Producer: Bob Johnston.

Reissue producer: Bruce Dickinson.

Enigineers: Ben Tallent, Stan Tonkel, Tom Geelan.

Digitally remastered by Chris Athens (Sony Music Studios).

Principally recorded at Ray Stevens Sound Lab, Nashville, Tennessee. Originally released on Columbia (32710). Includes liner notes by Loudon Wainwright III.

This is part of Legacy's Common Chord series.

Loudon Wainwright was thrown for a loop by the unexpected chart hit he had with "Dead Skunk" in 1973. He took a step away from following with any sort of additional novelty song when he made his fourth album, ATTEMPTED MUSTACHE. It opens with one of his most well-known songs, "The Swimming Song," which was covered by then-wife Kate McGarrigle and her sister Anna. Not only did Kate teach him how to play the banjo he wrote the song on, but she also wrote the album's gentlest number, "Come a Long Way." Recorded in Nashville in five days and produced by Bob Johnston, there's a casual one-take feel as the songs roll along with the capable accompaniment of some of the city's finest session players. Wainwright's "The Man Who Couldn't Cry" also appears here for the first time, a track that was covered powerfully by Johnny Cash on his AMERICAN RECORDINGS in 1994.