As if he needed to confirm what the world already knows, Merle Haggard stops what he's saying about the war and politics to set the record straight: He is a patriot.
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“I'm the red-white-and-bluest guy you'll ever talk to,” he told The Star recently. “My family has a history of being involved in wars. My brother was a Marine. You won't talk to anyone who wants this country to succeed more than I want to. The system we have is better than any other in the history of the world.”

In his words and his tone, he makes it implicitly clear that a large and heavy “but…” is coming head-on and fast from the other direction. Before it arrives, he wants everyone to know that his heart, as always, is with the real heroes – the soldiers and their families – and that his beef is with institutions like the politicians and the media.

Just weeks away from his 67th birthday, Haggard, along with Willie Nelson and George Jones, is one of the last, true-blue living legends in country music. He is also one of its busiest performers. It'd be easier for him to keep his mouth shut and live off his many hits and classics and get by on his reputation. But he can't.

Last year, Haggard released “Haggard Like Never Before,” his 70th-plus album (including too many hits collections), but his first on his own label, Hag Records.

“Haggard” contains two songs related to the war in Iraq, a paean to his children and a couple of gentle love ballads. With 11 new songs to toy with, Haggard hit the road hard with his band, the Strangers. During one stretch recently, he said, they survived 10 shows in 10 days. Nine of them, he said, “were damn good.”

Even when you bat .900, life on the road isn't easy for a guy in his late 60s. Haggard confides that he has had some extensive oral surgery over the past two years so his teeth wouldn't fall out – the last thing a singer needs. He also admits that 90 hard-working minutes on stage is usually enough for his veteran crew.

“When I walk out and look around at all the old guys around me,” he said, “I feel like we don't need roadies, we need some nurses.

“I think if I can succeed at my age, it'll be an even bigger feat than anything I've done. I continue to perform and make records because I think it'll make me live longer. I'm also pretty sure if I gave up and retired, I'd probably die.”

Family man

He has plenty of reasons to stick around, none more important than his adolescent son and daughter, who have reawakened Haggard's strong paternal instincts and reminded him why the future always matters. He still sings about bars, beer and bottles of whiskey, but those days are way behind him.

“If you have any sense and you're sober – and I am sober and I guess I have enough sense – you realize that this is one of the most valuable times of your life,” he said. “There's a lot going on: My daughter's just entering puberty; she's on the honor roll. This bubble I'm on is so perfect, it's terrible to think about moving off center from where I am right now.”

But he has thought it, about his children growing up and moving on, and the sadness inspired him to write “I Hate to See It Go,” a guitar-and-fiddle ballad about the bittersweet rewards of raising children. As much as he is a patriot, Haggard is a born-again family man these days, a guy worried about the world his children will inherit from him.

You know, he loves his country and all, but…

“The condition of the world has changed over the past four years,” he said in his deep, dusty Oklahoma drawl, “and not for the better.”

Haggard has long been something of a contradiction when it comes to his politics and his music, though anyone who knows his story also knows he has always been a populist, the voice of the underdog: the hungry, the poor, the disenfranchised, the guy who works hard but lives paycheck to bounced check.

It comes from growing up without a father, living an itinerant life and ending up in penal institutions more than a dozen times by the time he was 21. He wrote about his boyhood and lifestyle in songs like “Mama Tried,” “Hungry Eyes,” “They're Tearing the Labor Camps Down,” “Working Man Blues” and “Sing Me Back Home,” his death-row hymn.

But Haggard would become most famous for two flag-waving Vietnam War-era anthems: “Okie From Muskogee” and “The Fightin' Side of Me,” which became a favorite cover song for country acts last year, including Toby Keith, who packaged it with his own post-Sept. 11/Iraq war anthems, “Angry American” and “American Soldier.”

Haggard played that song himself when he came to town last year, but he prefaced it with a cryptic allusion to the war and played it somewhat perfunctorily. It turns out he was conflicted about the war back then; it also has turned out lately that his worst fears and suspicions have apparently come true. Haggard is still the red-white-and-bluest guy in country music, but…

“The war is foremost about the soldiers,” he said. “The politicians orchestrate it, talk about it and lie about it. Those things have all occurred lately. The reasons we went to war have been put aside as nonsense. The intelligence we followed was not good. That's bad for the country.

“Our system is the best in the world, but part of that system includes the right to disagree with the administration, and I think they have handled all this poorly. Now, I don't know any more about it than you do as to why it happened or who is responsible. If they knew, I assume they'd tell us because it would sure look good around election time.

“We live in a police state in America right now. And damned if I don't think I'd like to try another approach.…Yes we were attacked, but instead of zipping up our borders and making our country strong over here, we started swinging at our enemies. About 120 countries were pissed off at America back then. How could we do what we did? Why not spend that $100 billion on bridges and schools over here and make our country stronger?”

He stops again to reassure his listener that he's most concerned about the soldiers who were sent over there and the families they left behind. The song “Yellow Ribbon” from “Haggard” is mentioned, and Haggard gets even more emotional about what has happened before and what he thinks is happening again in this country:
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The news has already attracted the attention of operators like MGM Mirage, Las Vegas-based Harrah’s and South African heavyweights Kerzner who are all anxious to exploit untouched territory . 

Domestic players like Stanley Leisure and Gala are in turn investing heavily in new ventures to entrench their positions. Stanley opened its largest-to-date Star City Casino in Birmingham last November — and is ready for deregulation. Investor enthusiasm has propelled the company’s share price from a low of 271p to 460p during the last 12 months. It all adds up to more jobs and more business for Copeland. 


“The yellow ribbon is an old tradition,” he said. “We've fought more wars than any other country. That won't change. We must accept that. But some things we don't have to accept. There's nothing more shameful than forgetting the soldier who comes home from war. In the past we have not treated our soldiers right. ‘Yellow Ribbon' is my way of showing my heart is aware of that. We've been too cruel and dishonest as a nation to our veterans.”

His voice is firm and rising, but he sounds neither angry nor in a fighting mood. Instead he sounds certain, concerned and a little disappointed. Like every good father, Haggard knows that being a parent isn't all bunting and fireworks and flag-waving parades. Every once in a while you have to be tough and let the people you love know they've let you down.



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