Tom Petty Still Interested In ‘Wildflowers’ Tour Despite 40th Anniversary Tour Announcement

The big news of the day thus far has been Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers announcing 30+ dates for a 2017 Tour celebrating the band’s 40th anniversary. Earlier this year Tom Petty discussed his plans to tour behind a reissue of his famed 1994 album Wildflowers. While the just announced tour will not focus on Wildflowers, he hasn’t given up on the idea.

Petty chatted with Andy Greene of Rolling Stone for an interview that was posted just after the tour was announced. Greene was the same journalist who got Tom to open up on the Wildflowers idea earlier this year. One of the big takeaways from the interview is that Petty feels this might be his last major tour. “I’m thinking it may be the last trip around the country,” said Petty. “It’s very likely we’ll keep playing, but will we take on 50 shows in one tour? I don’t think so. I’d be lying if I didn’t say I was thinking this might be the last big one. We’re all on the backside of our sixties. I have a granddaughter now I’d like to see as much as I can. I don’t want to spend my life on the road. This tour will take me away for four months. With a little kid, that’s a lot of time.”

So what happened to the Wildflowers tour? “The 40th anniversary kind of got in the way of that,” Petty explained. “I looked at the tour they booked and it was all big places. The Wildflowers tour will have to be in smaller places because it’s just a lot of quiet and a lot of it is acoustic. It would be wrong to focus on one album for that tour.” As for the upcoming tour, since the band has no new music to promote the setlists may include rarities. “If I was a fan and they didn’t play ‘American Girl’ or ‘Free Fallin” I’d be disappointed,” said Petty. “But I want to continue with the vibe we had at the theater shows where we represented plenty of popular songs, but also give the longtime fans some really deep stuff, and we can change the show as much as we want from night to night.”

Tom Petty told Rolling Stone he’d like to embark on a Wildflowers tour after the 40th Anniversary run. “I started talking about that the other day and got a loud, ‘Shut up!'” Petty revealed. “Every time I bring it up it hits a wall somewhere. But we’re done in August. After that, it’s not out of the question I’d get the box set together and take it on the road to theaters before the end of the year.” In the meantime, there’s still more 40th Anniversary dates to be announced.

Head to Rolling Stone for more from Tom Petty.