Petty, Heartbreakers To Tour Info Superhighway

They’re calling it the “Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers Superhighway Tour,” but it’s not a series of one-night stands in cities across the country. Instead, it’s a conduit for delivering additional value to fans.

Confused? Let’s start at the beginning.

The multiple CD set – The Live Anthology – consists of live tracks drawn from the band’s long career ranging from 1978 through 2007. Selected by producers Petty, Mike Campbell and Ryan Ulyate, the collection contains no overdubs, fixes or additions. It’s all straight ahead rock & roll by one of the best concert bands of all time.

But it’s not just a one-size-fits-all CD release. Fans will have a choice of different sets at various prices.

For example, the collector’s deluxe box set, available only at Best Buy beginning Nov. 22, features five CDs containing 62 tracks plus two previously unreleased DVDs, including the band’s 1978 New Year’s Eve gig in Santa Monica as well as the documentary “400 Days” shot during the Wildflowers tour.

Also included in the deluxe package is a re-mastered vinyl copy of the 1976 “official” live bootleg, and a Blu-ray audio disc featuring all 62 tracks in stereo as well as in 5.1 Surround Sound.

Two days after the deluxe box set arrives at Best Buy, a four CD set containing 48 tracks will be available everywhere while a 48-track “digital album” will be sold through online music download stores.

Along with the various CD packages and the digital album offering, Petty and the Heartbreakers will release a 51-track vinyl deluxe box set, described as “mastered directly from the uncompressed 24-bit 96k files and pressed on seven 180-gram audiophile quality vinyl LPs.” The set will be available wherever fine vinyl recordings are sold beginning Nov. 24.

Now, here’s where it might get confusing, so we’ll type slower while you take your time reading each and every word.

The promotion coinciding with the release of all this music is called the “Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers Superhighway Tour.” But this is not a tour in the sense of Petty and co. hitting the road playing city after city. However, you do have to buy a ticket for this tour, and those ducats will be available from Ticketmaster as well as the tour’s official Web site beginning Sept. 29.

So, if it’s not a tour in the sense of Petty and the band playing a venue near you, just what the heck is this “Superhighway” offering anyway?

It’s additional music, plus interviews, new band commentary and rare Petty/Heartbreakers content. It’s 24 of the 48 Live Anthology tracks delivered over an eight week advance period. Once the CD collection is released Nov. 24, Superhighway Tour ticket holders will receive the set’s remaining 24 tracks by way of digital delivery.

You can also catch a free preview of the Superhighway Tour from the tour’s Web site and download a free copy of a track from the band’s 1981 concert at the Los Angeles Forum beginning Sept. 29.

How much will one ticket for the Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers Superhighway Tour cost you? $24.98, which works out to 52 cents per track, and covers all the additional material ticket holders will receive during the eight weeks leading up to release of The Live Anthology.

It’s a fun way to promote awareness of the box set and its various flavors as well as giving fans something extra in the form of digital downloads and additional content. But you gotta buy a ticket to be in it. For more information, please click here for the Superhighway Tour Web site.