Improving Tom Petty's Highway Companion...

"Highway Companion... feels a little off, as if Petty is striving to make a fun rock and roll record but his heart is in making a melancholy introspective album, where he's grappling with growing older." allmusic

Let me be clear about this, I've been a Tom Petty (TP) fan for a long time. I've seen TP and the Heartbreakers play live twice, I've owned most of the band's albums twice - original and re-mastered versions - and TP's Wildflowers solo album is one of my all-time favorites. When I depart on a driving trip, it's usually with me in either cassette or CD form.

So imagine my disappointment in July of 2006 when I purchased Highway Companion, his third solo album, and felt it was a C- effort at best. I was not alone... A fellow TP fan told me that he "hated it" so much that he threw the CD against a wall, breaking the jewel box it came in!

Simply being patient didn't work ("Maybe I'll like it better in a few months..."), so I just set it aside. Eventually, as I listened to the soundtrack from the great movie Elizabethtown, it dawned on me that there were two Heartbreakers/TP songs on it... It'll All Work Out from the band, and a slightly different master of Square One, the second track on Companion.

What if I take these two tracks from Elizabethtown and graft them on to Companion - making Highway Companion + (Plus), if you will? For some reason - or, actually, a couple - it seemed to work. The soundtrack tunes fit in with the mood and them of Companion and vice-versa. Further, it turns the short cassette-length album (43:56) into a CD that's a better investment for a road trip. The Plus version times out at 51 minutes and 30 seconds.

Oh, and I grade the new version as a respectable B- musically (even my friend liked it more than the original).

In order to create your own HC+ all you need is the Companion CD, the Elizabethtown soundtrack CD, and a computer program that will enable you to equalize the sounds (control the loudness levels) between the two CDs.

At another time, I might provide some track-by-track comments (a retro record review), but for now here's the new order of songs that I came up with in my touch-up exercise:

1. It'll All Work Out (3:47)
2. Square One (3:27)
3. Saving Grace (3:52)
4. Flirting With Time (3:20)
5. Down South (3:31)
6. Jack (2:33)
7. Turn This Car Around (4:02)
8. Big Weekend (3:19)
9. Night Driver (4:32)
10. Damaged By Love (3:25)
11. This Old Town (4:21)
12. Ankle Deep (3:28)
13. The Garden Rose (4:45)
14. Square One (3:27)

Note: The first version of Square One (track 2, above) has a fuller and richer sound, as is desirable for a film soundtrack. The second version (track 14) is "brighter," allowing one to hear the guitar work better. Both are fine masters, just varying slightly in bias.