Lonesome, On'ry and Mean [Bonus Tracks]

The remastered reissue of Waylon Jennings' first, largely self-produced effort from 1972 is remarkable for many reasons, not the least of which is how well it holds up over 30 years after it was recorded. Lonesome, On'ry and Mean is the first album of Jennings' renegade, unprecedented contract with RCA. Jennings was a star who carried weight and basically was ready to go and make records in New York or L.A. if he wasn't given complete artistic control of his recording process. Three of the cuts here were recorded before the new deal, and he left them: "Gone to Denver," penned by Jennings and Johnny Cash; "Lay It Down"; and Willie Nelson's "Pretend I Never Happened." Jennings produced the last of these, but two producers he disdained, Donny Davis and Ronnie Light, had worked on the other two tracks. The album kicks off with the title track, Steve Young's quintessential anthem, the very song that started the entire outlaw movement. Young, a true renegade picker to this day, may have gotten financial recompense for the song, but it was his song and his own arrangement that Jennings used and Young has never been properly recognized outside of Jennings' own for his contribution; on the Jennings tribute album of the same name, and at Jennings' funeral, Young was not asked to perform it, despite the fact that his two recorded versions are better than any others -- this one not excepted. The tribute version by Henry Rollins is nothing more than a steaming pile of ____ (fill in the blank) by a no-account standup comedian who once fronted a punk rock band. Jennings' band's sound differed from the Nash-Vegas countrypolitain sound in that their attack is immediate, seemingly live, and driven by an insistent pulse. On some of the album's tunes you can hear how this translates to well-known material, such as on Danny O'Keefe's "Good Time Charlie's Got the Blues," the late Mickey Newbury's "San Francisco Mabel Joy," and an astonishingly heartfelt version of Kris Kristofferson's "Me and Bobbie McGee." Lonesome, On'ry and Mean didn't rock as hard as Honky Tonk Heroes or Ol' Waylon, but it rocked harder than anything else coming out of Music City at the time, and the album won admirers from virtually all forms of pop music. The reissue adds three tracks from the session that didn't make the final cut, all of them previously unreleased in the U.S. (they all appear on the second Bear Family box-set retrospective), "Big, Big Love" by Wynn Stewart, "The Last One to Leave Seattle" starring Randy Scruggs and Danny Flowers in addition to Jennings, and the Vince Matthews/Lee Casey honky tonk rocker "Laid Back Country Picker." Given that Nashville only put ten songs on a record in those days, the fact that these were left off the final product is not a reflection on their quality at all; they belong here and this presentation brings them home to rest while adding depth and dimension to an already classic album. ~ Thom Jurek, All Music Guide