How time flies. I've been living with the essential Merle Haggard box, Down Every Road, for going on six years now, and I don't think I have even begun to get to the bottom of it. Haggard's work is a clinic in craft: the stories he tells, the laconic idioms of his lyrics, the sly wit, the simplicity of the arrangements and playing, and perhaps more than anything else, the deceptive artfulness of his phrasing, which sounds plain as can be until you start trying to sing with it. And, as "Here in Frisco" demonstrates, just when you think you know what he is, that's what he's not. I'm not sure how this one sits with the hardcore of his following, maybe they consider it an anomaly, but what surprises me is what a heartfelt expression of love for a city this is. And which city is that? Oh, sure, he goes with the term that tourists are warned never to use, but he's not mocking San Francisco in any way that I can detect. I just hear someone who loves where he is and wishes the one he loves were there with him too. I love the instantly evocative way he starts by locating himself via time zones ("It's 4 a.m. in New York City, 3 a.m. in Dallas / The night is still early here in Frisco"). Already the scope is as big, and as lonesome, as the entire country ("They say it's raining in Chicago, but it's cold and clear in Denver," he goes on)—and the middle of the night. I imagine him in a hotel listening to late-night radio, contemplating take-out Chinese, listening to the sounds of the city through an open window, and missing the woman to whom he never refers once, directly. But I think the whole song is about her, and she haunts San Francisco for the singer, and perhaps always has.
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