I suspect every expat Californian in Montana has a story about the moment they realized it was time to move. Mine involves Merle Haggard.
I was a college student paying the bills working in a record store. For people of a certain age, that immediately ups my rank on the hipness scale by a factor of 10. But for anyone so young they’ve never pondered the merits of hip replacement surgery, “record store” might as well be written in Mandarin.
To clarify for all the young invincibles out there, record stores were a cool place to work back in the 20th century. We sold records, 12-inch discs of vinyl that mechanically converted music into sound waves via a needle and turntable, and then through an amplifier that was attached, using wires, to speakers. Like today, those speakers were judged by their size. Unlike today, bigger was better for the speakers of my youth.
We all thought ourselves hipsters, and record store hipsters, circa the early 1980s, all listened to punk rock or some variation of the form. It’s just what we did.
Back then my idea of a great weekend wasn’t fishing the Missouri, it involved driving to LA and thumbing through stacks of records at the small, boutique record shops that featured imports of the best of British punk.
I was at the record shop one day, practicing the uninterested affect I deployed when the zombie-like unhip, searching for Phil Collins’ latest, invaded our sanctuary of hipness, when someone returned a “defective” copy of Merle Haggard’s “Epic Hits: The First 11.” Albums were often returned in those days, usually because the buyer had an inexpensive turntable that skipped or otherwise malfunctioned. Being that “smart aleck” was the other persona I too often turned to in my misbegotten youth, I decided to replace whatever was spinning on the turntable at the moment – probably Ultravox or The Clash – with that Haggard LP.
I was sure I’d make everyone mad in the joint.
Well, the response wasn’t quite what I expected. Yeah, most folks in the shop weren’t too thrilled to hear old-school country, but my reaction wasn’t what I expected either. I liked it. No, I dug it. Haggard, I realized, wasn’t just some yokel whining about cheating women or too much whisky. This was an American poet, telling our story to the accompaniment of slide guitar. Toward the end of the first side (kids, that was a thing) I was rethinking what country music meant to me. Then the final song of side A, “Big City,” started with that sweet fiddle intro, and the course of my life was permanently changed.
It’s not that I had never considered moving to Montana before that moment. Heck, I thought myself something of an accomplished fly fisher by that point so I had some idea what Montana meant, and I wanted to be there.
But when Merle sang, “Turn me loose, set me free, somewhere in the middle of Montana,” I had my confirmation. It took some time, but within a few years I was in the Bitterroot, living the semi-respectable life of a sportswriter at the Hamilton daily newspaper. Like me, Merle was a California boy. But his words fueled the Montana dream it took me almost a decade to realize.
The poignant, sophisticated work Haggard produced over a decades-long career established him as one of the all-time great American artists, regardless of medium. He didn’t rely on simplistic jingoism, the boosterism devoid of self-reflection that is too common in much of country music. His lyrics reflect what makes America great, that this country is strong enough to withstand the collective self-reflection — and sometimes harsh criticism — of those who love it most.
And he suggested that a place somewhere in the middle of what is best about America is actually a place somewhere in Montana.
He was absolutely right.