Petty travels heavy
By Marilyn Beck
Houston Chronicle - Thursday, May 9, 1985

HOLLYWOOD - Tom Petty will certainly be giving his now-healed hand (broken when he smashed it into a wall last October) a thorough workout this summer. The very hot rock star and his Heartbreakers group are planning to make their first concert tour in three years their biggest ever - literally.

They intend to tote their own antebellum mansion along for the trek.

Petty, whose "Southern Accents" LP sold more than a million copies in its first three weeks of release, is currently having the massive set - "Tara-West" - built in a warehouse in the San Fernando Valley. Designed to look like the front of a plantation manor, it'll include pillars that house sound monitors and lighting boards. There will also be two female backing singers and a three-man horn section on the tour.

Plans call for Petty and the Heartbreakers to be on the road June 6 through Aug. 3 - starting in Toledo, with concerts also in Philadelphia, the New York area, Chicago, Cleveland, Detroit, Houston, San Antonio, Atlanta, Tampa, San Francisco and L.A.