PBS To Air Merle Haggard Documentary

On Wednesday, July 21, PBS will air Learning To Live With Myself, a new American Masters documentary on country music legend Merle Haggard (read our cover story on Merle here).

Keith Richards, Robert Duvall, John Fogerty, Billy Gibbons, Kris Kristofferson, Tanya Tucker, Don Was, and Dwight Yoakam, all pay tribute to “the poet of the common man” in interviews.

The doc was directed by Gandulf Hennig, who spent three years shooting intimate footage of Haggard. “For me as a documentary filmmaker, it has been a dream come true and at times a challenge,” says Hennig. “Merle is very guarded, at the same time, very honest. As an artist, he is as original and as spontaneous as it gets. Working with Merle, I learned to prepare for the unexpected at all times – it seems that he often doesn’t know himself what he’s going to do next. There is no middle ground with him. It’s not always easy, but it’s always exciting.”

Learning To Live With Myself will air at 9 pm (ET).