No, Mudcrutch isn't something you order late at night on a shopping channel to help you hop over muddy patches of earth. It's the band Tom Petty started in the early '70s when he was still living in Gainesville, Florida. He and two other Mudcrutchers, guitarist Mike Campbell and keyboard man Benmont Tench, would of course become rock 'n' roll worldbeaters by the end of the decade as Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers.

A man with a long memory and a genuine love of music, Petty recently got to thinking about his old outfit and floated the idea of a reunion to singer/guitarist Tom Leadon and drummer Randall Marsh (Petty was the bassist in the band). End result: The first Mudcrutch album is due April 29 on Warner/Reprise, and the band's in the midst of a short string of dates that cap off with an April 25-29 stint at the Troubadour in L.A. If this isn't the longest it's ever taken for a band to release their debut album, somebody's got their Guinness book upside down.