Merle Haggard
Live At Billy Bob's Texas

THE REVIEW

"A chicken wire fence!"

The image of the amazed and intrigued exclamation from the Blues Brothers' saxophonist in front of the stage set for the concert at Bob's country bar, caught between disbelief, worry, and amusement, is the first thing this CD brought to my mind.

Those who are fond of John Landis's legendary film can hardly forget the hilarious sequence of the Blues Brothers performing their blues repertoire protected by a chicken wire fence while the club's audience, impatient because the band wasn't playing country music, threw hundreds of beer bottles at them.

Even before inserting the CD into the player, the booklet takes the listener inside one of these venues, in a world that, for me, is as fascinating as few others: that of the honky-tonk.

These are precisely those places often seen in American movies, and of which the vast American countryside is indeed abundant. They are all those bars with a relative stage where, in the evening, the working class gathered to drink beer and listen to music after a hard day's work.

The world's largest honky-tonk, Billy Bob's Texas, is the stage for this exhilarating performance by Merle Haggard, one of the great old figures in the stars and stripes music scene.

With 40 songs that reached the number one spot on the Billboard charts, in addition to a vast number of songs that entered the charts over more than forty years, Merle Haggard fully deserves the hyperbolic phrases written in the booklet, claiming that very few artists can boast such marked importance for the history and evolution of this musical genre.

Listening to the CD is faithful proof of this. In a truly warm and at times exhilarating atmosphere, the Californian singer-songwriter revisits a small part of his countless great hits from the '60s and '70s, with an arrangement very faithful to the original recordings but refreshed here and there to update the sound to new millennium standards.

The opening medley "Running Kind-I'm a Lonesome Fugitive" harkens back to outlaw music, as does his rendition of Johnny Cash's "Folsom Prison Blues". There are numerous ballads, including the stunning "Kern River", "Farmer's Daughter", and "Footlights", the classics "Runaway Mama", "Rainbow Stew", "Fighting Side of Me", and many more. With truly excellent audio quality.

For lovers of the most genuine country, absolutely not to be missed.