If you’re a child of the ’80s, Steve Ferrone has probably played with at least one of your favorite bands or artists. But it was his tenure with Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers—from 1994 to Petty’s death in 2017—that etched his name onto the map. Not every drummer jumps from playing in Average White Band to holding down the beat at the Super Bowl XLII halftime show, you know.
The 73-year-old drummer joined Christian rock band Vota (stylized “VOTA”) at St. Pete’s Floridian Social on Thursday night for a 90-minute set of Petty’s greatest hits. Most of the setlist consisted of tracks that were performed on Petty’s final tour—which stopped at Tampa’s Amalie Arena in May 2017—and a few rare catches. Vota frontman Bryan Olesen seemed to forget a few of the words on the five-and-a-half-minute “Swingin’,” and before “Angel Dream,” Ferrone needed a reminder of the name of “She’s The One,” the flick Petty wrote the track—and a whole soundtrack—for.
And, as a special treat, he took to the mic on super deep-cut “Joe,” the scathing takedown of music business CEOs off of 2002’s The Last DJ.
The smattering of Ferrone’s anecdotes were Petty-related, and one even displayed the perfectionist side of Gainesville’s favorite son. Let’s just say that it relates to him getting a call from the boss, complaining about a live recording—played on the drummer’s SiriusXM show—from a gig in mile-high Denver, on which the tempo to “You Got Lucky” was played slightly too fast.
“See what I have to go through as a drummer?” he joked. “That’s why you see me back there singing. I’m not singing because I like the song or the words. I only sing the songs to make sure that Tom had enough space to get all of his lyrics in, because if he didn’t, it was on my ass.”
