Suzy Bogguss brings Merle Haggard salute to L.A. and Orange counties

It’s not unusual to hear musicians gripe these days about jobs they have been forced to take on for themselves that used to be handled for them by others in the flusher days of the music business.

Some, however, are enthusiastically embracing the DIY spirit that is the new normal in leaner times.

“I’m really enjoying this,” country artist Suzy Bogguss said during a pit stop in Hawthorne earlier this week as part of a swing through California that includes a sold-out show Wednesday night in Santa Ynez.

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She’ll then return to the L.A.-Orange County area for performances Thursday at Don the Beachcomber’s new roots-Americana music series in Huntington Beach, Friday at Buck Owens’ Crystal Palace in Bakersfield and Saturday at McCabe’s in Santa Monica.

“It’s like putting the pieces of a puzzle together,” she said while sipping coffee in the lobby of her hotel near L.A. International Airport. She and her songwriter-engineer husband, Doug Crider, were due to meet the other two members of her touring trio, guitarist Craig Smith and bassist Charlie Chadwick, when they arrived Wednesday morning for this leg of her tour.

“I did 177 shows last year -- I don’t think I’ve ever been this busy,” said the singer who first came to national attention in the late 1980s with singles such as “Somewhere Between,” “Cross My Broken Heart” and “I Don’t Want to Set the World on Fire” before scoring a string of Top 10 hits in the early ‘90s, including Nanci Griffith and Tom Russell’s “Outbound Plane,” Crider and Matt Rollings’ “Letting Go” and John Hiatt’s “Drive South.”

The list of writers of those songs demonstrates her well-developed aficionado’s ear for great songwriting, as she has often turned to the works of respected Americana singer-songwriters, as much as to songs created in the Nashville songwriting community, for material.

Early last year, however, it was one songwriter she put in the spotlight with her latest album, “Lucky,” a salute to the work of one of her longtime country heroes, Merle Haggard.

Ironically, it has taken her almost two years to wend her way around North America before returning to the Southland to play Haggard’s music over the Grapevine in L.A. and Orange counties.

“There was nowhere here for us to play at that time,” she said. In the meantime, however, she and her husband, with help from her booking agent and, often, from her fans, have begun to build a new network of performance venues.

“There’s a whole series of venues opening up in small towns that we haven’t played before,” she said. Many communities around the country, she said, are revitalizing vintage movie theaters, theater spaces and vaudeville halls to bring in cultural events. That has created an expanded menu of performance opportunities for musicians such as herself.

By cutting touring overhead to the bone, she has found she can afford to visit any number of smaller markets that were off the radar when she was playing amphitheaters and sports arenas in the ‘80s and ‘90s.

She spoke proudly of the single bag of production equipment her husband carries on tour that allows him to tap into such theaters’ house sound systems to adapt to her needs, and her band’s ultra-portable amplification set-ups.

Bogguss cut back on her touring for much of the 2000s, after the birth of her and Crider’s son, Ben, but now that he’s off to college, they are full bore back on the road.

“We call it ‘guerrilla touring,’” she said with a laugh. “We’re getting to see all these different parts of the country. I’m very happy to be back on the road.”

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