Back in the summer of 2003, I was witness to a great concert put on by Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers at Starwood Amphitheater in Antioch, Tennessee (may it R.I.P). The concert was great for a casual Petty fan; nary a song from the Heartbreakers� �Greatest Hits� collection was passed over and the band even changed up some of the classics to keep things interesting (a subdued and transcendent �Learning to Fly� comes to mind).

But my concert-going experience was interrupted by an inebriated gentleman sitting on the lawn behind me, a man who I will affectionately call �Drunk Guy.� Drunk Guy felt it his duty to explain to Mr. Petty, in as loud of a voice as possible, what songs should be on his setlist, and when Mr. Petty did not comply (not surprising, as the man was probably 500 yards away) Drunk Guy grew agitated. It went something like this (said in a thick Middle Tennessee accent):

�Tom! Tom! Where�s �Dogs on the Run�, man? No �Rebels�? C�mon! You�re not telling me you�re going to come down to Tennessee and not play anything from Southern Accents? That�s the only reason I�m here, Tom!�

To a casual Petty fan like me, the man grew from slightly amusing to plain annoying over the course of the night as he continued his one-sided conversation with Petty. But when I got back from the concert, I started to wonder what made these songs so special to this man. I quickly forgot about it, but about a year or so later, as I was perusing the used CD section at Nashville�s The Great Escape, I found the album in question for $7.99 and remembering the indirect recommendation from Drunk Guy, I thought I�d give it a try.

And it�s a good thing I did. Southern Accents is probably my favorite set of Petty songs to date, and possibly the best songs written about the Southern experience since Robbie Robertson (featured here) wrote �The Night They Drove Ole� Dixie Down.�

The album is a throwback to Petty�s roots. Though he�s often labeled as a California rocker (due in no small part to songs like �Free Fallin�� with characters living their lives in the San Fernando Valley) the Heartbreakers actually started in Gainesville, Florida and the album seems loosely built around the concept of coming to terms with one�s heritage � something most Southerners have experienced, especially those who spent their whole lives trying to leave the region, only to find out you can never really leave it.

�Rebels� is the first person account of a man living as a �rebel� in the modern day South, only he doesn�t have anything to fight for, so he just gets drunk and speeds and wonders why his girlfriend gets mad at him when she has to bail him out. He�s a man out of time; a Confederate soldier born a hundred years too late, surrounded by reminders of the desecrated South, cursing those �blue-bellied devils� who �burned out cornfields and left our cities leveled.� Rebellion is in his blood, �even before� his �father�s father,� he just doesn�t have anywhere to direct his unruly streak, which is why he lives with �one foot in the grave and one foot on the pedal.� It�s no surprise this song is often covered in concert by Drive-By Truckers, a band who recorded an entire album about what they called the �duality of the Southern thing.�

The title track covers similar territory, but even more directly. Whereas in �Rebels� the narrator didn�t realize he was self-destructing, the character here is clearly trying to salvage the last vestiges of life as he knows it. The narrator seems to be somewhere in a dirty hotel room, far away from home, thinking about how awful things are. He talks about how �that drunk tank in Atlanta was just a motel room to me,� as if his life is so far down the crapper he can barely tell the difference. He sees his mother by the window saying a prayer for him; but he�s sure to note �everything is done with a Southern accent, where I come from.� Again, he can�t escape it, no matter how hard he tries, for better or worse he keeps getting pulled back in.

�Dogs on the Run� seems to be the capper, when the character finally �fell overboard and washed up on the beach.� He meets a girl who takes him into a room painted �blue and gray� (the colors of the Union and Confederacy, respectively) and she turns out to be just like him. She tells him: �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.�

Now I know what Drunk Guy was yelling about. Petty wasn�t just singing to him; he was singing about him. He was singing about every modern day Southerner who feels alienated in the world, the folks with rebellion in their blood � the people who really are just dogs on the run.

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