"Runnin Kind/Lonesome Fugitive" Merle Haggard-Live At Billy Bob's

The original outlaw and lonesome fugitive, when I think of Merle I often recall one of the truest quotes ever uttered about the man. Sitting at a bar in Nashville listening to one of the many hundreds of great bands that inhabit that town with pedal steels on stage and telecaster guitars fitted with custom inlays the lead singer introduced Merle as the man Johnny Cash pretended to be. While the crowd gasped in horror at the sacrilege I smiled knowing the back story of this epic songwriter, hellraiser and ex con. Then again the crowd maybe knew all that, maybe they don't take to kindly to Merle for he invented a new sound in country music, a sound that trumped said town's for arguably decades.

County music's sound before Merle was significantly different. Think of Elvis Presley's "Don't be Cruel", "Four Walls" by Jimmy Reeves or "I Fall to Pieces" from Patsy Cline. It was heavily produced, over engineered, utilized (I admit I do love it) a new tuning on the guitar in which wound EADG strings on a standardly tuned six-string guitar (EBGDAE)run an octave higher. It is a good sound but in the end gets tired and I reckon I wasn't the only one feeling that way.

Merle Haggard was born in Oildale, California next to another shithole town widely known as Bakersfield. Before readers get all spun up about that comment I suggest they spend a few weeks there. His parents moved from Oklahoma during the Great Depression and in their new land life wasn't any easier. Merle's father died when he was nine years old, from that tender age on he engaged in petty crimes, was interned in a juvenile detention center at thirteen and spent the remainder of his teens in and out of various centers and jails until he saw Lefty Frizzle in concert and decided to pursue music as a career. It didn't exactly take off and just seven years later Merle found himself robbing a Bakersfield bar and receiving a stretch at the famous San Quentin State Penitentiary.

Incarcerated Merle still kept his old ways, he ran a gamboling and brewing racket from his cell, while in solitary he met two men named Drunk Adam and Rabbit who engineered an escape, Rabbit would escape only to shoot a police officer and return to San Quentin for execution. It was the turning point in Merle's life. Also while in San Quentin he attended three of Johnny Cash's concerts the topic of which would later come up later on after Merle's country music fame in a conversation:

Haggard came up to Johnny and told him, "I certainly enjoyed your show at San Quentin." Cash said "Merle, I don't remember you bein' in that show." Merle Haggard said, "Johnny, I wasn't in that show, I was in the audience."

Upon his release Haggard left the dark side for good and began his country career in earnest posting thirty eight number one hits throughout his career and being famous for starting "The Bakersfield Sound" of country music which plays in direct contrast to the Nashville sound spoken of earlier. This stripped down, heavy guitar influence music would be the catalyst for the Outlaw Country Music movement played by men such as Waylon Jennings, Willie Nelson, David Allan Coe and Buck Owens. The British songs "Act Naturally" and "Far Away Eyes" by The Beatles and Stones respectively encompass the genre, Gram Parsons and the Flying Burrito Brothers made their names on it.

Aside from all this history (I feel the post is becoming a bit too didactic) this song, which is actually a combination of two famous Merle songs, brings to mind the road, the freedom and the experience of a man who spent the early years of his life with no freedom at all, only the hell of prison life and the misery of watching days tick on with no end in sight. It is purely American in its openness and ideals, self reliance, not offering excuses or apologies. When I drive out west as I often do through the jerkwater towns, the vast expanse of the American continent there is nothing better than throwing on some Merle, opening the windows, lighting a Red and just enjoy being on the run, lonesome and while maybe not a fugitive from the law, trying to outrun that blackberry.

"A Kiss Before I Go" Ryan Adams and the Cardinals-Jacksonville City Nights

My good friend turned me onto this album, he tended to sway more towards the long sleeve T-Shirt under short sleeve T-Shirt-Paste Magazine-Wilco-Whole Foods-Mac-Saab side of the spectrum...not that there is anything wrong with that; and like many things there was a whole 'nother side under that skin that would shine through at certain times. There was always something inherently American inside of him, when I read blogs such as The Selvege Yard, A Continuous Lean, Cold Splinters, Impossible Cool, etc. I see this person. And like those blogs and their creators as well as my friend they have spurned this grass roots campaign of solid American traditions, be it in clothes, people and most importantly music.

When my friend gave me the album I put it aside, an act as habitual as an addict roping up his arm "Yea if it is that good why don't I have it.." Then later, maybe I'll give it a try and play a random song, decree it is terrible and give it back to said person without an import into iTunes. In this case I was intrigued by the title, we were living in Jacksonville (although not the one Ryan Adams had in mind) and the mood of the album permeated through me throughout my time in residence there, so it ended up on my iPod. Like my twenty year old cowboy boots this song has remained a great friend throughout the years, my consciousness bending the meaning of the lyrics and structure of the melody as toes breaking in tough leather, beating it down as a mink oil into a fabric of silky warm harmonics. The best songs come to you (whether you wrote them or acquire them) both when you are on you last leg and when you are riding high. They speak to you it the bowels of depression and celebrate till champagne-black-out just like that college friend who always wanted just one more drink.

When I hear that melancholy voice utter 1....2...1,2,3,4 and the faint sound a of boot tapping in the background a proverbial Stetson slides forward in my mind and and emotional Lucky dangling from my lower lip get lit by and old tarnished Zippo. The pedal steel slides in played by an old man with slicked back white hair and pearl snap denim. There's a Budweiser lamp hanging above a smoky pool table, cigarette burns on the faded green fabric, gaped hard wood planks for flooring and Silver Dollars varnished into the bar covered by spilled beer and dried whiskey creeping towards a few singles left for a tip.

"The engine turns on a dime but I ain't going nowhere tonight, I ain't been going nowhere for quite any while..." a heartfelt raspy falsetto sans reverb mutters into a stainless microphone. And that man alone at the bar, his hat slides down and reaches for the pack. He lights it take a deep drag with his forearms on the bar, exhales, then looks down at the hardwood planks and the nick on his boots remembering Amarillo. The rhythm man hits an F on a large Taylor Widebody with hand painted roses under the pic guard and chrome vine inlays on the fretboard. Our man solo at the bar thinks of her in Rock Springs two nights ago in that neon motel when he hears "I'll miss those nights at the bar with every girl all loaded like freights, and the pain in the morning comes as easy as it goes." How she smiled in the morning when she looked up from his chest wrapped in faded chestnut sheets, then arose to pull on a tight pair of jeans, button up her blouse with a name tag on the left breast and shove an order book in her back pocket listening to her boots click in staccato on the way out the door then rolling over and out of bed to take a shower to make Jackson in two days.

There's a couple in the dark back left corner who met two hours ago at the counter of a small home cooked restaurant along a small running creek four miles down the road before you cross over the Snake River and into the tiny hamlet. They've only unlocked eyes to survey a hand on a leg, a breast and that curve above her hip bone exposing itself just enough to catch view of powder milky pale soft skin and the promise it brings. She grabs his waist around the cracked leather belt and hooks her right thumb on the inside of his jeans running it side to side and pulling gently outward. "Breath all heavy and slow..." While the white-haired gentleman vibratos the steel on his ZumSteelD10, the Taylor Widebody hits an E chord and the open low echoes off the walls.

And it happens every night. Whether it takes place at Bar Pleiades with characters in Bruno Cucinelli Jackets and Chanel suits, or in the back of Long Boards with Birdwells trunks, Rainbow thongs and USD T-Shirts the story is always the same and usually so is the ending. But as for me, I (and my dear friend who introduced me to this track) remember this one place, a place that has now been corrupted but in my mind was always filled with such characters, such wants, needs and such sadly beautiful stories that are somehow so less romantic outside of the wild American Western cannon.