THE TRUTH — AND MERLE — WERE OUT THERE
With Tillis’ long career, she has plenty of stories with fellow musicians. Local fans will be interested in one of the strangest ones involving Merle Haggard and his inaugural UFO festival.
“This is so crazy.”
“So Merle and I had the same booking agent and they told me Merle had an eccentric streak. He was a conspiracy theorist — don’t get him started about poltergeists and chemtrails, you didn’t want to go down (that path). Who knew this? This was not well known.
“So anyway, Merle decides to throw the first annual UFO festival in Roswell, N.M., (in 2003). That’s what he wants to do. And Merle, this is his baby, and he wants to put it all together.
“Now mind you, these old-school guys … they came up in a different era. So Merle decides to take care of the sound and the lights — who let him do this I have no idea — but he’s like, ‘No, I’m gonna manage all this. I’ve got the sound system … I’ve got it all lined up.’ He does this all himself.
“It turns out, we get there and the sound system is so bad and the lights are so bad…
“I came off my bus just right as Marty Stuart was going on and I stood there and watched for a minute and I realized that the sound and lights were so bad that you could either play loud or you could be seen but you couldn’t do both. Every time the band got loud the lights would dim.
“That was funny enough and Marty’s band was trying to marshal through it, but Merle gets on stage and he is cussing the sound crew the whole time. He is ready to pull a George Jones, come offstage and whoop that monitor man’s (expletive). “But he’s cussing out the company that he hired. But, you know, It’s Merle Haggard up there, so Merle would make some crack, ‘Can you believe this … blah-blah-blah-blah-blah-blah-blah’ and the crowd would just cheer ‘Yeah, Merle! You tell ‘em, Merle!’
“So Merle, the whole time, is watching the sky, like ‘I’m throwing the UFO festival … They could land. This could happen.’ He’s like, “You (all) seeing that light up there?’ It was just weird, surreal. You can’t make this (expletive) up. That was all it was. It was just hilarious.
“But the big finale, the very last song, was really surreal because he wants us to get on stage with him, Merle does, and so Marty’s band and my band, everybody, we all get up there and, Marty’s band and my band, we all wore tin-foil hats.
“And I don’t know who gave it to me but I had an alien baby head and I was bottle-feeding it while we’re singing “You’re walking on the fightin’ side of me.’”
“So that’s my Merle Haggard UFO festival story.” Did Haggard take it all in stride or was he piqued by it?
“No, no! He was rolling with it. It was all hilarious. He just went with it. It’s just the weirdest thing. I promise I didn’t make it up.”