Description

*First time available in its original mono mix since the 60s.

*Expanded CD and 2xLP edition with 15 bonus tracks!

*CD & 2xLP include book liner notes by John Dixon with a previously unpublished 1998 interview with Lee.

*Unseen archive photos.

*Light In The Attics Lee Hazlewood Archive Series continues with an expanded reissue of Lee Hazlewoods debut album.

Remastered from the original tapes, this is the first time Trouble Is a Lonesome Town has been available in its original mono mix since the 1960s. Presented as a double LP with 15 bonus tracks and an eight page booklet, this is an essential purchase for Hazlewood fans or anyone curious about about the man before the mustache.

Originally released in 1963, Trouble finds the bohemian cowboy sketching out a vivid picture of a backwater place named Trouble, where trouble with a small t is never far away. Trouble is little and its lonesome, he says, on the title track, you wont find it on any map, but you can take three steps in any direction and youre there. Lee says plenty on the album. The first voice you hear is Hazlewoods spokenword narration. Its a format the singersongwriter would revisit frequently, introducing his stirring songs with a touch fireside storytelling in the rich, Texan drawl hed tried hard to lose during years he was struggling to make it as an aspiring radio DJ.

Each mini, presong poem seems to impart unexpected wisdom. Indeed, if the record sounds remarkably wise and mature
for a debut album, Hazlewood was, of course, no spring chicken on making this debut. 34 years old at the time of the
albums release, he was already a seasoned producer, writer and publisher with dozens of hits under his belt and a few singles under his own name and more under the pseudonym Mark Robinson all of which are included here in this
reissue.

A pet producer of Duane Eddys, Hazlewood could turn his hand to any musical style (bonus Mark Robinson track Pretty Jane is unreconstructed rock n roll), but with Trouble, it felt like the singer had touched on something that was uniquely him. In 2000, however, the late singer revealed that he hadnt planned on making whats best described as a musical storybook. That was a demo. I didnt know it was a concept album. I wrote a complete story of a makebelieve town, he said. The town nearly lived outside of the album too in August 1968 there was serious talk of a television show based on the album. Lee wrote a script for a proposed weekly halfhour series called,Trouble Is a Lonesome that, sadly, never made it to air.

The cover sees Lee by the railroad tracks in Avondale, west of Phoenix. Smoking a cigarette and holding a guitar case, Hazlewoods myth was laid out here. The newly minted performers long journey had taken him from Texas to Los Angeles via service in the armed forces and radio stations in smalltown America. By 1963 hed made it as far as the Hollywood Hills, but in many ways, his story was only just beginning. Light In The Attic will be revealing the rest of it throughout 2013 and 2014.

Well leave the final words to album supervisor Jack Tracy. His 1963 liner notes still true nearly 50 years later. I happen to think that Trouble is as significant a chunk of Americana as has been written in many years, he wrote. But dont let that get in your way. It was written to be enjoyed and to entertain. It will surely do that.