Swingin’ the Club

Spencer Patterson

Wednesday, Aug. 17, 2005 | 8:22 a.m.

First, he assembled a set list loaded with deep original cuts and rarely played covers for Tuesday's stopover at The Joint at the Hard Rock Hotel.

Then, the 54-year-old headliner took his departure from the norm a step further, mixing in a few unplanned tunes during his 2-hour, 10- minute performance.

The motivation for Petty's playful behavior? The lone club setting on this summer's amphitheater-centric "For the Hell of it" tour.

"We've been on tour for three months now, and this is the only small venue we've done," Petty explained early in the show. "So I'm gonna play whatever crosses my mind."

Petty has shown a fondness for mixing it up in the past. At the Aladdin Theatre for the Performing Arts in 2002, he left most of his biggest hits on the shelf in favor of lesser-known material from his considerable catalog.

On that occasion the approach left much of the audience cold, which wasn't particularly surprising, given that it was a Friday night casino crowd numbering more than 5,000.

But on a weeknight at the intimate, sold-out Joint, with just 2,000 rabid -- and mainly local -- Petty fans in attendance, Petty's instincts were on target.

Not that he and his longtime band, the Heartbreakers, abstained from playing their classics.

The six musicians reeled off plenty of classic-rock radio staples, including a string of four -- "Listen to Her Heart," "I Won't Back Down," "Free Fallin' " and "Breakdown" -- early in the set, and another trio -- "Don't Come Around Here No More," "Refugee" and "Runnin' Down a Dream" -- to close.

But most of the night's indelible moments occurred when Petty detoured into less familiar territory, numbers the colorfully dressed singer/ guitarist often prefaced with brief explanations.

"This is one we haven't played in many, many a long, long time," went one such briefing, leading into the twangy "What Are You Doin' in My Life?" off the 1979 album "Damn the Torpedoes."

The first signal Tuesday's show would be anything but typical came at the start, when Petty smartly plucked Chuck Berry's "Around and Around" (first line: "The joint was jumpin' / Goin' round and 'round") for his opener.

After satisfying casual admirers with the early parade of hits, Petty dug deeper for Little Richard's rockabilly ditty "Rip it Up," the Animals' foot-stomping "I'm Crying" and slow blues standard "Little Red Rooster."

"Rooster," a Willie Dixon tune covered frequently by the Rolling Stones and the Grateful Dead over the years, proved to be the concert's zenith.

Petty's snarling vocals were an ideal match for the drawn-out lyrics ("Keep everything in the baaarnyaaard"), while all instrumentalists got an opportunity stretch out musically.

The Heartbreakers -- guitarists Mike Campbell and Scott Thurston, keyboardist Benmont Tench, bassist Ron Blair and drummer Steve Ferrone -- continued to show off their chops on J.J. Cale's shadowy "Thirteen Days" and new Petty composition "Melinda."

The latter, which featured a monster piano solo from Tench, meandered a tad too far off course, but Petty quickly refocused his fans with an acoustic rendition of the more familiar "Learning to Fly."

Fittingly, the night ended not with standard Petty encore capper "American Girl" but with Van Morrison's "Gloria," one of rock's enduring vocal improvisation vehicles.

Midway through the tune, a grinning Petty spoke-sang about an encounter with the song's namesake.

"She said, 'I know your kind of man. You laze around the house all day, watching Dr. Phil ... and you smell like marijuana,' " Petty ad-libbed, eliciting a roar topped only when he waved goodnight and blew the room a kiss a few minutes later.

"Did you have a good time tonight?" he asked before exiting. "We had a good time, too."