"Hillbilly Central" was the name of the studio ran after the disbandment of the in the mid-'70s. It was the portion of the shared assets that he earned in the fall-out and he set up camp there, continuing to record for , turning into something like the outlaw's outlaw: the ornery renegade who ran on the fringes, providing a clubhouse with his studio -- and cut albums there -- earning respect instead of hits. chronicles this time on their two-part 2005 reissue dubbed , providing the first CD reissues of his classic LPs for . The first volume, , contains 1973's and 1974's , transitional albums that eased out of the and onto his own winding path -- quite literally so in the case of which, according to 's excellent liner notes (over the course of the two discs, they untangle a knotty past and tell a complete history), was initially billed to the . It may have carried their name but it was surely a showcase for , particularly his gift for worn, weary introspection and storytelling. Unlike the albums that followed, had a hefty dose of originals, highlighted by the title track -- an account of a no-good bastard who leaves his family in the lurch -- the story song and its bad-time companion His covers of three songs -- including a terrific -- are pitch-perfect complements, as is a starkly melancholy medley of country gospel standards which don't contradict the carousing as much as underscore the sadness that runs beneath them. And that's the most compelling thing about : for outlaw country, it's surprisingly high and lonesome, a soundtrack for rumination, not parties. The same can't quite be said of its companion here, , although it shares the medley, albeit in a different, expanded form. released in the U.K. early in 1974 to capitalize on the momentum had from his festival performance. As it's caught between , his defacto debut even if it didn't bear his name, and his out-and-out first solo album , this is very much a transitional album containing a big chunk of and a lot of introspective outlaw ballads reminiscent of . The difference is, none of the sad songs come from 's pen: he rounds up songs by , , and, yes, -- plus the lesser-known -- to hit those melancholy notes. These songs don't quite have the sad swagger of those on but the music sounds fuller, which points the way to 's late-'70s records as strongly as the creeping preponderance of humor, coming not just from -- who has the old-timey romp -- but also the slyly funny and savage which deserved to go much farther as a single than it did. Some of this material popped up later in the U.S. -- showed up on in 1975 -- and this has a similar, but different, version of the medley from , one that tacks on the end, but by and large this is a good collection of great songs, one that holds its own with the best of 's solo work. Finally, added two songs to the end of this volume of : the paper-thin and sugar-sweet unreleased AM pop confection co-written by , and a good, plain-spoken rendition of that was previously unreleased. It all adds up to an essential part of the Outlaw lexicon that has been buried for too long now. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine