Holding Merle Haggard

15 Songs | MR032 | Release Date 2007 Perhaps the first thing you need to grasp is that Jason Morphew's Holding Merle Haggard (Max Recordings) is an album, not a CD - vinyl, baby, and no excuses. And it's good vinyl: the thick kind that won't warp the first time your air conditioner dies. Furthermore, the lion's share of this album is just a voice and a guitar, and neither one is always in tune. This is a record to play in the dark, out on the porch in the sultry heat of summer. Alcohol and cigarettes likely would not hurt the experience. Morphew is well known and highly regarded within the singer-songwriter ranks of Arkansas. Two of his earlier CDs, The Duke of Arkansas and Sunday Afternoon, are critically acclaimed, brilliant testimonies to his songwriting prowess and hisability to take an ordinary, even awkward, voice and render it unique through the sheer force of words and music. Holding Merle Haggard came before all that, when Morphew was a 22-two-year-old, heartbroken soul trying