Inspired by the death of an icon, Preston based singer-songwriter Dave Shurr takes on Tom Petty’s ‘A Face in the Crowd’.

Dave Shurr’s a brave man, to cover Tom Petty and the Heartbreaker’s so soon after his death.  A bold move, fortunately Mr Shurr does the song and himself justice and more so than that he makes the song his own.

This song immediately makes you feel good, it creeps in with a hypnotic beat and then maintains a steady laid back rhythm.

Shurr has a voice that sounds almost therapeutic and has an old fashioned style twang to it, his voice sounds a lot more mature than his age which provides a very calming element to it.

His vocals provide a pleasant comfort with softly spoken lyrics, I really liked the individual style he portrays.

I would have to mention that one thing I would have changed about this track was that  his vocals should have been  louder as I thought in some points of the song they get a little bit lost in with the instruments.

I do however like the symbols and the quirky beat. I think it’s a song that you can relax to.

The song progresses and seems to build up a mental image of me running through fields of daisies wearing a flower garland.

It’s that feeling you get, laid back, hippy and carefree. I can tell Dave cares about his music though.

You can hear in Dave’s vocals that this cover is a heartfelt tribute. He treats the song with a level of respect, only differing subtly from the original 1989 version.

The sourthern twang of the slide guitar in Tom Petty’s version is replaced with a more distant, brooding atmosphere, which is quite fitting considering how recent Tom Petty’s death was.

” The day he died I listened to all his albums and then picked a tune that I thought I could accomplish in a recording environment with relative ease. People say I look like him all the time but I definitely have my own thing going.”

Click here to listen to Dave Shurr’s version

Click here to listen to Tom Petty A Face in The Crowd

Article written in collaboration with Daniel Morris

Music Magazine