Loser's Lounge : Lee Hazlewood Edition 1999

I just stumbled across the program for the Lee Hazlewood tribute that took place Saturday, April 4th, 1999 at Fez in NYC and thought I would share the scans of it here. My favorite memory of this event is two fold. Lee sat in the back for some of it sipping Chivas and gave funny comments using that baritone voice I wouldn't call velvet-like but maybe more velour in quality? He sat like a king in the back of the small room while his dedicated minions did their best to pay tribute to him.

The other great moment was the surprise guest appearance of my old friend Mark Pickerel, solo artist but also the first drummer of the Screaming Trees, who joined Tiffany Anders and J.Mascis for "Sundown, Sundown". As I have mentioned here on the blog before, Mark is the whole reason I fell in love with Lee Hazelwood in the first place. In the late '80s Mark was my Sub Pop sales rep and was kind enough to send me two of Lee's records to check out. The moment I heard those songs, it was love at first sound. Little did I understand at the time that there was a cult of Lee followers and we would all have a chance to meet and celebrate the legendary artist (no less in his presense) a decade later - timed to go along with the reissues that Steve from Sonic Youth was doing for Lee on is label Smells Like.

Other memorable Lee Hazlewood moments was the meet and greet at Maxwell's in Hoboken, N.J. as well as a Q & A after some film shorts featuring Lee, also in NYC.