It was difficult to get into Vincent’s on Wednesday night. As soon as you opened the door, you were met with a near impenetrable wall of humanity — packed tight as sardines, carousing and waiting in rapt anticipation of “You’re Gonna Get It! Night 3,” a tribute to Tom Petty featuring some of Worcester’s most talented and acclaimed musicians.

With such talented performers playing music by one of rock’s most beloved songwriters, it’s no wonder that the tribute was still a major audience draw – never mind that it was at a beloved local bar and there was no cover charge. In a lot of ways, Vincent’s was the exact right and exact wrong venue for the show: Far too small, but with a certain sort of intimacy that made the music — already deeply personal for much of the crowd — feel visceral and immediate. The crowd was packed so tight that the joy at the first notes of the band’s opening number, “You Wreck Me,” seemed to reverberate from body to body. The crowd was hooked immediately, and as the band rocked on through that into “Learning To Fly” and the anthemic “I Won’t Back Down,” it was clear that this show was marked with the sort of magic that transcends the normal indifference or jadedness a cover band can face at a crowded bar.

Of course, this was no normal collection of musicians, the pick-up band featuring members of popular Worcester-based bands The Curtain Society, The Curtis Mayflower, The Marshall Pass and more, including Duncan Arsenault, Roger Lavallee, Ron Mominee, Craig Rawding, Annie Arsenault, Charlene Arsenault, Ed Barnett and John Donovan. Singer-songwriter Sam James, who performed at the first two installments of the tribute concert, was absent Wednesday.

But it was the intensely personal reactions individual members of the audience had to certain songs that best illustrated the importance and relevance of Petty’s music. One large man sang the chorus to “Breakdown” with a sort of manic abandon. “Last Dance With Mary Jane” brought a sort of singalong from the back. A woman at the bar swayed ecstatically to “American Girl,” and the rendition of “Don’t Come Around Here No More,” near the end of the show, brought an electric wave of audience participation.

Petty was hardly the only great musician to die in 2017, but like Prince and David Bowie the year before, he was still seen as a vital artist whose work was still fresh and relevant. Certainly, Chuck Berry and Gregg Allman left the stage on excellent swansong albums, and the loss of musicians such as Fats Domino, Glen Campbell, Chris Cornell, Walter Becker, Chuck Mosely, Prodigy, Malcolm Young, Grant Hart, Troy Gentry, Gord Downie, Butch Trucks, Mel Tillis, Jessi Zazu and hometown hero J. Geils are all tragic losses in their own ways, but there was something about Petty’s music that resonated across generations and genres.

That accessibility was on full display Wednesday: Indeed, if there’s one thing this show made plain, it’s just how much of Petty’s music is instantly recognizable. Songs such as “Refugee,” “Listen To Her Heart,” “You Don’t Know How It Feels,” “Running Down A Dream,” “The Waiting” and “Stop Dragging My Heart Around” hit with a palpable force, the audience responding instantly and physically with each song’s opening notes, voices rising to meet lyrics before the audience often seemed to realize it was singing. They knew these songs, even if they didn’t realize they knew these songs. Even deeper cuts such as “Nightwatchman” were greeted with instant response.

This was music that was deeply loved, both by the audience and by the band, and that care and affection was evident for the totality of the more than three-hour show: A fitting tribute to a master songwriter, and one for which even a three-night stint seems insufficient. If another installment of the show emerges, there’s really nothing that needs to be changed, save perhaps a bigger space. But that being said, it wouldn’t have been the same with the remove of a more distant stage. The intimacy, as uncomfortable as it sometimes was, was definitely part of what made the show so personal and affecting.

Email Victor D. Infante at Victor.Infante@Telegram.com and follow him on Twitter @ocvictor.