Sidetracks to wine, hot springs

and the pine street saloon

The last couple of years of Merle's life he and I were working on the idea of producing his own wine label out of Paso Robles, California.  I had done a

number of new wine labels for a Digital Film Festivals I produced, each year we would bottle a wine and put a label on the wine bottle from the Festival

and a couple of years would put the name of a film award on the label and give to the filmmakers who's film won an award.  Over a few years time I did a

wine for Paula Nelson, Willie's daughter, a special blend for 40 anniversary of the Miles Davis' Bitches Brew album that was distributed at the party

in Hollywood, up on top of some building somewhere in lalaland.  Merle, Frank Mull  and I thought be good idea, knowing how much Kris and his wife

Lisa loved wine that we were dreaming up one for Texas/Hawaii/California "favorite son" along with the idea of a Toby Keith wine...  A double barrel

wine shotgun of these two guitar slinging legends for sale for sure could have been a ticket to ride, but Hag took a side track to the promise land.

First time I mentioned the idea of Hag having his own wine blend that we could just start with as a deal in California, then he could start moving it into

the honky tonks, saloons, Indian casinos and places that he played.  We got so going on the talks on his bus that I started making the phone calls and

moving the project down the road.  Had my sister Linda Standley-Anderson do the label you see on the Paula Nelson one and the Haggard below.

Merle's love for saloons, bars, honky tonks and roadhouses stayed strong. He always called his band a “bar band” and supported the saloons that wanted

to bring him because they were keeping country music alive and there were all the drinkin' songs.  I got him to do a TV commercial for the Pine Street

Saloon in Paso Robles, he remembered the place when I mentioned to him the first year we met he said, "What is the saloon there?"  I said, "Pine Street Saloon," he said yup and that he remembered it from his Bakersfield days traveling around the area.  He also knew that this is where they brought James

Dean body after the car wreck out of town a few miles, and he said it was where Marlin Monroe married Jo DiMaggio in hotel in town, but he did not

remember the name. 

Thought I would take a step backwards from wine to back to the Pine Street Saloon, that mentioned above, and by the way they do have their

own wine saloon blends and are a hit for sure.  You can buy by the glass, bottle or case.  After about 6 years studying the history of the ole bar

I am convinced it is one of the more interesting saloon sagas west of the Mississippi and maybe even the Atlantic ocean for that matter.  Been

TV shows and magazine articles written about the ghost that haunt the place.  I had an office in the building...trust me there are spirits and stark feelings in the shadows and dark. 

So, other than the wine talk about Paso Robles, his wife Thresa and I get to talking about the hot springs and they kept trying to find a time

to get to the springs, but instead Haggard told me to see if I could find any land that wine vineyards and hot springs on the property that he

could buy.  I started the search for a few months and was finding some leads, but on a side track and talking to my pal Dan "Sasu Weh"

who was living in Oklahoma and had been the Chairman of the Ponka Tribe for seven years.  Merle liked to call him "the Chief"...anyway I

am telling him about looking around Paso for some land for Haggard to buy with hot springs on the lake, and Dan starts telling me about

a lake for sale in Oklahoma which has me talking about how Merle has talked about wanting/dreaming of a place in Oklahoma to keep

the busses and part of his operation so when he hits the road on East Coast tours he doesn't have to drive so far, and said Toby Keith

and some pals where talking him about getting a jet to just fly when he needed it.

 

I took the number and called and the lake had sold, so it came to Dan that his tribe was in the early stages of working with the Chickasaw

to build a new casino and already had the land laid out and what if we did a Haggard casino...then as we talked the idea grew to be a

Music Complex, with theaters, not only a museum that honored Merle Haggard an "Oklahoma Favorite Son" but the rich culture of the

Country music that has some out of Oklahoma via names like Garth Brooks, Reba McEntire, Toby Keith, Blake Shelton, Vince Gill,

Carrie Underwood, Woody Guthrie, Gene Autry, Hoyt Axton, Roger Miller, Roy Clark, Leon Russell, J.J. Cale and more greats.

To bring Buck on the bus to meet Merle was a great honor, and took me back to introducing Buck to Willie Nelson.  Buck ran with Pres.

Reagan, Roy Rogers, Gene Autry, Eddie Dean and many of the greats, for years and in his last years he was friends and managed by Cliffy

Stone.  I met Buck through Rex Allen, Sr. in 1988.  Rex had me come to the Union Plaza Hotel near the Grayhound bus station in Las Vegas

for a meeting that would be come the beginning of the Western Music Association and ole Buck Page was there and we met and stayed

friends for 18 years.  Spent a good bit of time together doing shows, me taking him places, hanging on his couch.  He was my adopted

 grandfather and helped me in some hard times as well.

 

He knew so many great stories from the early days of Western Music...the fact that he and Merle would be together and with Norm Stephens

who played guitar for Merle and had played for Lefty Frizzell I knew this would be a meeting to get some great footage and stories down on

Lefty from these two men that knew him and all knew of the relationship of Jimmie to Lefty to Haggard.  Buck was close to Lefty when he was

out on the west coast doing TV shows and bought his horses for him and they would go to horse races.  Tell ya right now the stories I have on

cam of these three great men of country music telling Lefty stories is something for the museums.

Buck plays 21 instruments in all, including lead guitar, rhythm guitar, mandolin, tenor banjo, plectrum banjo, 5 string banjo, ukulele, fiddle, violin, viola, cello, string bass, electric 6 string bass, 4 string electric bass, steel guitar and drums. He is a member of the screen actors guild, The American Federation of TV and Radio Actor's and a life time member of L.A. Local 47 of the American Federation of Musicians ad AGVA since he was 17 years old.  He and his brother formed The Riders of the Purple Sage in 1936, when Buck was 13, and they became NBC staff members for three years at KDKA Radio in Pittsburg, PA. It was the very first radio station in history, the Riders were doing five one hour radio shows per week coast to coast for three years. For the next three years the Riders headed to New York to do WOR Radio on the Mutual Network coast to coast five days a week at the famous Village Barn. In between the shows they would do vaudeville, which was on the edge of passing into history with the envent of movies, the phonograph the radio.

Buck's stories and experience goes back to the early days of medicine shows. Buck was much the part of early radio and has much knowledge

of this great time period in the history of the entertainment business.  Some of the Riders big tunes in those days were "Twilight on the Trail," "Don'tFence Me In," "Gold Mine in the Sky," and "We'll Rest At The End of the Trail."  This gig at the famous Village Barn gave the band much exposure and they began to ride high. During these days of the passing of vaudeville and the new fad of "going to the movies" the Riders of the Purple Sage would play on stage to open a movie or during the intermission. In the early days of the band we were doing Vaudeville. We had a

whip act and did shooting tricks on stage with a real gun. It all started when we wound up in Albany, New York where we were working on two

radio stations. We were sponsored by Montgomery Wards five morning. We did the Saturday Moring Jamboree, where the kids would come

and we had a live audience. We were goofing around and did some tricks and it began to work well into our act.

Haggard meets Dave Somerville of The Diamonds

It as such a honor with a fun feeling inside to introduce Merle to a list of my old stars from music history to him, and in all cases he was as

excited to meet them as they were to meet the Hag.  Because of my work on JIMMIE RODGERS SAGA, KICKING UP DUST and the

PIONEER TROUBADOUR projects I was able to dig up and meet with many of the old legends and those that they worked with.  Another

close friend and brother in fun in Hollywood was Dave Somerville.  Dave was founding member and lead singer of The Diamonds.  They

were famous for a number of songs including "Little Darlin'" which became the first 45 rpm record to sell a million copies and were one of

the top bands of the 50tys, touring with Fats Domino, Chuck Berry, Paul Anka, Buddy Holly, and The Everly Brothers.  For a period of time

Dave told me he left the Diamonds in 1961 to go solo as a folk artist, then in 1967 he joined the Four Preps for a few years then went back

to the Diamonds for a couple of decades. 

Year by year months would go by then there would be another show with Willie Nelson and Family or a actual tour.  One of the fun meet ups was in July when Merle would have his Merle Haggard Music and UFO Festival in Roswell, New Mexico, but of course. He would have Willie there to headline the show on the night of July 3rd.  Later that night after all the equipment was loaded up then Willies road rodeo would leave the gig together with the Haggard road rodeo headed for Fort Worth Texas and Willie's annual 4th of July Pick Nick right at the Ft. Worth Stock Yards and Billy Bob's the largest Honky Tonk in the county.  Measured in acres with ainside bull arena.  I am not talking mechanical bull here folks.

 

Haggard's three bus convoy was headed to New Mexico and I packed up in my van and headed out of Paso late at night headed to the  2^nd Annual Merle Haggard's UFO Music Festival in Roswell, New Mexico with Willie Nelson, Lacy J. Dalton, Freddy Powers back in 2005. Roswell AKA UFO Capitol of the World for it was in Roswell in 1947, a mysterious object crashed on a ranch North of Roswell. Rancher Mac Brazel found something in his sheep pasture, said to be metallic sticks held together with tape, and other materials. The local sheriff called officials at the Roswell Army Air Force base. Soldiers came and collected materials and sped off in armored trucks. Later reports from the Air Force said that the alleged “flying saucer,” was only a crashed weather balloon.

So Merle thought that was a perfect place to hold his UFO Music Festival.  I was very excited to go back to Roswell for in the spirit of UFO's

and to sell T-shirts for my buddies at Not Fade Away who did all the Grateful Dead's tie-dies I thought could make some money there with

some T-shirt and I was spending time in Gallup, NM, the Indian Capital of the world so headed there for the 50 year anniversary of the

"happening."  While I was there in town for the show, I drove out to the place where the UFO was said to have gone down on the ranch.

Someone at the ranch that day took me to a place I could park my van and hike down to the area that he pointed out to me a few hundred

yards away. I for sure felt a vibe, or with the blend of a joint that I smoked walking down and the feelings already high on the thoughts of

people from another universe were here?  Wow, and it was a warm New Mexico day in a rugged desert rock and limestone, with yucca's

and cactus everywhere.  I had cold chills the entire walk across the desert like landscape. When I was at the area I found a cactus and dug

it up and hid in my van and took back to California. 

 

We load up after the Roswell show and the Willie and Family road show and the Haggard road show caravan of busses, couple trucks and a number of cars of folks heading on to Willie's 4th of July hootenanny head East for the 460 mile trip to Fort Worth, Texas.  I have a lease van that is a smooth ride but I got to drive all night on these tours.  Because of the "radius rule" it is usually 300 miles between gigs and all the busses leave together and travel through the night.  Usually a late morning load in so to make the 3 ish sound check.  I am alone and on tour there are bus drivers that get some sleep before the all night drive, so I usually hit the town and need to sleep in my van for a few hours before the show begins... We were rolling down some  highway and I saw a car pull up next to Haggard's bus like trying to pull them over, after a ways the buss pulled over in a parking lot and Johnny Gimble got out of the car with his son and there was a great time at the side of the road.  Johnny is old friend of Haggard's and he used to play fiddle for Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys.  Johnny said they were rolling down the highway and his son said, "Hey Dad... that bus looks like a train."  Johnny said, "Train HELL, that is Merle Haggard's bus.