This year marks half a century since the self-titled debut LP by Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers – and nine years since Petty left this plane of existence tragically and far too soon. Mike Campbell was there the whole time, beginning even before the beginning as a founding member of Petty’s first band, Mudcrutch (f.k.a. the Epics). Campbell was every bit the Lennon to Petty’s McCartney – or perhaps vice versa – co-writing many of the band’s most popular songs, and on this July evening, his contributions to the Heartbreakers’ sound were subtly on display as he led his band The Dirty Knobs through an evening’s worth of tunes. 

Campbell co-founded the Knobs in 2001, playing occasional one-off gigs and recording a single in 2010 but not releasing a studio album until 2020’s Wreckless Abandon. They’ve released another three albums since then, most recently this year’s Mission of Mercy, which their set at the Keswick treated as the point of the evening, rather than the opening act for a nostalgia tour: eleven of the album’s twelve songs made and constituted the bulk of the setlist. Sarah Lee Guthrie opened solo, setting the emotional register of the evening before Campbell ever plugged in: a songwriter carrying a songwriting bloodline forward by hand, the perfect table-setter for a headliner in the same line of work. 

Campbell and the Knobs took the stage and opened with a tour premiere, “Don’t Wait Up,” a 2024 original co-written with Chris Stapleton and fellow Heartbreaker-since-the-Mudcrutch-days, Benmont Tench. Campbell manned his Gibson Firebird, one of a handful of guitars he would play throughout the evening: his next was a Rickenbacker, whose jangle was the only suitable treatment for one of the Knobs’ new tunes, “Let Me Back In My Dream.” Guitarist and singer Chris Holt likewise rotated through his own collection of guitars – from Les Paul to Tele to Strat – as he’s been doing since last year as a touring guitarist with Eagles, another band with whom Campbell is familiar. (He played in Mudcrutch with Tom Leadon, brother of Eagles co-founder Bernie, and co-wrote “The Boys of Summer” “The Heart of the Matter” with Don Henley.)

The uninitiated might have mistaken many Knobs originals for deep Petty cuts, highlighting the Campbell’s indelible, if not immediately obvious, fingerprints on Petty’s catalogue. Likewise, his playing had Petty’s fingerprints on it, and a mid-set harmonica turn made the inheritance audible. Campbell makes it look easy: he rips through a solo that suddenly winds down as a quiet verse kicks in, one of a dozen small Petty-ish moves baked so deep into his playing they’ve long since become muscle memory, rather than an homage.

Drummer Steve Ferrone, the other ex-Heartbreaker on stage, stepped up to the mic mid-set to talk about how hard the last several years have been since Petty died. Campbell sat beside him cross-legged, following with “Even the Losers,” which Campbell introduced as one of his favorites precisely because Petty wrote it alone: a cover of a song he actually wasn’t in the room for, played by the two men who spent the most time in rooms with the guy who was. “Bongo Mania” and the equal parts hilarious and venomous “Fuck That Guy” (another Chris Stapleton co-write) kept the set moving before the night’s one genuine detour into the dark, all-red-SG corner of the catalog: “Armageddon.” They followed that with another Petty co-write, “Don’t Fade On Me,” and went on to close the set with yet another, “Runnin’ Down a Dream.” 

The band’s one-song encore was the fourth Petty tune of the evening: “You Wreck Me,” the second of two Campbell co-writes from “Wildflowers.” They played it fast and furious, in and out with no lingering. The decision to play fewer Petty tunes than elsewhere on the tour read less like restraint than like a band that’s stopped needing the old songs to prove anything, playing them because they’re good, not because the room needs convincing.