Merle Haggard’s Nashville Residency: 8 Hag Highlights
The best part of Nashville’s Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum right now is probably an exhibit dedicated to the Bakersfield Sound, looking back on when artists like Merle Haggard and Buck Owens injected wiry electric Telecaster and old-time pedal steel sounds into the largely conservative country music landscape of the mid-Sixties. The exhibit includes Haggard’s signature sunburst Telecaster and the handwritten lyrics to songs like 1972’s racial anthem “Irma Jackson.” Most acts covered this extensively at the Hall of Fame have long hung up their instruments, but not Haggard. During a two-night stand at Nashville’s Ryman Auditorium that began Monday (“I’ll be here for two nights. You can stash your stuff in the same seat it’ll still be here”), Haggard proved he remains a master performer, storyteller and bandleader. He guided his seven-piece group the Strangers through both barroom and working-class anthems, soul and Western swing and the honky-tonk sounds of his youth with plenty of old-school showmanship. “I wrote a lot of these songs in my late twenties, and here I am singing them in my late forties,” Haggard joked. His real age? 77.
Haggard made clear he has never felt a particularly deep connection with Nashville (“I lived here for a year one time, and I don’t think I did anything of importance,” he said), but he does have a historic relationship with the Ryman. Every day, tour groups at the theater hear about when Haggard appeared on The Johnny Cash Show at the Ryman in 1969; Haggard surprised fans by revealing he had been an inmate serving a 15-year sentence at San Quentin when Cash played the prison in 1958. Cash’s show for the inmates pushed Haggard to get out on good behavior and pursue songwriting.
Haggard’s shows are essential viewing for Music Row. While reporting a recent Eric Church feature, Church told me his first date with his wife, Katherine, was a Haggard show at the Ryman about a decade ago. Last night, Jewel and Jamey Johnson were hanging out backstage (later, Johnson caught up with Haggard on his bus) while fans like Vince Gill — who recently recorded an entire album dedicated to Haggard’s Bakersfield Sound — watched from the front.
Haggard doesn’t make setlists, and those who attended both nights received plenty of variety. The first night was rowdier; fans sang every word from the moment Haggard emerged in a grey suit and Stetson and launched into the stomper “I Think I’ll Just Stay Here and Drink.” Those screams only intensified when the band launched into the twangy opening notes of “Mama Tried” or the fiddle intro of “Big City.” Night Two, however, was a two-hour, ten-minute marathon, a freewheeling set that included surprise covers of friends like Roger Miller — that even seemed to astound longtime tour manager Frank Mull. “He’s having a lot of fun right now,” Mull said backstage. Here are some great moments from both nights that prove Haggard can still kick the footlights out again and again.
The Strangers
“These guys have been making me sound good since 1965,” Haggard said while introducing his band the Strangers, including steel guitar player Norman Hamlet, who joined in 1967. The current band includes fiddle-guitarist Scott Joss, bass player Taras Prodaniuk, piano player Floyd Domino, drummer Jim Christie and sax player Renato Caranto. It’s also a family affair, with Merle’s wife Theresa Haggard on backup vocals and 21-year-old Ben Haggard on guitar, who unleashed a flurry of twang on “I Think I’ll Just Stay Here and Drink.”
The Strangers are tighter than they’ve been in years, turning on a dime from swing to soul to rock & roll. Haggard often evoked a jazz bandleader; during the slow-rolling groove of “Silver Wings,” he pointed to sax player Caranto to take a soaring solo. On the frantic boogie “Motorcycle Cowboy,” bassist Prodaniuk and pianist Domino blew minds by soloing in unison. On Night Two, Ben Haggard and Joss weaved together their own masterful solos on “That’s the Way Love Goes.” Haggard’s guitar playing was also in fine form, nailing the jittery lead on “I’m a Lonesome Fugitive.”
The Drinking Songs
“We’re gonna do a song for the drunks,” Haggard said. “We got a lot songs written in the alley. We call ’em ‘drinkin’ songs.'” He then launched into a rousing “The Bottle Let Me Down.” The night was heavy on those boozy songs, including “Swinging Doors” and, on Tuesday, a heartbreaking, soulful version of “Misery and Gin.”