Prior to doing my weekly half-assed research for this week's tune, I thought my introduction to it was the song being featured in the Showtime series that I was one of about three people who thought it was a good show: Roadies. But after a little reading...how's that for a lame-ass teaser?
Mudcrutch (quite the intriguing name, may or may not have had its origin in the fact that the band members were all dirt poor and/or looking for a psychedelic sounding name) formed in Gainesville, Florida in 1970, and quickly developed into a popular band from Central Florida to Southern Georgia. They moved to Los Angeles in 1974 and signed with Shelter Records. They released a single that didn't sell, and after a year the label lost patience with their lack of success and broke the band up. Three of the members--Tom Petty, Mike Campbell, and Benmont Tench (you may have heard of them)--went on to form Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers with some measure of success. Mudcrutch would reform in 2008 and release their first album to commercial and critical success. The band released a second album in 2016, but sadly it would be their last as Petty passed away in 2017 from an accidental overdose.
"Trailer" was featured on Mudcrutch's second album, the rather appropriately named 2. The song was not released as a single (though there was a promotional single for it). The album peaked at #10 on the Billboard 200 and was also named one of Rolling Stone's top fifty albums of 2016.
Fun Fact: As noted above, until I began reading about this week's tune I thought the first I'd heard it was on Roadies. Turns out the song was actually originally released as the B-side of Petty's 1985 single "Don't Come Around Here No More." It so happens that I own that particular single, and when I checked it out, sure enough the B-side was indeed "Trailer." As at one time I was quite the devotee of B-side singles, there's a good chance that I had heard it before, though apparently it didn't make much of an impression back then.
One of the gifts that Tom Petty had--and despite his success, never lost--was his ability to write songs about everyday people that touched the heart. In "Trailer" Petty weaves the tale of a young man who fell in love in high school, bought his love a trailer for the two of them to share, only to have her leave without so much as a goodbye and all he has left is a trailer that he doesn't much like and the dreams he has of the life he might have led had he never bought it. In truth, it's kind of a sad song, but Petty and Mudcrutch never let it devolve into mawkishness. There's some nice guitar work from Mike Campbell, a bit of emaycee fave harmonica, and Petty's vocals capture the yearning of a man reeling from the disappointment that his life has become. And it's all done in three minutes and seventeen seconds--one of the truly great aspects of rock and roll is its ability to say so much with so few frills, and with "Trailer" Mudcrutch gives a master class in how it's done.
Lyric Sheet: "I can't find a band aid that gives me an answer/That shines any light on the way things went/I get by on my own time..."
Enjoy:
Republicans = Nazis
Peace,
emaycee
