POP MUSIC REVIEW : An Aging Haggard Puts on Rollicking Show in Anaheim

On his most recent album, “Chill Factor,” Merle Haggard sounds like a man whose spirit is as worn as the furrowed, hangdog visage on the record cover. Most of the songs are about what it is like to be old and cold, to have turned the corner past 50 for a long, sad slide.

But the Haggard who turned up Thursday night at the Celebrity Theatre in Anaheim wasn’t sounding depleted or begging for sympathy. The first of his two shows offered lots of zest, variety and loose, spirited playing, even though Haggard was struggling a bit with the aftereffects of a real chill factor--a bout with the flu that had forced him to postpone the concert from Feb. 12.

If Haggard’s latest collection of songs represents his deepest, most meditative thoughts as he approaches 51, his 75-minute show offered an antidote: Get out on stage in a cowboy hat and a corduroy jacket, rollick a little with some country blues and some Western swing and have some fun. It is at least as effective as the antidote that has turned up time and again through 25 years of Haggard hits: that trusty yet treacherous old friend, the bottle.

The show hopped through a couple of barrooms, of course, but only long enough to soak up a few elevating spirits. Happily boozy renditions of “It’s Been a Great Afternoon” and “Swinging Doors” featured appropriately bleary honking from a two-piece horn section that added a Dixieland touch.

Haggard and his nine-piece band, the Strangers (plus harmony singer Bonnie Owens), also stopped in at a Texas dance hall for a couple of swing tunes, including Bob Wills’ “Ida Red,” that saw Haggard switching from guitar to fiddle and wielding the bow with playful flourishes.

For a while at the start, it was far from certain that the show would hit such playful peaks. Haggard’s singing lacked spark, and the Strangers took extensive but unfocused solos, like a football team trying to get limber between plays after the game already has started.

The turning point came on “Going Where the Lonely Go,” one of the few slower, sadder tunes Haggard played. A well-controlled, emotional quaver in Haggard’s voice as he sang “I’ve got to keep goin’ ” was the first sign that he was warming to form, and it drew a spontaneous cheer from his demonstrative, highly partisan audience. Soon, he had also found a resonant low register that had been missing earlier.

Clint Strong, the lead guitarist, tacked on the first of many fluid, jazz-tinged solos, Haggard came in with his contrasting guitar tone, clipped and throaty, and the fine fiddler, Jimmy Belken, topped off the song with a pretty, delicate coda. It was one of many examples of the Strangers serving as more than a capable backing cast; they were integral role players, who had plenty of room to step forward in Haggard’s loose song arrangements.

Haggard allowed too much space to one instrumentalist: himself. Several times he would embark on a guitar solo and grope for a line that would put him on a creative course, only to go on wandering without finding the thread. It happened at the end of the song “Chill Factor,” but it didn’t undermine the reflective tone Haggard already had established with a subdued, intimate vocal.

Coming near the end of the show, after a series of lighter, up-tempo tunes, the song might have been Haggard’s reminder that levity in barrooms and dance halls provides only a temporary escape from the problems of aging and decline that have been on his mind.

Maybe it was more than coincidence that the next and last song was Jimmie Rodgers’ up-tempo “TB Blues,” which makes the point that, if you’ve got to go, it might as well be with a yodel rather than a whimper.