The tribute album titled, Petty Country: A Country Music Celebration of Tom Petty will include songs like “Southern Accents” recorded by Dolly Parton, you'll hear George Strait‘s vocals on “You Wreck Me,” and there's a version of “Refugee” by Wynonna Judd & Lainey Wilson.
One of Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers‘ best known and most loved songs, “American Girl” actually flopped on radio both times it was released as a single, but is considered one of his greatest songs. It got a resurgence in 1991 when it was used in the movie Silence of The Lambs and Petty continued to play it live.
Multi-platinum artist, Dierks Bentley covered it for the tribute album, he tells us more:
“‘American Girl” is just a classic in every genre of music. I mean, it's obviously the rock world, the country world. You can American Girls are song. You'll hear down a little Broadway. Someone's probably singing it right now down there. It's probably money is being put in a tip jar to request that song. It's one I've sung many times before as well, so it's just a classic song. It's also a big part of the Bluegrass world. Tom Petty is, at least, uh, his music's been covered by some of my favorite people, including Marty Stewart, and The Del McCoury band. So I was so excited to be asked to be part of this project, to honor this great musician, this great band, The Heartbreakers, put my own spin on this track. I feel like we're able to do that. John Randall and I kind of added a little bit of the blue grass element to the uh to The Rock Sound, and it come up with something that feels pretty original. So, Just, Feel lucky. This song was available, I jumped on a project pretty quick and was able to get the song that I wanted and it's an incredible project with so many great artists. Including Dolly, Parton and George Strait. Uh, Chris Stapleton. Hopefully we'll get a chance to, you know, do the whole thing live somewhere for an audience but uh just great track American Girl. I couldn't be more happy about the way it turned out.” :1:06