Standing in San Francisco’s Fillmore auditorium for the first time in more than 20 years, musician Mike Campbell was nearly at a loss for words. In a few hours’ time, his new band, the Dirty Knobs, would be hitting the stage for the first time, touring to promote their second album, 2022’s “External Combustion.”

But as Campbell looked around the venue’s storied ballroom, the afternoon light cascading off the chandeliers, his mind was flush with memories.

“Goodness, there are a lot of ghosts here,” he told The Chronicle in late October. “And that’s good.”

Among them is the spirit of Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, who famously played 20 shows over the course of 30 days in the famed rock hall in 1997. Though the group would return for an encore run in 1999, it was their initial string of performances at the Fillmore in 1997 that Campbell now considers “probably the band at their best.”

“It was fun,” Campbell said of the band’s return in 1999, “but it’s like going back to seeing your old girlfriend again: not quite as good as the first time.”

In the wake of Petty’s accidental overdose death in 2017 at age 66, his estate, managed by his daughter, Adria, and widow, Dana, has released a steady stream of reissues, bonus material and other treasures from Petty’s massive archive. The latest is “Live at the Fillmore (1997),” which collects 58 songs and 14 spoken word tracks recorded during the band’s final six nights at the venue.

Available Friday, Nov. 25, in various boxed-set forms, this long-awaited release includes covers of Bob Dylan and the Kinks, guest appearances from John Lee Hooker and the Byrds’ Roger McGuinn, and extended versions of fan favorites like “Mary Jane’s Last Dance” and “Gloria.” The comprehensive collection also captures the freewheeling, storytelling side of Petty in the form of spoken song introductions, interludes and crowd banter sequenced throughout the tracklist.

The intent, Adria Petty said, is to give listeners a sense of what it felt like to be at the Fillmore during that magical run from Jan. 10 to Feb. 7, 1997.

“We wanted to make it an experience by having Dad talking between the songs,” she said. “You really get a sense of his stagecraft: his ability to connect with and commune with the band and crowd. … We curated it so that you get to spend the evening with Tom, because, for most of us, that’s what we miss the most.”

Prior to booking their residency at the Fillmore, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers were growing a bit weary of touring arenas and playing the same songs every night, Campbell recalled. Thus, when Petty suggested the band play a series of dates at an intimate venue with a friendly crowd, everyone agreed.

“Big venues are just different organisms with different dynamics,” Campbell explained. “They’re cool in their own way but we wanted to get back to that feeling of when we first started out and played little places for 200 or 300 people in Florida. We wanted to get back to what that felt like and what really turned us on at the beginning. And we did rekindle those inspirations.”

Tickets for a planned 10-show run sold out almost instantly, so the group doubled the number of performances. Many diehard fans bought entry for every night, surprising the band and creating an ad hoc community of Heartbreaker faithful whose faces would become familiar to Campbell and is bandmates by the time their residency was over.

One such face was longtime Chronicle music critic Joel Selvin.

In his liner notes for the “Live at the Fillmore (1997)” box set, Selvin includes an excerpt of an interview he did with Petty for the newspaper ahead of the band’s first show.

“I just want to play and get away from the land of videos and records for a while,” Petty told Selvin. “We want to get back to what we understand. If we went out on an arena tour right now, I don’t think we’d be real inspired. We’re musicians and we want to play.”

The results were a month’s worth of intimate, loose performances that saw Petty inventing lyrics on the fly, jamming with his idols, and tearing up the night’s setlists with glee.

“It was a party,” Selvin recalled. “Fans were meeting up before shows to compare notes from the previous nights and the band was having a ball. Even then, people realized how special this was and how lucky we all were to be there.”

Berkeley’s Mark Schickman can still vividly recall the four shows he watched during the band’s 1997 Fillmore run. A practicing attorney in San Francisco, Schickman took his 16-year-old son, Jon, to one show, and his wife, Susan, to another, while fortunate friends scored his extra tickets for the other two nights.

Schickman would go on to see Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers return to the Fillmore in 1999, then Petty with his old band, Mudcrutch, when that group played the same venue in 2016. He was even at the concert Petty played at the Greek Theatre in Berkeley just a week prior to the rocker’s death, but the longtime fan said it was the 1997 shows that will always take top billing in his mind.

“Nothing captured the magic of those Fillmore shows,” Schickman told The Chronicle. “Tom Petty was very generous and relaxed, bringing guests on the stage. The covers were the real surprise treat — different from night to night. ‘Goldfinger’ and ‘Slaughter on 10th Avenue’ blew me away. I’d never heard them (play) as an instrumental band. By the last show, the band and the crowd were really connected, moving as one.”

It was a sentiment felt by Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers as well. Beyond showing up night after night, fans seemed to be getting into the spirit as much as the band was.

“I had these (guitar) picks made for the shows that were shaped like a space alien with eyes and a nose drawn on it. On the other side, it said ‘You’ve had a close encounter with MC,’” Campbell recalled. “One of the Fillmore shows was on my birthday and when Tom announced that it was my birthday, about 12 people in the front held up masks with my guitar pick alien face on them. … That’s the kind of familiarity and love that we had with the people.”

And the fans’ enthusiasm made the band play better, Campbell said. By their second show, the group had rechristened themselves the Fillmore House Band, a nod to their willingness to take the evening in whatever direction felt right.

“The Fillmore was, for sure, the highlight of his career,” said Petty’s widow, Dana Petty. “It was the most fun he ever had playing with the band — at least that I ever witnessed, and that’s what he would say, too.”

She shared that Petty would work in snippets from Sally Jessy Raphael’s daytime talk show — apparently the only thing to watch at the Miyako Hotel in Japantown — into his performances each night.

“There was nothing on TV except for Sally Jessy Raphael, so he would incorporate what was on the show that day into his introduction for ‘Gloria’ every night,” Dana Petty said. “It just grew longer and longer as they kept doing shows. That really cracked me up.”

“Live at the Fillmore (1997)” features several versions of “Gloria.” But more than showcasing any one highlight, the new release strives to capture the buzz of a band and its fans at a moment of perfect harmony.

“The world is very weird right now,” Adria Petty conceded, “but we want people to remember that at Tom Petty concerts, everybody could go and be there together and enjoy the same thing. This box set is a chance to experience what a naturally beautiful person my dad was. To be able to let people get a little taste of that with this record is a really nice thing.”

Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers’ “Live at the Fillmore (1997)” is available to stream and purchase starting Friday, Nov. 25.