After four decades as the guitarist and co-writer of dozens of songs in Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, Mike Campbell transitioned full-time to a role as the bandleader of the Dirty Knobs. The recent release of the Knobs’ fourth album, Mission of Mercy, finds Campbell supplying a dozen tightly-constructed songs that allow he and his bandmates to show off their growth as a rock-and-roll unit.

The material echoes Campbell’s previous musical activities while making them fresh for several generations of listeners. He offers some satisfying surprises in the pure energy of “Bongo Mania” with guest Kate Pierson of The B-52s, the loose-limbed country tune, “More Than Gold” with Morgane Stapleton, the Beach Boys-inspired title track and the album closer, “Vagrant,” which unfolds with a stream of conscious narrative as its main character makes his way around San Franciso.

In 2024 with Vagabonds, Virgins & Misfits, the third album by the Dirty Knobs (a reference to grimy knobs on an amplifier), Campbell found his sweet spot as a singer and songwriter for what was once only an onstage side project.

His critically-acclaimed Heartbreaker: A Memoir takes readers from his destitute days growing up through the Heartbreakers rise, Petty’s death and his undivided passion to continue playing and creating new music.

Over the years he’s become more comfortable as a frontman, as a lead singer and a songwriter, who doesn’t just provide music but also comes up with lyrics. All in all, Campbell continues to push the music and himself forward to new territory.

The new album really underscores your passion for creating new material rather than relying on your past work. What do you think accounts for it?

I’m just doing what I love to do. I don’t want to live in the past. I have a great band, and I have a lot of songs. I’m very grateful to have an outlet to continue making music. That’s what I love.

Your new album incorporates a variety of styles and pushes the material further forward than Vagabonds,yet there’s an overall cohesiveness. They don’t come out of left field. Is there a secret to achieving that?

Well, thank you for that. Maybe it comes out of right field but thank you, I agree. The Knobs is a great rock-and-roll band and we play live mostly in the studio. I like to bring in fresh songs that they don’t know that well and throw them at them and then capture a take in the first or second playthrough. That’s fun for me, so that’s the way we do it.

Is there a style of music you don’t feel comfortable tackling because there’s variations of rock, country, blues…

Well, you won’t hear us doing any disco or any jazz…or hip hop. We appreciate all those other things, but we’re a rock-and-roll band, basically, and we’re a song-oriented band. When I write songs, I draw from the things that inspired me back when I was a kid, like the Beatles, the Beach Boys, Stones. Those are the things that come out in the songs in different ways.

At this stage of your life and career, is it easier to write or is it more difficult because you might come up with an idea and you’ll realize it sounds similar to something else out there or even something you’ve previously done?

It’s the same as it’s always been. Writing music is pretty easy for me. I don’t put rules on it as it’s happening. Once I get an inspiration, and it could channel through me, and I put it down and work on it. Then, I might sit back and look, “Oh, that’s too much like the Kinks.” I just scrap it or I’m like, “That’s really cool. I’ll keep it.” So, it’s pretty easy. My channels are open. I have the opposite of writer’s block.

Are you like the Rolling Stones where you listen to some tapes that were recorded years ago and you find something that’s interesting there and then you finally finish it? Or are you always is it always new?

It’s both. I have a studio tech, Martin Pradler, who’s been going through all my old two-inch tapes—demos, from 20 years ago or more—and he’s been chronicling them for me. When we do an album, I always have new songs, and we’ll get into it, and he might say, “I found this song that you might want to hear” and he’ll put it up and I’ll go, “Yeah, that works with this record. We’ll finish that one.” So, it’s both ways.

I read how it took you a while to be comfortable with writing lyrics. What happened that helped you break through to the other side regarding that?

Well, starting from the first Dirty Knobs album, I had this great lyricist in the Heartbreakers, and I was always intimidated to even bother to write lyrics because I could handle music and he would write something that would blow my mind better than anything I could have thought of. But now that he’s not there, I’m left open to come up with my own ideas. It was a little bit of a struggle at first, but that door appears to have opened in my mind now, and I get lyrics all the time. I really enjoy it.

During the early days of the Dirty Knobs, back in 2000, were those shows basically doing covers or did they mix some of your own material and Heartbreakers material?

Not much Heartbreakers in those shows. Some covers, but it was all songs I was working on at the time. It was great to have a batch of songs, then go out to a local bar and try ‘em out in front of an audience to see which ones stick. So, it’s kind of a workshop back in those days, but new songs.

You mentioned the Beach Boys earlier. Their sound obviously influenced the title track on Mission of Mercy. Can you talk your approach to that one?

Fortunately, I have a great singer in the band, Christopher Holt, who doubled my voice on “Mission of Mercy,” and that’s why it sounds good. He’s got a smoother voice and the two voices sound good together. A lot of my favorite records were doubled or stacked with lead vocals. So, I like that sound of two voices together.

On that song, in particular, it’s curious, because I kind of forgot about it. That was one of the ones that the engineer brought in one day. He said, “I found this track from 20 years ago. You ought to hear it.” And it came back to me as I was listening to it. I thought, “Well, I was probably fooling around in a Brian Wilson state of mind back then and experimenting. I wonder if I could do something like that with some background vocals and different chords and things.”

I think I was just having fun with it, but when I heard it, I thought, “This is way different than what the Knobs are doing, but I think it’s valid.” And I really love the melody, and, I think, the production is really cool. So, it became the title track.

It might confuse people because it’s not a rock-and-roll song, but it’s part of my DNA.

The album leads up to it, and then it goes back to the guitar rock-oriented material.

Yeah, well, it’s our fourth album, too. As the albums go on, you can take a few chances, stylistically, here and there and grow, hopefully.

A song like “I Remember” embodies your tasteful, economical guitar soloing. You play enough notes to get the point across and make an impact rather than getting wanky. From listening to you over the years, I’ve always wondered what guides you that way?

That’s my instinct. I play by instinct and my instinct is formed by the things that affected me when I was younger, when I was discovering music that turned me on and inspired me. So, I don’t struggle with guitar parts. They just seem to come out. I channel into the melody of the song, and then I add guitar where I think it should go.

“I Remember,” it’s interesting, because it was written on the piano, which I do from time to time, and so the guitar was added after the fact. I just put guitar in the holes where it feels like it needs something.

Do you ever just go wild and you’re jamming with the Dirty Knobs and solo for five straight minutes?

No, there’s no five-minute soloing. [Laughs.] We would call that noodling. [Laughs.] I will play long enough to establish what this should be, but I won’t go on endlessly. When I’m writing, sometimes, I will go on for several minutes, looking for a groove or looking for a chord change or a lick but once we’re recording the record, I have a pretty good economical sense of what the guitars should do.

 “Bongo Mania” with Kate Pierson is a cool song. What led you to that one?

Bongos are kind of a funny instrument. It’s beatnik, groovy, beachcomber, banging on the bongos. I heard an old song on the radio from the ‘50s. It had a bongo in it, and I thought, “There’s little pieces of bongo there where it’s all by itself. Maybe, I could loop that and try to write a song to that groove,” and that’s what I did. Once we got the song, [Steve] Ferrone came in and replaced the loop with his own playing. But, it’s just a fun song. It just came together really fast, and it’s got humor, but it’s definitely got a groove. It’s exciting, and it’s just blast.

Then, I thought, “Wow! Wouldn’t it be great to have Kate Pierson on this?” I never thought she would do it, but she did. She made the song even better with her parts. I always loved The B-52s. I thought they were awesome. That’s a big thrill for me to have her on there.

Then you had Morgane Stapleton join you on vocals for “More Than Gold.”

I had met her through Chris [Stapleton], who’s a friend of mine, and we played some shows together. I thought that she would sound good on this one song. So, I sent it to her. She was in Nashville, and I told her, “Just sing all the way through it” because my voice is really low on that song. It’s in a kind of John Prine zone. I thought, “If she put a high melody above mine and we mix it together, it might be cool.” And she did. She did a great job.

Like the Kate Pierson contribution, when you were recording it, did you think, “I need something to counter or blend with my voice?”

I wasn’t thinking about that. I just wanted her personality and her sense of humor and the sound of her backgrounds and stuff. And she came through. You hear, she’s giggling through the whole song, pretty much. It’s that type of song. It’s just an adrenaline rush from start to finish.

In addition to the title track, another track that’s quite different from the rest of the album is “Vagrant.” How did that spoken word, stream of consciousness vibe come together?

Well, that is a stretch. As I said before we don’t play any jazz but that’s as close to jazz you’ll ever get from us. But it was a joke. I was up the night before. I like to write lyrics now, even without music. I just like to write words and rhymes and stream of consciousness. So, I had written all this kind of nonsense, really, the night before. Then the band came in and I said, “Let’s warm up. Let’s get our sounds together and get our headphones balanced. And here, here’s some chords. Here’s a 5/4 groove. Just play this. I’m going to talk over it. Just to warm up.”

I didn’t really take it seriously at all until we were putting the sequencing together. Somebody said, “What about that song?” I said, “That’s not a song.” But then we put it on and at the end, I thought, “You know, there’s something really cool about this. This kind of beat poet, stream of consciousness, vague image of this scene, this guy walking through San Francisco at night and all the images. He’s a vagrant. I guess it was writing about me, I don’t know, but it was just fun playing with words. That has a lot of wordplay and rhymes and things.

One of the things I love about lyrics is, you could set up a verse or a chorus or whatever, and then you set up a line, and then you realize, “Well, I need a line to rhyme with that” and you don’t always want to settle with the obvious—moon and June—line. So, I try to use Bob Dylan as a guidepost, and he would always come up with the cleverest rhymes. So, that’s what I like to do. I like to play with the words and see where the rhymes will take me. Sometimes, searching for the rhyme will direct you to the next verse, enlarge the character. “Oh, now I know what he’s doing. You should do this next. I should write about this.”

So, it’s a game. It’s almost like a crossword puzzle, but it’s more than that. It’s an inspiration, like following the muse. It’s really exciting. It’s one of my favorite things to do.

That was just a goof but then it kind of made sense to be at the end of the record. Now, when we decided to put it on the record, I realized there was no song, and I thought, “Well, it’d be nice if I had something come in that was sort of like a chorus.” So, I came up with a little [sings] “Who can save you now?/Who can pull you out?” I wrote that and inserted that into the poem. It gave it a little structure.

Are you somebody that, when you bring it to the band, it’s a complete song and then you give everyone direction or do you present something more like sketches of music, some chords and lyrics?

Well, both. For instance, “Mission of Mercy” was already realized. The chords, melody and arrangement were so good that I just said, “Here, guys. Just add to this. You play over this.”

So, that was scripted but most of the time with the Dirty Knobs, I like to bring in a song where I’ve worked out the structure and show it to them once. Then, as they’re learning it, start recording. Once they know all the chords, “Okay, let’s do a take.” Usually, the first or second take is great. That’s how good they are. And that’s exciting for me because it’s got a structure, but it doesn’t have any nuance to it, and they add to it.

The album is half brand-new songs written the day before and old stuff that I dug out of the locker.

Doing it that way, I imagine it has a fresh, organic quality rather than being overworked.

Yeah. At this point in my life, I spent a lot of time in studios, slaving over the snare sounds, slaving over the groove, slaving over this and making it a lot of work. We made some great records that way with the Heartbreakers but, sometimes, they weren’t much fun. At this point in my life, I want to have fun. I don’t want to slave over technicalities. I have a home studio, which is state of the art, and all the sounds are up. I don’t have to mess around with the sounds. Just turn it on. All the instruments are on. We start working on the music. So, it’s very fresh. I like to catch the band before they know the song too well so there’s happy accidents.

You just talked about the Heartbreakers and the Dirty Knobs. You could be a solo artist and just bring in a rotating cast of musicians to record and to tour. What is it about being part of a band that you like?

One reason I fit in so well with Tom because I had no ambition to compete with him. I was happy to be part of the gang.

My favorite artists were bands, back in the day, and I’ve always thought of myself, “Well, I’ll get in a band.” I’ve always been in bands. I like the brotherhood. I could do things on my own, sometimes, and that’s kind of fun but I like the give-and-take and the interaction between the players. Even if we’re not playing, if we’re just hanging out, I like having friends. They’re the only friends I got. [Laughs.]

In your book, I remember you wrote about the difficulty of being a frontman and how impressed you were with Tom and how he was able to achieve that while you and the band could be focused on just the music. Having become a frontman, and that not really being in your DNA, were there things that you learned from Tom that you now incorporate or even something you learned from your time with Bob Dylan or Fleetwood Mac or whoever you’ve worked with in the past?

Absolutely. I learned a lot from Tom. I watched him like a hawk for decades and I picked up a lot of bandleader talents from him. Speaking of Tom—God bless him, I miss my brother—you were talking about why do I like to be in a band. Well, a good band can bring out the best in you. They can pull stuff out of you that if you’re sitting by yourself, you might feel like, “That’s good enough,” or you’re only inspired by yourself. But, if you have guys around you going, “How about this with that?” It pushes you to be your best.

In Tom’s defense, all those years he wanted to be in a band, too. Even when he would do solo records, he usually pulled me in to help because he liked the band vibe. He didn’t want to be a solo artist either, really. It’s not much fun being on your own all the time.

If you ever get in a band, you’ll see what I mean. There’s a brotherhood and a love that happens, and you’re sharing the music and you’re pushing each other to greatness that you wouldn’t do on your own. That’s the beauty of the band.

I’m looking over the tour schedule and I see your September 12th date is listed as Mike Campbell and the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra. Have you done anything with an orchestra previously? What encouraged you to do this?

Over the years, we had strings come in on occasion. I think on “A Woman in Love” we had an orchestra come in here and there. On The Last DJ album, we had some orchestra stuff.

I’ve always loved orchestral music. I’m a total Mozart, Beethoven fan. I still listen to that stuff all the time. The orchestra thing was like a fantasy I had in my mind when I was younger, like, “When I get old and the band’s not happening or quits or whatever, I’ll just get a tour bus, get the dogs and send some charts off to different colleges and have their orchestras learn some of these songs and perform them.” It was always just kind of a little fantasy thing.

Then, I looked up one day and “Wow! I’m old now.” [Laughs.] I was thinking “If I’m gonna do this, maybe, I should do it now.” So, that’s how it came to be. I have this guy, Patrick Warren, who’s a great orchestra composer. He’s taken a lot of the hits, most of the ones that I co-wrote from the decades, and he’s written string parts and orchestra parts for them.

I’m excited about it. It’s going to be kind of scary. I’ll probably play guitar a little bit here and there, but it’s uncharted territory. Like, I said, it’s something I always dreamed about. So, I’m gonna give it a shot.

The keyboard part on “You Got Lucky” seems as if it would work in an orchestral format.

What I’ve discovered is a lot of those songs, especially the some of the ones that I wrote that are more dense with chords and stuff are really great. “You Can Still Change Your Mind, “Can’t Stop the Sun,” “Woman in Love,” “First Flash of Freedom,” “Good Enough,” a lot of those songs have a lot of chords and they’re more complicated than just a rock song. They really translate well to well-written orchestra parts. It’s exciting to hear those melodies and rhythms with woodwinds and strings instead of guitars.

Are you going to wear a tuxedo?

I’ve been thinking about what I should wear. I might go out there in a tutu. I don’t know yet. I think a pink tutu would be nice. [Laughs.]