National Public Radio’s afternoon news and information show, All Things Considered, featured an interview with Merle Haggard yesterday (1/3) about his 2007 release, The Bluegrass Sessions.

The Hag spoke with Melissa Block about his life at 70 years old and his new music, and clips from several songs on the new CD are featured.

From the interview…

One of the new tracks, “Learning to Live with Myself,” was written in his bathtub — or at least, according to Haggard, “There was water everywhere.”

“At my age, I’ve learned how to live with my spouse and I’ve learned how to live with my beautiful children,” Haggard says. “I learned how to be friends with everybody and do everything. The only thing I hadn’t learned how to do was to learn to live with myself. I think that’s probably the hardest thing we all have to do. We can lie to everybody else, but you can’t lie to yourself.”

The piece runs nearly ten minutes and you can hear the entire thing on the NPR site - where they also feature a web extra, with Haggard speaking of his fondness for Jimmie Rodgers.