TOUR WITH STAR MAY END A COUNTRY MUSIC SECRET

Ask country superstars Willie Nelson, George Jones or Merle Haggard who Freddie Powers is, and they’ll probably tell you that he’s one of country music’s best-kept secrets.

But he may not remain a secret much longer. Singer-songwriter Powers and mentor Haggard are on tour featuring members of both singers’ backup bands.

The troupe is scheduled to perform Thursday night at El Cajon’s 1,500-seat East County Performing Arts Center. According to promoter Marc Oswald, who heads the Encinitas-based Luckenbach Productions with brother Greg, the show is almost sold out, thanks mainly to the presence of country superstar Haggard.

Luckenbach is producing the Powers-Haggard six-city “Bread and Butter Tour,” which kicked off Tuesday in the small town of Imperial. The project has the backing of MCA Records, which hopes Powers breaks through as a new performing force in country music.

“We’ve been working with Merle for a number of years now,” explained Marc Oswald, “and since I know he’s always looking to find new things to do, I called him up four or five months ago and suggested he try a solo acoustic tour, playing smaller halls than he normally does in just five or six cities.

“He called me back after he had thought it over and said that he didn’t really want to do a solo tour, but he liked the idea of going into small halls. He told me he wanted to get some exposure for Freddie, with whom he’s been writing songs together for several years, and after a bit of brainstorming we came up with the idea for the Bread and Butter Tour.”

Haggard, who wrote his last three hits, “Always Get Lucky,” “Let’s Chase Each Other Around the Room” and the new “A Place to Fall Apart,” in collaboration with Powers, said this is the first time in almost two decades that he has toured without his regular supporting group, the Strangers.

“But I think Freddie’s overdue for some success of his own,” Haggard said by phone from Lake Shasta, where he and Powers live on two neighboring houseboats. “He’s a great artist, and all he needs right now is a little boost. We’re going to take him around California and show him to some of the people we know, and I’m just going to lay back and play guitar and let him do his thing.”

Haggard’s enthusiasm for Powers is shared by a host of other country greats, most prominently Willie Nelson, for whom Powers produced the 1981 album, “Somewhere Over the Rainbow.”

Originally part of the same West Texas scene that in the ‘50s spawned Nelson and other country “outlaws,” Powers switched to folk in the latter part of that decade. He tasted fame briefly in the early 1960s through a series of appearances on ABC-TV’s “Hootenanny,” a guest slot on the original “Today” show, and an album on Warner Bros. Records.

“But when the bottom fell out of folk music, I went back to country music and started playing the clubs again, and kept on doing that for the better part of 20 years,” Powers said.

While playing a club in the Lake Tahoe-Reno area in 1981, Willie Nelson happened by, and before the night was over, Powers said, the two renewed a long-lost friendship and started hanging out together.

“Then one day we were playing golf and reminiscing about the old music we used to play, the songs we really cut our teeth on, and I said, ‘Hell, why not make an album together?’ and he said, ‘Hell, why not?’ ” Powers said. “So two weeks later we had a band together consisting of a lot of the old players we worked with back in the ‘50s--bassist Dean Reynolds, fiddle player Johnny Gimbel, people like that--and we made that album.”

That album, “Somewhere Over the Rainbow,” was an instant hit and helped get Powers back into the mainstream of country music. Nelson introduced Powers to friends like Haggard, George Jones and Janie Fricke; within a year the 50-year-old “secret” was writing and producing some of the hottest country hits around.

Until now he has been in the background, something both he and his high-powered country friends are hoping to change.

“Maybe they call me a best-kept secret,” Powers said, laughing. “But I enjoy myself, and I tell you, just making a living by doing something I love is a miracle in itself.”