Merle's world

Haggard looks back in song

by Jeff Ousborne

Unlike, say, volatile punks, volatile country legends have an obligation to age gracefully. The possibility of a spindly Johnny Thunders at 55 was always unlikely; the prospect of Johnny Rotten at 60 is silly. But Merle Haggard at 63 is a sublime ruin, an old rock formation -- crumbling, weathered, full of grottos and ghosts.

Sure, the rest of craggy Mount Rushmore has its own evocative past. Johnny Cash once smashed the stage lights at the Grand Ole Opry in a pill-induced rage. As country's capital-"R" romantic, Willie Nelson's slept with more women than Wilt Chamberlain. And George Jones, the honey-throated hillbilly Sinatra, still gets lickered-up and wrecks the occasional SUV. But Haggard is an American hardship myth come to life. The son of Okie parents who left dust-bowl Oklahoma for Bakersfield, California. Born in a boxcar. Juvenile delinquency. A botched burglary. Solitary at San Quentin. Musical redemption. Addiction. Gin and misery. Divorces. A duet with Jewel. Oh, and there were those 40 or so #1 hits, too, starting in 1962. He's remained prolific ever since, even releasing two best-of compilations of his '90s work.

Along the way, Haggard became the most supple, versatile of country singer-songwriters, an artist who rarely if ever let his personality overshadow the music. That's why his loving tribute albums, like 1970's prescient Bob Wills homage The Best Damn Fiddler In the World, rank among his best work. He disappears into an entire tradition at will. Yet Haggard's admirable self-abnegation and classicism make him a harder sell to alterna-rock hipsters than Nelson, who recently hooked up with edgy producer Daniel Lanois, or Cash, who appears as comfortable on stage at the Viper Room as he is at a honky-tonk.

Haggard, however, is perfectly suited to his new record company. LA's Anti-records, an imprint of the punk label Epitaph, is distinguishing itself as a left-of-the-dial boarding house for outlaws and expatriates (Tom Waits, Joe Strummer). The alliance also puts a poignant reverse spin on the trajectory of alterna-country. Over the last decade and half, ex-post-punks like Uncle Tupelo and Ryan Adams have abandoned the empty husk of alternative rock for country's bracing honesty and populism. That a West Coast indie label is now embracing Haggard -- a wandering apostle of West Coast country -- embodies a kind of circle-completing poetic justice.

Of course, Haggard wasn't around for the DIY rock epiphanies of the '70s and '80s. (Then again, neither was Adams, whose band Whiskeytown recorded a stellar version of Haggard's "Silver Wings" last year for a tribute to country-punk prophets the Knitters.) But the screw-it-all reactionary æsthetic of punk was always akin to the bottle-smashing, equally reactionary impulses of country. Both offer the promise of something dirty, unmediated, honest, a little scary. Besides, Haggard can hippie-bash with the best of them, as his ironic 1969 hit "Okie from Muskogee" proved. Reactionary populism has its perils: musical mediocrities getting by on "authenticity," pointless obsessions with purity, and Haggard's own slightly paranoid right-wing politics. So what?

Indeed, the unassuming If I Could Only Fly easily earns a place on that small shelf of great albums about being a tired old man. Recorded with Haggard's trusty backing band, the Strangers, it shows little in the way of glitz, just a palette of earth tones and lyrics as direct as a death sentence. On '60s hits like "Swinging Doors" and "The Bottle Let Me Down, " Haggard's voice was always an astringent pleasure, not a sweet one. But his mouth's more puckery than ever before -- a dry quality his own simple production and acoustic arrangements accentuate.

Country and personal reference points abound. Disguised as a nostalgia piece, "Wishing All the Old Things Were New," which has the elegantly carpentered perfection of a Guy Clark song, begins: "Watching while some old friends do a line/Holding back the `want to' in my own addicted mind." Haggard tips his 10-gallon hat to Wills on the bouncy, fiddle-happy Texas swing of "Bareback" and does an uncanny Cash impression on the first line of "I'm Still Your Daddy" ("I knew some day/You'd find out about San Quentin"). Virtuoso Norm Hamlet drizzles delicious steel guitar all over the mid-tempo "Leavin's Getting Harder" as Haggard weighs genre clichés of living on the road against his urge to stay home. Indeed, most of this quiet, haunting disc is about reconciliation and resignation, past and present, possibilities and limitations. By the time you get to the masterful title track, a sad, Willie Nelson-style ballad, its bone-simple lyrics creak under the weight of their accumulated meaning, even as Haggard's voice soars. The song won't reward repeated listenings: "If I Could Only Fly" will flatten you immediately or else it'll never mean anything to you.

Haggard says that if his new disc stiffs, he'll leave country music for good to focus on his own gospel label, which distributes directly to Wal-Mart. And as good as it is, If I Could Only Fly does sound like the end of something, not a new beginning: a round of acknowledgments, yee-haws, and back-porch wisdom. If Haggard does opt out, you can't blame him.