Haggard Like Never Before

Haggard Like Never Before

What does it mean that the man who famously took on the antiwar movement in 1970 with what many interpreted as the pro-Nixon "The Fightin’ Side of Me" reemerges more than three decades later with a devastatingly pensive antiwar song for the G.W. Bush era? Listening to "That’s the News," Hag’s latest blue-collar protest song, prompts one to conclude that the country giant hasn’t changed much at all; you’d still be on his fightin’ side if you attacked the troops, but their leaders are fair game. "Suddenly the cost of war is out of sight/ Lost a lot of heroes in the fight/ Politicians do all the talking/ Soldiers pay the dues/ Suddenly the war is over, that’s the news," he intones, and one is left to wonder what the let’s-kick-butt likes of Toby Keith would make of the nuanced Hag circa 2003. <I>Like Never Before</I> proves 2000’s comeback effort <I>If I Could Only Fly</I> was no fluke. Showing great care in presenting 10 sparely arranged originals (a Willie Nelson duet on Woody Guthrie’s "Reno Blues" rounds out the set), Haggard moves easily from honky-tonker to Western swing to ballads with the ease of well-traveled man who may have strayed off the path now and again, but has never lost his bearings. <I>--Steven Stolder</I>