When examining the history of any individual, or family for that matter, there are often key, dramatic and/or traumatic events that serve as pivotal points in that person, or in that family's history.  One such event, for the Haggard family was the incident in which their barn was burned down, apparently by a man offended that Merle father didn't offer him the royal treatment.

This man, an African-American, needed a ride in the midst of what is described in the book as "one of those "Oklahoma frog-stranglin' rains," so he knocked on the door of the Haggard home and let his request be known.  Merle speculates in the book that his father, who was particular about anybody riding in his car, regardless of race, offered the man a ride in horse-and-buggy team instead.  The man stormed off into the storm.  The rest of what happened is subject to speculation. 

Haggard implies that the man, likely having taken Merle's father's actions as an expression of racism, then lit the family barn on fire, destroying with it, his daddy's "prized Model-A" car, the cattle, the horses, the plows, and many valuable family items.  That event was ultimately that pivotal event that led the family to move to California.  Without that event, Bakersfield (Oildale, to be specific) may have never had, as its native son, and the Bakersfield sound may have become the Buckersfield sound, or something of that nature.  Instead, Bakersfield produced a legend, a legend, whose life, and music, would be shaped by this one pivotal event. 

When I wrote this song, I was taking myself back to the day that the barn burned and confronting the man (not as a black man, but simply as a man with an evil plan), or the forces of nature, that may have caused the event. 


Barn Burner
words and music by Dr BLT copyright 2009

(rough acoustic mix sample only)

Download | Duration: 00:03:15

who do you think you are
burnin' the family barn
and with the barn
the family car
all the horses, cows
and plows

chorus:
barn burner
burnin' down the barn
barn burner
what happened to your charm
you didn't get the ride
that you wanted from the man
barn burner
such an evil plan

who do you think you are
Merle's dad
had a great big heart
but you crushed it
with this evil deed
you can't stand to see
this man succeed

they packed up and moved
to California
you can't keep a good man down
his son touched the world
with the songs that he'd sing
in a little place called Oildale
just a mid-west country town
(chorus)