Herald review: * * * *
(Shock/Festival)
Review: Graham Reid
Haggard is the genuine son of the road who, at 63, tours steadily and records regularly. But on this outing of (mostly) new originals, his first for a while, he adopts the mood of a man for whom wisdom has come at a price.
Haggard - who, like many of his generation of country musicians, has done most things, including time - opens with the moving, reflective Wishing All These Old Things Were New which sets the tone: "Watching while some old friends do a line, wishing it was still the thing even I could do ... watching while some young men go to jail, and they show it all on TV just to see somebody fail."
There's a wistful quality here too (the closer, Listening to the Wind, is jes' plain lovely) and throughout he punctuates hard-learned lessons ("I knew some day you'd find out about San Quentin," he sings on I'm Still Your Daddy). There's the neat single entendre of the Texas swinging Bareback ("There ain't no riding bareback anymore") and Haggard is as at home on a pared-down Lullaby as he is on the jazzy Honky Tonk Mama. Turn to Me has that same direct simplicity of lyric that Willie Nelson once claimed as his own.
Reflective, sentimental without being cloying, and still here despite it all. As with fellow traveller Johnny, show your appreciation now because the road doesn't go on forever.
<i>Merle Haggard:</i>If I Could Only Fly
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