NEW GLASGOW, N.S. — Don Haggart calls his new album 10 years in the making.
The Pictou Country country music artist, who along with his late brother Jim, made three appearances at the Grand Ole Opry in Nashville, is putting out a 12-song record titled A Man and His Music.
Jim Haggart died in 2006.
“It was a marathon of a project to try to coordinate,” he says, relaxing in a chair at his New Glasgow home.
“I kept trying to find someone that would be able to record my stuff with exactly the spirit I wanted in it.”
He ultimately ended up meeting with producer George Longard, and after determining that Longhard’s vision for traditional country music matched his own, Haggart entered Longhard’s Cumberland County studio earlier this year and started laying down songs, all of which were written by Haggart.
There will be a CD release gala on Nov. 16 from 2 to 4 p.m. at the lower hall in the First Presbyterian Church on James Street in New Glasgow (James Street entrance). He’s inviting all his fans to come in to enjoy the refreshments.
“They don’t have to buy a CD, but it’d be nice for them to support me, just by dropping by,” he said.
“If they buy a CD, that’s a bonus.”
He and his brother had three No. 1 country songs in Canada (another 10 songs in the top 10), played on The Tommy Hunter Show and made a living from their musical talents.
It wasn’t always bright lights, however; there were some down times when Haggart had to get a real job in order to get by (he once worked for a year on a Canadian Coast Guard icebreaker).
“I bet you I did 47 different types of work, when the music business wasn’t being kind,” says Haggart, who still plays roughly a dozen shows a year. “But my main career was the music business.”
Now in his 60s, Haggart is picking up the pace; he plans on re-entering the studio “fairly soon” to record another CD, one he hopes to put out in 2020.
“Now that I’m still fairly healthy and I’ve got the right producer, I want to do another one right away. Some of my best songs I still have, if they’re not recorded, they’ll end up in a top drawer, and something that eventually winds up being discarded.”
Some of the songs have already been released in Australia and California, and are already on international playlists and available for downloading.
BRUSHES WITH GREATNESS
• Haggart and his brother made many connections in Nashville back in the day; he met country music legends Tex Ritter, Roy Acuff and shared stages with luminaries such as Marty Robbins.
• Don Haggart, at one point, wrote a song with Johnny Cash in mind, gave a copy to Maybelle Carter, and sometime later, received a letter from a Cash representative, who said that Cash heard the song and liked it but was not prepared to record it at the time. Cash never did record the song, and died in 2003.
