"I don't like all of country music," Merle Haggard has said. "In fact, I like very little of it." In an age where pretty-boy country stars with nothing original to say are churned out by the numbers from Nashville, Haggard is a music-business dinosaur who's still taking pride in doing things his own way. Currently on the California-based punk-rock label, Epitaph Records (because he was not making enough money for Nashville's Curb Records), 63-year-old Haggard is an uncompromising artist whose work is based on his honesty. Unlike most modern-day country musicians, when Haggard's singing about trains, prison or Momma, you'd better listen, because he's really lived his songs.
Born on April 6, 1937, in Bakersfield, Calif., Haggard had a rough childhood. When Haggard's father died of a brain tumor, his mother was left alone in humble circumstances to care for her nine-year-old son. Despite her best efforts, Haggard was frequently in trouble as a boy. A botched robbery at age 21 resulted in a three-year stretch at San Quentin Penitentiary and caused Haggard to reflect on the direction his life was headed.
Emerging from prison in 1960 determined to make something of his musical talents, Haggard returned to Bakersfield and started playing the bar circuit as a guitar player. Recording his own songs on the small Tally label, Haggard hit the big time in 1965 with his song, "(All My Friends Are Gonna Be) Strangers." Re-released by Capitol Records, the tune became Haggard's first top-10 single and launched one of country music's most enduring and successful careers.
During his stop in town Sunday night at Stubb's, a beach hat and sunglass-wearing Haggard played his hits - new and old - to an excited, packed house. Opening Sunday night with "Silver Wings," Haggard and his eight-piece band played with the kind of ease and familiarity that only arises between old friends. With a steel-guitar player, saxophonist, pianist, bassist, drummer, two guitarists and old Bob Wills band member Johnny Gimble sitting in on fiddle, Haggard's band was large, in top form and sounded great.
Playing a mixture of old classics with newer songs, Haggard kept the audience cheering. "Big City" and "Rambling Fever" (featuring Gimble on the mandolin) were both early highlights in the set. For the Bob Wills song, "Time Changes Everything," Haggard put aside his guitar and traded licks with Gimble on the fiddle. Other highlights from the night included "Are the Good Times Really Over For Good," "I'm A Lonesome Fugitive" and "That's The Way Love Goes." Haggard ended the night by leading the crowd in his sing-alongs, "Mama Tried" and "Okie From Muskogee."
An outlaw even in his old age, Haggard told a story Sunday night about how Canadian customs searched him and his band coming across the border, because they looked "suspicious." Laughing about the scrutiny he and his aging band received, Haggard smilingly told the audience, "They patted me down so many times, I started to giggle." Still laughing in the face of authority and doing things his own way, maybe it's only appropriate that Haggard's music has ended up on a punk-rock label, after all.
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