Hag at 70

At 10 a.m., at his sprawling 200-acre Lake Shasta estate in northern California, Merle Haggard is already deep into his daily chores, washing the breakfast dishes before he and his wife Theresa stroll out to tend the celery, shallots and cherry tomatoes growing organically in their garden. Although he’ll be touring soon to promote three recent albums—solo set, Chicago Wind; a duets collection with George Jones, Kickin’ Out The Footlights... Again; and Last Of The Breed, a brand-new 22-track showcase with longtime chums Ray Price and Willie Nelson—he delights in such mundane duties. When you hit 69, he sighs, putting down his dishcloth, “You’ve gotta have some sort of routine in your mind, you’ve gotta come up with things to entertain yourself. You’ve gotta come up with lies that distract you from things that you know are inevitable, because right down the road somewhere, you and I—in the wink of an eye—are gonna meet our maker.”

Depressing? Anything but, guffaws Haggard, who’s always been a bit of a philosopher. Mortality? “We don’t wanna sit around and dwell on that,” he declares. “We’ve gotta come up with something to satisfy ourselves, like ‘Aw, maybe there’ll be something that’ll happen before it comes our time, and maybe we won’t have to die!’ Why, I was wondering just this morning, ‘What if tomorrow comes early? It’d be a big-time collision, wouldn’t it?’ I know it’s not possible, but it’s ridiculously funny. And it’s what we talk about, and what crosses your mind every morning when you get to be my age—you say, ‘Oh! Still another day, huh?’”

Haggard isn’t waiting on any cosmic answers. He’s happy with the riddles themselves. So he just keeps right on doing what he’s done since the early ’60s—writing, recording, performing and enjoying the sparse downtime in between. “I think each one of us has some pre-ordained situation that we’re supposed to follow,” he says. “Now, we may vary from that and go off in different directions, as humans will do. But I think that there is some route we’re supposed to stick with, and each one of us is indelibly gifted with that, just like a fingerprint.”

SLINGS AND ARROWS Lord knows the country legend struggled against his destiny for many colorful years. After his father’s death, the Oklahoma transplant left his Bakersfield, Calif., home—a converted railroad carriage—at 14 and started hopping actual working boxcars to see the country. The journey didn’t end well. After landing in several reformatories, Hag—as he would soon be known—did a three-year stint in San Quentin for armed robbery. But it was there, in 1958, that he witnessed and was inspired by one of Johnny Cash’s infamous prison performances. Haggard was paroled (later receiving a full pardon from then-governor Ronald Reagan and the California Supreme Court) and barreled back into Bakersfield just as its Buck Owens-helmed, electric-guitar-centered scene was revving to life.

“I tried to enlist in the Marines when I was 14, and I would’ve been in Korea,” Haggard recalls. “But they wouldn’t let me in, and instead I was riding boxcars. … I’m proud of it—I wouldn’t trade it for anything in the world. I’ve had so many things happen in my young years that I actually believe was meant to be education, and I don’t think it was meant to be anything else. And as it turned out, 12 Supreme Court judges from the state of California saw fit to give me a pardon. And I probably wouldn’t have done any time at all if I’d have been a rich boy. But I was just a poor kid, so I got to experience some things that I would never have understood [otherwise].”

With a thumbs-up from Cash—a ‘Hey, didn’t I see you in the crowd at San Quentin?’ quip on his TV show—Haggard started scoring late-’60s hits with prison-themed originals like “Mama Tried,” “The Fugitive” and “Sing Me Back Home,” tracks that would influence later country renegades like Gram Parsons. While his tongue-in-cheek redneck anthems “Okie From Muskogee” and “The Fightin’ Side Of Me” were eagerly taken by Republicans like Nixon and George Wallace at face value, Hag leans brazenly left with new songs like “Chicago Wind” and the staunchly anti-war “Rebuild America First” (“Let’s get out of Iraq / And get back on the track”). His voice, despite time’s seasoning, is every bit as hickory-stick booming as it was in his “Okie” era.

MISCHIEF AT ANY AGE
Price and Nelson are also in fine form on the Fred Foster-produced Breed. Haggard contributed a new cut (“Sweet Jesus”), as did Nelson (“Back To Earth”), but mostly it’s just three Country Music Hall of Famers crooning classics like “Night Watch,” “Why Me, Lord,” “Heartaches By The Number” and “Mom And Dad’s Waltz,” over echo-y arrangements often backed by The Jordanaires. It was Price who initially came up with the trio concept; He convinced Nelson, who then phoned Haggard, who explains, “this was bound to happen anyway—we’ve been recording and doing each other’s material, doing shows together for so many years,”

The sessions reportedly spanned a whopping two days, and a spring tour is also on the docket, sure to be a party with the notorious Nelson in tow. But it’s the 81-year-old Price who worries Hag the most. “He loved his chickens, and he gave me a rooster one time, a big fighting cock, and he knew that I didn’t have no place to carry that sonofabitch. I was about 26 years old, and he was having fun with the young kid—he gave me this goddamn chicken, and it flew all over the bus and shit on everything. And don’tcha know Ray just laughed! So he’s got something planned for this tour, I just know it.”

“Life’s been good to me,” Haggard concludes. “I’ve gotta look at it that way. I’ve been fortunate enough to maintain good health, I’ve got a 14-year-old son whom I’m very proud of, and I think four or five great-grandsons. I’ve got a pretty wife, and if I live to April 6th, I’ll be 70 years on this Earth. And touring for me is like swimming—it’s really good exercise and good for the health.”

RAY PRICE COMES FULL CIRCLE
Like his pal Merle, Ray Price has a rural routine each non-tour day. “I’m up at 6 o’clock in the morning,” he outlines, while roosters crow and hens cluck in the coop where he’s scattering grain. “We have 17 thoroughbred racehorses, and we have to feed ’em, take ’em outta their stalls and put ’em in the paddocks. Then we feed the chickens, the racing pigeons, the bird dogs and the little rabbit beagles—it’s quite a job, but it’s something I like.”

Did Price really play fowl on Hag’s bus? “It’s not true at all, though Merle may think it is,” he says, laughing. “But chickens are a hobby I’ve had for years—I just love ’em, and I ship mine all over the world.” Price, who once roomed with Hank Williams, switched to an orchestra and dinner jacket for his “Good Times” ’60s. Now, with Last of the Breed, he’s returned to his honky-tonk roots. And the irony doesn’t escape him.

“Our music has been refused to be played by the power-that-be and all the radio stations,” growls the artist, who cites the late ’70s “Urban Cowboy” movement as the beginning of country’s end. “… But now, all of a sudden, the people have rebelled and stations have started playing the classics again. I’m not mad at the people—they’re out to make money. But they sure did hurt us for a long time.

“But now everything’s cool, everything’s fine, and my career looks like it’s beginning to bloom open again. And that just tickles me to death, ’cause what greater blessing could you have at the age I’m at?”