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Wikipedia / Kickin' Out the Footlights...Again

Kickin' Out the Footlights...Again is a studio album by American country music artists George Jones and Merle Haggard, released in 2006.

Background

Jones and Haggard had previously recorded one album together in 1982, A Taste of Yesterday's Wine, which produced the number one single "Yesterday's Wine". Their friendship stretched much farther back, however, to when Jones first heard the Haggard-penned "I Threw Away the Rose," which rose to number 2. In his 1981 autobiography Merle Haggard: Sing Me Back Home, Haggard recalls playing somewhere in Texas when someone handed him a phone saying Jones was on the line. Jones slurred his appreciation for the song and said he was coming to see him immediately. "It wasn't hard to see that ol' George was pretty wasted," Haggard wrote. "I hung up the phone and some of the others in the room said they wouldn't be surprised if he showed up. I told them I didn't think so, 'cause hell, he was supposed to be doing concerts all week." The next day Jones arrived, kicking the door in and eventually folding up the roll-away bed that Haggard's sleeping manager Fuzzy Owen was on and wheeling it out of the room. Jones would record "I Threw Away the Rose" himself, as well as several other Haggard compositions over the course of his career, and say repeatedly over the years that, next to Hank Williams, Haggard was his favorite singer.

Jones had previously recorded Haggard's early hit "All My Friends Are Strangers" when he was on the Musicor record label in the 1960s. Haggard had recorded Jones's smash "She Thinks I Still Care" on his 1969 album A Portrait of Merle Haggard.

Kickin' Out The Footlights...Again would be the final album Jones recorded before his death in 2013.

Reception

The album reached number 25 on the Billboard country albums chart and received positive reviews, although many critics took note of Jones's increasingly withered voice. Stephen Thomas Erlewine of AllMusic wrote "Of the two, George sounds a bit worse for wear—his voice is a little thin and slightly scratchy—but even if their age is evident... the album also illustrates exactly why Jones and Haggard are two of the greatest vocalists in country music history." Music critic Robert Christgau wrote "Hag keeps getting Haggier, but that thing in George's voice that was grainy like cornbread is turning to mush."

Track listing

Personnel

Production

  • Merle Haggard producer

  • Keith Stegall producer

  • Lou Bradley producer, engineer

  • Susan Nadler executive producer

  • Evelyn Shriver executive producer

  • Matt Rovey engineer, assistant engineer

  • Jason Campbell production coordination

  • Michael Campbell project manager

  • John Kelton engineer, mixing

  • Matt Lumpkin photography

  • Nancy Jones photography

  • Jerry Jordan photography

  • Todd Tilwell assistant engineer

  • David Gulliver assistant engineer

  • Nathan Dickinson assistant engineer

  • Hank Williams mastering

References