WAITING FOR A TRAIN

WITH MERLE HAGGARD

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ALL OF THE PICTURES ON THE PAGE ARE PROPERTY OF BENFORD E. STANDLEY AND ARE

NOT TO BE COPIED OR SHARED IN ANYWAY UNLESS WITH WRITTEN PERMISSION.

I have decided to self publish my eMediaBook on Me & Merle and love to

have you be part of the train ride to its release in the Fall of this year...

You can go to WaitingForATrainWithMerleHaggard.com and

get more of the idea of the multimedia track we will take

you down in the Virtual Memoir Waiting for A Train.

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For the first year that I was around Merle on various tours and at a number of shows in California,  Frank and I would talk, and

I began to meet the guys in the band, the road crew and bus drivers, let's call it a vetting dance.   A number of months later,

and after several meet ups with some dates in California Frank told me to meet them at a show off the 210 near LA, I met

Frank at a hotel, where he was checking in the band he said, "Merle is out in the parking lot on his bus, why don't you go

say hi to him."  I got butterflies in my stomach as I began to walk out of the hotel into the parking lot headed for the Super Chief

his famous bus.  I boarded the bus and Merle looked at me and said, "Come on in Banford."  He called me Banford, instead of

Benford...hell I didn't care Merle Haggard could call me whatever he wanted, and from that point on a great friendship and a

working relationship began and grew year by year.

 

 

 

 

Over the next decade plus, I would become a friend and partner, and was one of the selected few that got to spend many

times with him on his bus talking Jimmie Rodgers, Lefty Frizzell, Bob Wills and  on and on...  For the first year we would

meet up at different venues in California, sometimes I would follow the busses from town to town.  He told me one time that

Johnny Cash called him and said "Merle where are you?"  Merle said, "I don't know."  Cash told him, "Call room service

and ask them."   Merle loved to tell stories about his great friends, more than talk about himself, even told me one time

he would love to do a television show where he told stories about guys like Bob Willis, Johnny Cash, Roger Miller, Lefty

Frizzell and hundreds of the greats that he knew.

 

Based on our love of Jimmie Rodgers, "The Singing Brakeman" and his desire to help me with the documentary, which

became one of the central elements of the friendship, and out of the deep passion we both shared to tell the story of "the

man that started it all".   We were both always amazed that no one ever make a movie or a documentary about his

incredible life.  And,  Willie was right..."If you want to know something about Jimmie Rodgers... talk to Merle Haggard.

 

CUT TO:  BOOK STORY LINE AND NARRATIVE...

 

It is known in film and literature as the "protagonist"  and by some is called the "hero" usually by the readers or audience.

It's said  that the word arrived from the Greek language and was used in Greek drama where it referred to "the person who led

the chorus"... In my narrative Merle Haggard is the "hero."

 

Enter Merle Haggard.  In his DNA is a ramblin' fever.  His father was part of the Okie migration to California, where he settled his

family in an old Santa Fe railroad refrigerator boxcar, known as a refeer, in Oildale, California, a bedroom community of Bakersfield. 

Merle was born in 1937, in the Bakersfield hospital then brought back to Oildale to be raised in the boxcar, with a railroad track only

blocks away.  Merle said he began to know loneliness when his dad would leave to work on the railroad line, then when Merle lost

his dad to a brain tumor when Hag was only 9 years old he said he became scared and angry, and the loneliness grew deep, and

the ramblin' fever took over the rest of his life.

 

 

the setting for my dozen years with Merle Haggard was the road...

 

Enter the "antagonists" for there will be many for The Hag.  In an interview with Dan Rather, Mr. Rather asked him, "You

don't have to work anymore.  Why do you do it?  Why jump on the bus and drive a thousand miles to another date?  Merle

said, "I'm scared of the loneliness.  It would be awful quite awful quick.  If you want to be left alone, they'll leave you alone. 

I don't want that.  We want to continue...we don't ever want to die.  You know that is the next big event once you retire.

Loneness is a terrible thing."

 

The ramblin' fever was adding fuel to hit the road throughout his life, and not two years after the death of his father he

hopped a freight train at 11 years old, and began a life of running away and life on the road.  By age 16, and because of his

truancy and "ditching" school he began his many incarcerations in California Youth Authority Detention Centers and jails

that led to his 17 escapes...all leading to being put behind the bars of San Quentin Prison.

 

Running from that box car house in Oildale, running from those small school rooms, jails and dentition centers lockups

where his spirit was locked away, running to and from the small back stage rooms to the hotel rooms and that small

rooms on his bus always with leaving on his mind.  Running from four marriages and families, record labels and hucksters,

photographers, journalists and fans...He said "I don't know if I am running from or to."

 

At 16 years old he played for his idol Lefty Frizzell, and Lefty had him open a show with his band...Merle said,  "I was hooked,

I knew I could do it, then in San Quentin Prison he was in the audience when Johnny Cash played...this locked in his desire to

be a musician... When he got out of prison his life on the road would be forever. 

 

The ramblin' fever, the road and his bus were antagonists.  His memories that became his songs and the

passion and his deep desire to tell his life in song so others could learn became his antagonists.   Hear it

in the songs he sang up and down the highways of the country for six decades.

 

I was born the running kind, leaving always on my mind.  Home was never home to me at any time.

And I got to keep goin'  I can't lay down Sleep won't hardly come Where there's loneliness all around.

Listen to the train that stops in our town, Sliver Wings shining in the sunlight.  Sing Me Back Home

Where The Lonely Go  Too Many Bridges to Cross Over  I'm a Lonesome Fugitive  The darkness of

the night catches me crying A whistle soon will blow a lonesome sound.  No matter where I am living

I've got to tell them where I've been, or they will send me back to prison if I fail.  A canvas covered

cabin in a crowded labor camp stand out in this memory I revived.  I'm tired of this dirty old city

Big city turn me lose and set me free   Won't be long before my shoes touch the ground  Down every

road there's always one more city.  I'm on the run, the highway is my home.  I'm a hunted fugitive

with just two ways: Outrun the law or spend my life in jail.  Within me there is a prison, surrounding

me alone As real as any dungeon with walls of stone  I know running is not the answer, but running's

been my nature  And part of me that keeps moving on...Sing me back home with a song I used to

hear  Make my old memories come alive  Take me away and turn back the years.  Well I'm leavin'

town forever kiss an old boxcar goodbye...SING ME BACK HOME BEFORE I DIE and KERN

RIVER BLUES...he sang to me as we held hands on this bus before his next to last show...

 

THE BOB DYLAN  &  MERLE HAGGARD TOUR

 

Back in 2005, Merle told me that Bob had called him to tour the United States, and was wanting him to tour with him as an opening

act on  30+ dates across the United States.  Merle told him, "No."   "Hell!" Merle said, "He wanted to go out at the wrong time of the

year for me to want to cross the U.S. North to South to West to East...And, Merle looked at me and said, "I'm not an opening act...

maybe for Willie."  Then he said, "And the money was not that good."

 

Days after I got the first phone call from Frank Mull that this had all come down... Frank calls back and tells me the tour is on!  Later

Merle tells me, "After the call I told my ranch hand to go to town and get me some Dylan CD's".  The story from Frank and Merle is

that after listening to the CD's he called Frank and said, "Call Dylan...tell him I will do the show.  That son-of-a-bitch is a GENIUS!".

Let's say Merle Haggard just discovered Bob Dylan.

In that the prior year I'd been not only running down Haggard for interviews to have him in the Jimmie Rodgers documentary,

but I had already run down Bob Dylan, and had already started talks with his management for his involvement and had his

interest, I could not help but feel some fate, destiny and synergy going on with the call of this tour coming together.

 

In 1969, Merle released a tribute album to Rodgers titled SAME TRAIN A DIFFERENT TIME,  and in 1997, Dylan released a

tribute album to the Jimmie titled THE SONGS OF JIMMIE RODGERS: A TRIBUTE.  In short Dylan and Haggard's boys gave

me permission to be the only video and digital camera on the tour.  A month plus on the road and 39 shows sold out across

the Nation.  I started taking notes and serious video of the tour itself, the busses, the roadies, the load ins and load outs, and

the road warriors doing what they do.

 

PioneerTroubadours.com/DylanHaggardJournal.htm

this link will take you to my digital journal from the tour, with pictures and a day to day journal on the road with

Bob Dylan and Merle Haggard.

The Dylan and Haggard journey was in 2006, during that tour Merle and I became saddle pals, and I felt a friendship growing.

Some weeks after the tour I showed him some of the footage and pictures that I shot and had them online on my computer to

show to him.  That's when he asked me if I wanted to help him shoot a trailer to help get some footage of his life together to

then present to some studio and/or script writer.  He had in mind Clint Eastwood or Ron Howard.  At that point I jumped in the

Hag Band Wagon and got my personal All Access Back Stage Pass.

 

For the next decade I was  On The Road Again and again with Merle Haggard and the Strangers I learned more about one

of the great legends of all time.  Haggard and I taught each other a lot of music history, and talked for hours upon hours about

everybody we knew and both being history buffs, he said one day, we told each other things we both did not know.  I filmed

his stories, took notes when he talked, and for years many times those stories he remembered brought him to tears.

 

Later down the road in an interview with Merle asking him about me, out of this interview, of which I have a copy of, Merle said,

"When I see ole Benford walking up, I know we are going to be talking about some music history and something interesting."

cut to:

Merle Haggard and Willie Nelson

From the Merle Haggard UFO Music Festival in Roswell, NM to

the Willie Nelson's 4th of July Picknick, then their last tour and

shows together in 2015 on the Django and Jimmie album Tour

A sell out October 2015 tour in support of the Django and Jimmie release followed the album's

#1 position on the Country Charts.  The Boot.com named the album the #3 country album of the

year, and it was the top selling album on the Amazon.com Classic Country Charts for weeks...

and the album was dedicated to Jimmie Rodgers and Django Reinhardt and the synergy

grows with this next linkup of Merle Haggard, Jimmie Rodgers and myself, with Willie to boot.

CUT TO 2014, somewhere on the road with Merle...

In 2014, Merle was talking about getting back together with Willie on a project.  He and Willie and Kris had just been together

at an awards show, so he and Willie started the ball rolling on the idea to do another album.  Merle had said they wanted to do

something with Kris, but at the time and for awhile Kris was dealing with some health problems, which later showed he was

most dealing with the wrong diagnosis, and he was having to cancel some shows.

 

There were a number of times Merle would tell me about the project, then he would just grab his phone and call Willie.  Last call

I remember he just grabbed his phone and called Willie and they talked awhile about getting off the dime and doing the project. 

Merle told Willie to "call Mark and let's get this moving and let's get in the studio."  Sony came on board and that picked up the

pace...  As per many of the big recording projects the doings were kept hush hush, so for awhile I just knew when Willie and Merle

were getting together to do some recording.  Most of the work had been done on the phone with Willie and Merle talking about

songs... Merle told me the story about how the song D'Jango and Jimmie came across his and Willie's radar and that is a story

that for sure tied me into the mix.