Lou Reed and Kris Kristofferson - The Bottom Line Archive Series: In Their Own Words: With Vin Scelsa [RSD 2022] Vinyl Record

We bring you another historic, once-in-a-lifetime meeting taking place during the winter of ’94 on that venerable Bottom Line stage. Culled from an evening that also included Suzanne Vega and Victoria Williams, there was perhaps no other pairing more perfectly suited to the In Their Own Words platform than this singular meeting of Lou Reed and Kris Kristofferson. As much a course in music history and songwriting as a performance, and years before VH1’s Storytellers series, Allan Pepper and Vin Scelsa’s In Their Own Words series afforded the audience a window into the minds of their favorite songsmiths, in a run that lasted from May of 1990 until March of 2003.

The two songsmiths in question were born and raised in two very different worlds - Lou Reed in the jungles of New York City and Kris Kristofferson in the heart of the Southland. Still, both men demanded total artistic freedom and created raw, brutally honest art that addressed strikingly similar issues of struggles – with loneliness and alienation, addiction and recovery, love and loss, good and evil, vulnerability and hopelessness - painfully aware of contradictions and critical of hypocrisy, painting pictures of characters known or imagined, yet always finding the humanity in our faults and weaknesses during our darkest hours. Through the lens of their music, Lou and Kris view the human condition with a sense of humility and no small amount of humor, which was always close at hand.

1. Introduction
2. Vin Scelsa Introduces Lou Reed
3. Betrayed
4. VS Introduces Kris Kristofferson
5. Shipwrecked
6. LR on Songwriting
7. Legendary Hearts
8. KK on His Childhood & Songwriting
9. Sunday Morning Coming Down/The Pilgrim
10. LR on New York
11. Strawman
12. KK talks about “Strawman”
13. Sam’s Song
14. LR on Writing for Wim Wenders
15. Why Can’t I Be Good
16. LR on Autobiographical Songs
17. KK on Nashville
18. Help Me Make It Through The Night
19. LR on Velvet Underground & Warhol
20. Sweet Jane
21. KK on Writing
22. To Beat The Devil
23. LR on Writing Prose
24. Romeo Had Juliet
25. Burden of Freedom
26. KK on “Me and Bobby McGee”
27. Me and Bobby McGee
28. KK on “Bird On A Wire”
29. Bird On A Wire
30. Tracks of My Tears