The Speaker Wars, led by former Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers drummer Stan Lynch and guitarist/vocalist Jon Christopher Davis, have a new single out titled “The Forgiveness Tree.”
It comes from their upcoming self-titled debut album, due on May 30. The track also features Jay Michael Smith on guitar, Brian Patterson on bass, Steve Ritter on percussion and Jay Brown on keyboards.
“This one had legs from the start – it’s written from the heart,” Lynch said of the new song in a press release. “It’s a roadmap to healing. It’s the truth.”
“It was a simple chorus I had lying around,” Davis added. “I sat at Stan’s piano and played it. He immediately knew where I was trying to go. Two hours later, the song was finished. The end result is a soul scratcher.”
You can listen to “The Forgiveness Tree,” as well as view the album’s full track listing, below.
How the Speaker Wars Came to Be
Lynch and Davis first started working together back in the early 2000s, a collaboration that blossomed into a co-writing partnership.
“Tom [Petty] used to say, if we leave all the shitty stuff out, we’ll probably be stuck with something pretty good. That was part of his genius,” Lynch told UCR in 2022 when Speaker Wars released their debut single. “And then watching how Jon works — which is just like the power of ‘no.’ Just because you did it, don’t mean it’s any good and you gotta use it.”
“I’ve shot past the point of caring to the point of: I follow my bliss. And my bliss is looped into Jon and this bizarre adventure,” he continued. “I feel like this is something we can own. We’ve just scratched the surface.”
‘The Speaker Wars’ Track Listing:
1. “You Make Every Lie Come True”
2. “It Ain’t Easy”
3. “Taste of Heaven”
4. “Never Ready to Go”
5. “The Forgiveness Tree”
6. “When The Moon Cries Wolf”
7. “Trader’s South”
8. “Leave Him”
9. “Sit With My Soul”
10. “I Wish You Peace”
Tom Petty’s Heartbreakers: Where Are They Now?
The surviving members continue to forge new paths.
Gallery Credit: Allison Rapp
