Sunday, August 31, 2025

ANOTHER Barracuda gets time under Hollywood lights


Nine years after Merle Haggard’s death Ethan Hawke has organized a biography by way of California road trip and recording-studio extravaganza, Highway 99: A Double Album is a gathering of several dozen musicians singing the country great’s praises, mainly by singing his songs.

There’s a subplot, if that term can apply to a documentary – the road, and the role of fathers in shaping a man. (If you were into great movies, you'll recall "Boyhood" starring Ethan Hawke https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1065073/?ref_=nm_flmg_job_1_cdt_t_46 )

Hawke conducts new interviews too, including with some of Haggard’s children and one of his wives, plus Willie Nelson and Dolly Parton, the object of Haggard’s unrequited love when they toured together.

As for Ethan Hawke's choice of a ‘68 Barracuda, his father owned a 1968 Plymouth Barracuda, so at the wheel of a 68 Barracuda, Hawke hits the road, California’s State Route 99, to be exact, in search of the music’s roots and the man’s. That north-south artery through the scrubland and ranches of the Central Valley, Hawke notes, connects key places in Haggard’s life. 

Merle famously lost his father when he was 9, and it shaped his future in a profound way. 
After his father’s death, years of truancy, train-hopping and crime, multiple escapes from local jails, and nearly three years in a maximum-security prison, San Quentin.

 Within nine years of his release from San Quentin, Haggard was not just a leading figure in the realm of the Bakersfield sound, but he was the top country musician in the United States, with three No. 1 singles in 1969 and a growing collection of industry awards.

The film is divided into two parts, with a theater-friendly 15-minute intermission (with extra music packed in there, too), and the song interpreters include Lucinda Williams, Dwight Yoakam, Gillian Welch, John Doe, Steve Earle, Los Lobos and Valerie June. Every one of the new performances reveals how finely the songs have aged.


Surprisingly I have posted about Merle Haggard 3 times:
and

When I emphasize ANOTHER Barracuda, it's because that in addition to this movie, recently there was a Barracuda in:

Maybe Hollywood just loves Barracudas since Nash Bridges... who knows? 
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