This fall , Tom Petty’s latest tour will be coming to your computer screen rather than a concert hall.  As a lead in to Petty’s massive “Live Anthology”, the Heartbreakers  “Superhighway Tour” will release a total of 24 of the 48 total anthology tracks for download over the 8 weeks leading up to the release of the anthology  with the final 24 being available on November 24th, the day of the Anthology’s release.

Petty and Mike Campbell personally selected the 48 anthology tracks from the best of the live shows between 1978 and 2007.  The band had hundreds of hours of high quality recordings to choose from including rare covers of the Grateful Dead’s “Friend of the Devil,” and James Brown’s “Good, Good Lovin”.  The set while remastered, contains no overdubs and is meant to play like the real Heartbreakers concert experience.  The music (available in mp3 or lossless FLAC files) is lively, and does a great job of capturing a great live act over the course of their career.

But this website is much more than just a bunch of live tracks, it is an experience.  The website is a veritable treasure chest of Petty nostalgia including photos, reviews, press clippings and audio commentary from the band for each track.  Either Tom Petty is a pack rat or he has kept some obsessive fans on his staff over the years, because this collection is stacked.  I found myself lost on the site, continually finding more and more great content about the band.  Much like the “Running Down A Dream” Petty documentary, this content portrays Tom Petty as a super cool unpretentious rocker, and really adds to his legend.

You don’t have to take my word for it, Petty is offering a free preview at his site here.

In addition to the Superhighway tour, the Live Anthology will be release in a physical form too, with it’s fair share of additional content.  The deluxe edition, available only at Best Buy, will include an additional 14 tracks, two DVDs: a New Year’s Eve concert in 1978 and the previously unreleased documentary “400 Days”, and a an addition Blu-ray disk with all of the Anthology songs in super high quality 96k 24 bit audio.  Not enough for you, well it will also include a deluxe concert poster designed by Shepard Fairey, a deluxe booklet, and all kinds of other goodies to.

Tom Petty clearly gets the fact that fans are looking for more than just tracks when making music purchases these days.  He is delivering with a ton of super cool content to make the listener want to buy the music as opposed to just pulling it off the web.  Well done as usual Mr. Petty.