Mike Campbell Credit: Mike Campbell & The Dirty Knobs/Facebook
Tom Petty’s right-hand man Mike Campbell just announced a new run of shows with his band The Dirty Knobs, which will finally bring the Heartbreaker home to Florida for some gigs this summer.

Tickets to see Mike Campbell and the Dirty Knobs play Clearwater’s Ruth Eckerd Hall on Wednesday, Aug. 13 are now on sale and start at $43.25.

This October marks eight years since Petty’s shocking death, following a wildly successful 40th anniversary tour with the Heartbreakers, but Campbell has kept as busy as ever since then.

The 75-year-old would help fill in for Lindsey Buckingham on what seems to be Fleetwood Mac’s final tour, and he started the 2020s by amplifying the band he’s been fronting since earlier this century, as a way to keep his chops sharp when Petty and the guys weren’t on the road.

The band has evolved into a new outlet for Campbell, seeing him reunite with long-estranged original Heartbreakers drummer Stan Lynch, and collaborating with the likes of Chris Stapleton, Mott The Hoople’s Ian Hunter, and—on the band’s latest album Vagabonds, Virgins, & Misfits—Graham Nash.

Speaking of collaborators, Steve Ferrone (a session legend who drummed for the Heartbreakers for the last 20-or-so years of Petty’s life) will be banging the cans at this semi-homecoming show, with singer-songwriter Shannon McNally opening the set.

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Josh Bradley is Creative Loafing Tampa Bay's calendar editor. He started as a freelance music writer in 2020 at the age of 18, and after spending years covering, announcing, and previewing concerts in...