California country music legend Merle Haggard's debut Vanguard release, I Am What I Am bristles with all the arresting qualities for which this unrivaled artist is prized. Every song is imbued with the near alchemical power of his dazzling vocal performances, and Haggard's interpretive mastery and unmatched phrasing continues to bring on impressive measures of sensitivity, candor and authority. Never conventional, often confrontational, always outspoken, the 72 year old Haggard remains as aggressively bent on revealing unspoken truths as ever. Over a distinguished fifty year-plus career that's taken him from a drastically misspent criminal youth to solitary confinement in San Quentin to the Country Music Hall of Fame, Haggard has memorably portrayed, in song, myriad archetypal characters. Whether fugitive, troubadour, misfit or crusader, he's explored each perspective with a critical acuity, a hard-won skill that's allowed him to score no less than 40 number one country hits. With I Am What I Am, Haggard really looks inward, going all the way back to his Oildale childhood on sentimental reminiscence "Oil Tanker Train," which Haggard called "My favorite song on the album--that's a true deal." Rough-edged numbers like "Stranger in the City" and the rowdy "Mexican Band" carries the set all the way up to the singer's still barely-controlled hell-raising ways--on the latter, he unforgettably declares "Agave makes me dance on my hands." But on tracks like "Pretty When It's New," a study of new love's marvelous voltage, and "How Did You Find Me Here" which convincingly takes him from morbid depression to elated joy, Haggard sounds almost re-born, intensely involved and consumed with a sheer sense of wonder that's enhanced further by those characteristically masterful vocals. Recorded with his ace band the Strangers, many of whom have been at Hag's side for decades, at his Northern California headquarters, the Shade Tree Manor studio, and co-produced by indispensable, longtime cohort Lou Bradley, the album was largely a family affair.

Track Listing

Disc 1:

1. I've Seen It Go Away
2. Pretty When It's New
3. Oil Tanker Train
4. Live And Love Always
5. The Road To My Heart
6. How Did You Find Me Here
7. We're Falling In Love Again
8. Bad Actor
9. Down At The End Of The Road
10. Stranger In The City
11. Mexican Bands
12. I Am What I Am