Haggard curtails tour due to pain
BY JENNIFER SELF, Californian lifestyles editor
A persistent headache and pinched neck have forced Merle Haggard to postpone or cancel the remaining dates of his current tour, according to Tresa Redburn, spokeswoman for the Bakersfield-born icon.
“He’s on the bus near Reno and should be home in a couple of hours,” Redburn told The Californian on Friday.
Merle Haggard picks a lead on his Telecaster guitar during the first performance at the Fox Theater last February. The guitar is a special Merle Haggard Signature Telecaster guitar made by Fender.
Redburn said Haggard, 72, was feeling a little better Friday but decided to head to his home near Redding to get the pain checked out. He told his spokeswoman he’d been having trouble concentrating and made the decision to curtail his tour on Thursday.
“He sounded good. I’m hoping he was being cautious,” Redburn said of their phone conversation.
A tumor was removed from Haggard’s lung at Bakersfield Memorial Hospital in November, and he resumed touring weeks later with a pair of dates at Buck Owens’ Crystal Palace.
He joked from the stage at those January concerts that they were the first in decades that he performed stone-cold sober, without so much as a drag on a cigarette.
He was in fine voice then and at a concert celebration at the Palace in late April for Bakersfield Sound pal Billy Mize.
Though Haggard’s current tour was a 12-day jaunt through the Midwest and South, there were no days off scheduled, Redburn said, making for a quite a slog. The tour had been set to wrap up Monday in Kettering, Ohio.
“He goes for three weeks, goes home, goes back on for three weeks — that sort of thing,” Redburn said. “He’s been doing that for years.”
Haggard is due to kick off another round of tour dates Sept. 18 in Oklahoma.
