which city? Was it a) Gainesville, Florida, b) Buffalo, New York, c) San Diego, California, or d) Kansas City, Missouri?
We didn’t have a ton of votes on this on the Twitter poll but again it was really spread. 20% of the votes went to Gainesville and San Diego and 30% went to each of Buffalo and Kansas City. What I love is that @jcb2010 on Twitter basically gave everyone the answer right after I posted it because he was in the crowd that day, in Buffalo New York! I also have to shout out the peerlessly hilarious Will Porteous who runs Wildflower Records in Norfolk UK. He commented simply “Bloody Hell this is hard!” and when I said this week’s question would be an easy one, asked if it would be “Name the frontman of Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers”. Well, I can’t really make it that easy, but this one should be a gimme for y’all. So your question for this week is this, and if you’ve listened to the episodes in this season so far, seriously, this one is a home run!:
Who is the first person, besides Tom and Mike, to receive a writing credit on a Heartbreakers studio release? Is it a) Benmont Tench, b) Jimmy Iovine, c) Tom Leadon, or d) Dave Stewart
OK, back to the song. This last verse really is the coup-de-grace and includes the superb line “She said 'honey, ain't it funny how a crowd gathers around anyone living life without a net?” That big drop in volume with the organ sitting in that upper register, Tom then belting us into the second half of the verse. And the conversational talk-singing that we heard in Spike. The build out into the last chorus chord progression has Tom repeating that refrain “It’s just dogs on the run” and riffing around it to make this section now a full chorus and flying up into his full upper register. I’ve talked lots about how good Tom was at writing songs economically and making effortless use of few words, few chord changes, sparse instrumentation etc. but that’s not the case on most of this album. This track blends the two approaches. It’s a simple chord progression. The song really doesn’t have a middle eight to speak of and sonically it doesn’t move much sonically away from how it builds up to after that first verse. Yet it’s pretty densely packed with lyrics; some of them conjuring evocative imagery; “Well we come with what was on our backs. Yeah, when the leaves had died and all turned black.” For me, the visual is the idea of itinerant pleasure seekers going where the wind takes them with little regard for planning out their next steps. I suppose you could also infer a bleaker Steinbeck-flavoured exodus across the country, never knowing where you next bed is going to be, but the warmth of the guitars and that glorious organ tone make it a more positive image in my head. Also that line I quoted about people living life without a net speaks more to me of carefree youth than weary travelers. We move from there to very specific images. Falling overboard, washing up on the beach, followed by a dreamlike vision of being helped to the home of a young bleached blond, from which the rest of the narrative plays out.
Is this song rooted firmly in Southern commentary or character study? I don’t think it is speficially. Yet as I’ve said, Tom manages to make it fit with those other three songs and they comprise what I think would have been the main thematic points of the original concept. Not everything about the South has a negative connotation for Tom and this song’s strange mantra, Dogs on the Run weaves a much more casual, hedonist thread through this aural tapestry. When you tie in songs like Trailer and The Apartment song, you definitely start to see more of a varied collage of snapshots of Southern life than you do with the track listing the album ended up with and the unrelated pop songs that invaded it.
OK Pettyheads, that’s all for this week. I could make an argument that this might be the closest Tom ever came to sounding like Springsteen. Even though they were contemporaries and shared similarities in some of their songwriting styles, there’s always a marked tonal difference between the two men even when they’re writing about similar themes. But you could easily hear the E Street band ripping into this one and Springsteen, neck muscles bulging, belting out the words. Would have been different but I bet it would have been cool to hear. I love the way Tom leans into his drawl to the absolute extreme on this song in places, then backs it off and becomes almost nostalgic and given to literary ethos on that line “I fell overboard and washed up on the beach.” It’s an artist in full control over his vocal ability and pulling out all the stops when he needs to to drive a great song forward.
Overall, Dogs on the Run is probably an underappreciated little gem on this album but it’s such a brilliant track to have at midpoint position on Side Two of the album. It would also have served as a great album closer and I’m sure John Paulsen and I will get into this in a big way, as I’ve mentioned before, when we do the album wrap! It’s another song that, in most other people’s catalogues, would be a highlight, it suffers only from being surrounded by diamonds that sparkle even more brightly. There’s enough in this song for me to love that again, I’m going to give it a rock solid 7. It lacks the pure outrageous charm of Spike, and doesn’t have the blistering frankness of Rebels or the heartwrenching beauty of Southern Accents, but it’s still a bloody brilliant song to sing along with and tap your foot to.
QUESTION: Who is the first person, besides Tom and Mike, to receive a writing credit on a Heartbreakers studio release? Is it a) Benmont Tench, b) Jimmy Iovine, c) Tom Leadon, or d) Dave Stewart
ANSWER: Well, as we’re covering Southern Accents and it’s pop-infused influences, I think most of you guessed that the answer was d) Dave Stewart. Stewart co-wrote three of the songs on the album with Tom and brought an entirely different sound to a Heartbreakers record that was already fraught with creative issues. Now, I adore Dave Stewart and his output with the Eurythmics is as close to pop perfection as you can get. I think that Don’t Come Around Here No More is also a complete masterpiece and a track that has a lot more depth to it than you first realize. However, I still think can’t help but wonder what the album would have sounded like if Tom had stuck to his original concept and included more of those Southern-themed tracks. Something to dig into on the album wrap episode perhaps…
Well we come with what was on our backs
Yeah, when the leaves had died and all turned black
Back when the wind was cold and blew them 'round
When we laid our blankets on the ground
Yeah and I woke up feelin' hungry
Lookin' straight into the sun, and left a cold night on the ground
Like a dog on the run
I fell overboard and washed up on the beach
Yes, let the waves and sand roll over me
I was helped to the home of a young bleached blond
Who said 'honey I discovered early in life there's ways of getting
Anything I want , some of us are different
It's just something in our blood, there's no need for explanations
We're just dogs on the run
The room was painted blue and gray
All my meals were served on a silver tray
Oh she would laugh, and light m why cigarettes
She said 'honey, ain't it funny how a crowd gathers around
Anyone living life without a net?
And how they'll beg you for the answers
But it won't ever be enough, there's no way you could ever tell 'em
It's just dogs on the run
