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New York Observer
November 13, 2000

Haggard: Thrills Over the Hill

The past decade has been good to former outlaws looking to return to their roots: Johnny Cash's American Recordings (1994), Bob Dylan's Time Out of Mind (1997) and Willie Nelson's Teatro (1998) are all albums that can be counted among the artists' all-time best.

Add Merle Haggard to that list. His latest album, If I Could Only Fly (Anti-/Epitaph), a short (35-minute), sparse effort that embraces the unrepentant, hard-drinking, womanizing redneck's own aging and mortality, deserves a spot on the shelf alongside his 1969 masterpiece Same Train, Different Night.

Mr. Haggard telegraphs his intentions from the git-go. The first song, "Wishing All These Old Things Were New," begins with him murmuring over a single, stretched accordion chord and a gentle acoustic-guitar line: "Watching while some old friends do a line / Holding back the want-to in my own addicted mind."

With two sentences, Mr. Haggard establishes his rough-and-ready bona fides and also shows he's O.K. with the fact that he's moving up in years. Before the song is over, he has gone so far as to relate how his children want him to give up even his legal vices: "They say it's time that dad should lay tobacco down."

Throughout the album, this sense of acceptance and change takes center stage. Even Mr. Haggard's sexual braggadocio is tempered by an accepting wistfulness. Take the deep Texas swing of "Bareback," a song about his late-found faith in monogamy: "I'm still up there riding every night / All you got to do is hold me tight / But I ain't riding bareback anymore."

Throughout the album's dozen songs, Mr. Haggard alternates between feel-good country-western romps and reflective ballads, with both styles serving as marvelous showcases for his longtime (and wonderfully adept) backing band, the Strangers. Mr. Haggard and his band are so well traveled they can reference more than 30 years of Americana -- Chuck Berry's "Memphis, Tennessee" riff in "Honky Tonk Mama," the Grateful Dead's heavy mythology in "Thanks to Uncle John" -- and make it sound like they invented it.

Three decades ago, Mr. Haggard -- who did two years and nine months in San Quentin for attempted robbery -- mined his own history and came up with "Mama Tried," a hit with this timeless line: "I turned 21 in prison doing life without parole." Now married to his third wife, his place in this country's musical heritage secure, Mr. Haggard is still bursting with confidence and a delicious swagger, growling down on his R's and forcing grunts out of his honey-soaked voice.

The music is as rich and full as ever. But now, instead of jailhouse tales and backwoods swells, Mr. Haggard is belting out lines like this: "I might be over the hill / But you make growing old quite a thrill." On If I Could Only Fly, the thrill is all ours.