A concert that should not be missed is this Sunday, February 11, at the Paramount: Neko Case and Merle Haggard. Haggard is what I love about country music: He’s authentic and his music is simple and heartfelt. He sings about heartbreak, drinking, rambling, prison, his struggling mama, the depression—all based on his own experiences. He was born and raised in Bakersfield, California, for god’s sake (also home to Buck Owens, Dwight Yoakam, and Korn) and his parents were actual Okies. (Currently, he lives on the outskirts of my hometown, Redding, California.)

He’s not so popular with today’s mainstream country crowd because he doesn’t play that terrible, overproduced, Southern-rock, Nashville sound that is the norm for commercial country music today. (Or, as George Jones recently said, perfectly: “They say they’re upgrading country music. I tell them they need to find a new title and let us have back our traditional country music. They’ve stolen our identity.”) Haggard is a prolific songwriter; he writes from the heart and his songs hurt in the best way. (The Haggard song I’ve been listening to the most lately: “Today I Started Loving You Again” from 1968. It’s simply beautiful.)

The man speaks his mind and does shit his own way. I saw him play at the San Francisco Jazz Festival a few years ago at the 3,000-seat Nob Hill Masonic Center. He was supposed to play an entire set of Bob Wills songs (the king of country swing); the opening band, who’s name escapes me, were also going to throw a few Wills songs into their set, but they ended up playing most of the ones Haggard had planned on performing. Well, that didn’t sit right with the Hag, so when he came out, he played an entire set of HIS songs. People were confused; people were pissed. My friends and I were ecstatic. It was a great show. (At one point he started to play the opening to his tongue-in-cheek “Okie from Muskogee,” then stopped it and said something like, “Nah, I’m not gonna do that one here…”)

Haggard started making records in the 1960s, when country was starting its decline toward plain suckiness. Overproduced, meaningless, soulless—everything that’s culminated into what we have today: nothin’ special. But when everyone else was adding strings and gloss, Haggard was playing straight-up, stripped-down honky tonk with a wandering, bluesy lead guitar, a hard-edged steel, and lyrics from the heart. He’s been consistently releasing albums ever since, on both major and independent labels (in 2000 and 2001 he released records on Epitaph).

This will be a great show. I wish I could go, but, goddamn, I don’t have an extra $60 lying around. The concert is $44.50–$49.50 plus all those fees (about $12 worth). It’s at 7:30 pm and there are still seats left. Go.