As Bonnaroo 2018 draws nearer, we've gotten the lowdown on who's playing which day as well as who's bringing the yuks, and today, we get a peek at the annual Superjam. In years past, the late-night, special-guest-laden set has tended to serve as a salute to a particular style of music, music from a certain place or a certain time. This year, the jam pays tribute to just one catalog of songs, but it's a pretty damned exceptional one: that of Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, whose leader died Oct. 2, just a few weeks shy of his 67th birthday.
Alongside his crack band that included guitarist Mike Campbell and keyboardist Benmont Tench, Petty performed artful anthems like "I Won't Back Down" and "American Girl" (songs that rightfully earned Petty the nickname Florida Springsteen) twice at Bonnaroo, in 2006 and 2013. This time out, they'll be performed by a house band led by Patrick Hallahan of My Morning Jacket and Craig Pfunder of VHS or Beta. Wilco's Pat Sansone, MMJ's Tom Blankenship, Vandaveer's Mark Heideger, The Texas Gentlemen's Daniel Creamer, and The Watson Twins will round out the band. Guests are set to include Sheryl Crow, Vanessa Carlton, Japanese Breakfast, Moon Taxi, Rayland Baxter and his father Bucky, among others.
More guests are to be announced. It's always possible that one of The Heartbreakers could show up — though that partially depends on when and where Fleetwood Mac's tour begins, as the word went out Monday that Campbell will be one of the guitarists taking the place of Lindsey Buckingham (the other is Crowded House's Neil Finn). Bonnaroo tickets are available via the festival's website.
