Country's greatest generation

Haggard talks about his touring trio

Mark Brown, Rocky Mountain News

Published March 8, 2007 at midnight

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The tour is called The Last of the Breed, which is both defiant and sad. Yes, Merle Haggard, Willie Nelson and Ray Price represent the best in classic country music. The sad part is that the name is true: Waylon is gone, Johnny is gone, and the Kenny Chesneys of the world aren't fit to polish their shoes, much less fill them.

The three have an album coming out under that title on March 20, but the tour hits Loveland on Monday. Haggard, 69, talking to Rocky music writer Mark Brown from his home in Redding, Calif., continues to be the outlaw and renegade, a quality that has taken him to both jail and the top of the charts. It also has taken him to the punk label Epitaph Records, which releases his solo work these days.

Between this tour and your album with George Jones you're in a collaborative mood lately.

"That would pretty well sum it. Some of your friends ask you to record, you just go record. It's as simple as that. George and I recorded together before. Willie and I have done a couple of albums. Ray's getting on up there in age and I really wanted to do this with him. We've all been friends for a lot of years."

Between the three of you it's like you've lived 20 lifetimes. These days people couldn't live the lives you've lived.

"That's true. We live in a time now that . . . I feel really sorry for people in the United States right now compared to what it was, what it used to be. What we put up with, what we gave up. What we allow. What we don't allow. There is no place for a guy like me or Willie or George or Ray or anybody to play except a casino or a fairground. I don't even know if the fairgrounds are gonna work this year. They've passed so many laws that eliminate any nightlife at all in America. You can fly a Lear jet from Seattle to New York and you wouldn't see a light nowhere."

All those laws make spontaneity go away in music. You can't just play a honky-tonk anymore.

"You take a guitar and walk into a bar they'll throw you in jail. They'll think you're crazy."

How was recording your songs with George Jones' on Kicking Out the Footlights?

"I was six years behind him in entering the business. I had about six years in nightclubs where I had to sing those songs of George's in order to make a living. I did all five of those songs in two hours and 40 minutes. The guys on the board said they'd never seen anything like that (laughs hard). George had to learn (my) songs."

Who has sung your songs the best?

"George Strait did a song of mine called Seashores of Old Mexico that was quite popular this past year. I thought he did a wonderful job on that. I was supposed to be in the video but I was not feeling well at the time they shot it in Mexico.."

You're touring less and taking more time for yourself. How is that working?

"If I don't (play music) I'll simply die. It keeps me alive, it keeps me breathing. The older you get the more critical things of that nature become. It would be real easy in my situation with my children - I have a 14-year-old boy and a 17-year-old girl that I'd like to be with all the time. It'd be real simple for me to just say 'This is it, I don't feel good, I'm not going to go and sit here in this chair,' sink back in it and be dead in about 18 months. The only way I can stay alive is to do what I've been doing and keep my lungs happy."

Your song America First came out against the war in Iraq without sounding unpatriotic.

"I think it's pretty well agreed upon that I am an American. My family history and my actions and my relatives who fought in previous wars, World War II, the Korean War, Vietnam. I've had grandchildren and brothers and cousins (serve). I tried to get in but I was too young. I wound up going to jail for trying to get in the Army. I think it's a well-known fact that Merle Haggard is a red, white and blue American. There are a lot of red, white and blue Americans who don't believe in what we're doing now, don't believe we're being told the truth. We're being told the truth after the fact because they get caught in their damn lies. It's a terrible time, politically, for America. There doesn't seem to be a great leader on the horizon. And it's a time when we certainly need one."

Last time we talked you said 9/11 changed us for good, but as a country we're now so divided.

"There seems to be forked tongue having to do with what we're doing about 9/11. At the same time, they talk to us about reasons they should be able to look up grandma's dress, yet here we are with the grandchildren and granddaughters dying over there for this freedom that we don't even have anymore."

You've taken to Web-casting shows from merlehaggard.com.

"If I were 10 years younger I'd tackle a talk-radio show, if nothing else on a Web cast. There's a need for somebody that this country could absolutely trust to give them a take on the news. It seems all the major medias have been censored. I hate to use a word so strong as that but it certainly seems that way."

What are you working on now? You mentioned a project Baja a few years ago, linking your music with Spanish music.

"I have about four or five recordings. I have a song called Mexico and a song called Baja and some other island songs. Right in the middle of that Kenny Chesney wanted to do one of the main songs. I let him have it and that blew the middle out of that project for me. But if he wants to record something, hot as he is, I better let him have it, huh?"

You released Roots, Vol. I to great acclaim. Where's Vol. II?

"It's here. It's ready to go. There's some interest in it once again from the people at Epitaph. They're still good friends. They'll probably eventually, maybe this year, take that project."

Last of the Breed Tour

featuring Willie Nelson, Merle Haggard and Ray Price

• When and where: 7:30 p.m. Monday, Budweiser Events Center, Loveland

• Tickets: $35, $45 and $55

• Information: 1-970-619-4100 or comcasttix.com

Supergroup

• Willie Nelson

Born: Fort Worth, Texas, 1933

Breakthrough: Crazy, 1961 (for Patsy Cline)

Signature songs: On the Road Again, Always on My Mind, Mamas Don't Let Your Babies Grow Up to Be Cowboys

• Merle Haggard

Born: Bakersfield, Calif., 1937