Album reviews: Merle Haggard's 'I Am What I Am' and Willie Nelson's 'Country Music'

The new albums by Willie Nelson and Merle Haggard represent each country veteran’s debut with a new label, but on both discs, that’s where the novelty ends: With Nelson's “Country Music” on Rounder and Haggard's “I Am What I Am” on Vanguard, these grizzled avatars of the late-'60s/early-'70s “outlaw country” movement are self-consciously reasserting their roots-music bona fides following recent forays into other styles. These are traditionally minded efforts from two old-timers who came of age bucking tradition.

To oversee “Country Music,” Nelson recruited T Bone Burnett, who had spent the last few years producing similarly conceived albums by John Mellencamp, Elvis Costello and the duo of Robert Plant and Alison Krauss. As he did on the Grammy-winning Plant-Krauss set, Burnett selected most of the vintage Nashville material, as well as the musicians making up Nelson’s backing band, and as usual, he chose well: “Dark as a Dungeon” and “Satan, Your Kingdom Must Come Down” are perfectly suited to the frayed edges of Nelson’s voice, while “Pistol Packin’ Mama” and “Drinking Champagne” emphasize the singer’s appealingly playful side.

Throughout the album, Burnett’s players (including guitarist Buddy Miller and Jim Lauderdale on harmony vocals) cushion Nelson’s singing with warm string-band arrangements that never overpower his understated delivery. If the result seems a little slight, it’s also deeply satisfying.

 “I Am What I Am” is less consistent than “Country Music”: Haggard’s writing occasionally lapses into anonymous honky-tonk hokum, and the playing sometimes feels cheap and dashed off. (Haggard’s voice sounds much more weathered than Nelson’s does, as well.) Yet because it’s made up of originals, not covers, it’s also more idiosyncratic; the best songs here — such as “Bad Actor” and “Oil Tanker Train,” the latter featuring his wife, Theresa, on vocals — tell us more about Haggard than Nelson’s do about him.

And they might contain sharper wordplay: In “Mexican Bands” Haggard rhymes mañana with “smoke what I wanna.”

— Mikael Wood

Merle Haggard
“I Am What I Am”
(Vanguard)
Two and a half stars (out of four)

Willie Nelson
“Country Music”
(Rounder)
Three stars (out of four)

Comments

[claudio]

nice to have willie and merle around
miss waylon and johhny =an era =keep trucking boys

[Tehachapian]

Without Cash and Jennings, there's no "Highwaymen", and I particularly miss that mashup of talent. To the writer, Haggard is recovering from lung cancer, so I don't doubt that his voice is a bit more "haggard" than Willie's. (Says a lot for the power of medicinal marijuana).

[Noegel Rhodes]

I wouldn't exactly consider Merle Haggard part of the "outlaw movement" per se although he by all means has an outlaw streak in his music and in his personal life. Willie Nelson and Waylon Jennings, as well as Billy Joe Shaver and pre-Streisand Kris Kristofferson, are the prime examples if not the prototypes. Haggard was making albums before the so-called Outlaw Movement was in full swing. Haggard may be an outlaw through his late 1970s association with Willie Nelson, but this does not apply to at least Waylon Jennings who wrote in his biography that he and Hag carried on a mutual yet respectful dislike of one another after Waylon beat Hag in a backstage poker game in the early 1970s.

[Joseppi]

Actually, Hag beat Waylon in the poker game. Both were not exactly sober at the time (especially Waylon) and according to Waylon's autobiography, Hag and one other person (I forget whom) were there strictly to take Waylon's money...not be friendly, not courteous, not to have some fun. They took all the money he had on him (several thousand) and then immediately left. That was something that Waylon never forgot and was the basis for the dislike, at least on Waylon's part.