Listen, if you are a Tom Petty fan (and really, who isn’t in this town?) you need to get yourself to the Cade Museum to see its newest exhibit, Tom Petty: Among The Wildflowers.
The exhibit is based on a documentary about how hometown rock icon Petty came to record his album Wildflowers in 1994. Petty’s personal favorite collection of his works, Wildflowers has been called his magnum opus.
Wildflowers was a new turn for Petty, to be sure. By his own account he was going through some tough emotional times in the run-up to Wildflowers, and it showed in his work.
“It’s soul music,” Petty, who died in 2017, once said. “I think it was just time to turn the corner and try to find another place to go, and the result was Wildflowers.”
“You belong among the wildflowers
You belong somewhere close to me
Far away from your trouble and worry
You belong somewhere you feel free”
At a sneak preview of the exhibit on Thursday night, younger brother Bruce Petty, talked about Tom and his work.
“He was always driven to do the very best he could do,” Bruce said. “Wildflowers was supposed to have 25 songs, but the company wouldn’t do a double album. He ended up getting 15 songs on an album which I don’t think had ever been done before.” (A 2020 rerelease of the album did include all 25 songs.)
Bruce recalled “the first album we ever bought together was Meet The Beatles! We took it home and listened to it and a light went on for Tom. He said ‘this is what I want to do.’”
In what became a sort of brotherly tradition, Tom Petty would call Bruce up after he recorded something new and say “I want to play this for you.”
“He would rent a house in St. Augustine and play all the songs for me. It was an almost religious experience for us.”
Tom Petty set the gold standard for GNV’s rich music culture. But that culture hasn’t died with Petty. The Cade brought in three talented young musicians to perform a selection of Wildflowers songs.
Sammie Daigle (left) and Chandler McFarland (center) are Buchholz High grads and perform with GNV’s Madwoman band. Amber Bethel (right) was also a BHS grad and a student of GNV’s Star theater.
“Why is a science museum throwing in a rock star exhibit?” poses Phoebe Miles-Cade, daughter Dr. James Robert Cade, the late UF scientists who invented Gatorade.
“The connection between music and science is strong,” she said. “My father always said he was a musician first and then an inventor.”
Cade played the violin, Petty the guitar. In their own ways they both helped put GNV on the map.
After all, what’s more GNV than Gatorade and Wildflowers?
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