Merle Haggard is a country music legend. Along with rival but probably friend Buck Owens, and his own Stratocaster, he created the Bakersfield twang. Haggard recently got the CMT Artist of a Lifetime award in Nashville and the John F. Kennedy Center lifetime achievement award, but he is still grounded in his roots.

Merle Haggard hit the Redding Civic Auditorium stage in Redding, Calif., on Sunday, Dec. 14, 2014 for a benefit for the Boles Fire in Weed. On Sept. 15, the Boles Fire burned over 150 homes, a saw mill and a church in the California town. According to reports, the fire moved so fast that residents had only a few minutes to get out of its path.

According to the Redding Civic Auditorium, the Merle Haggard concert resulted in a $4,000 donation to Shasta Regional Community Foundation's Community Disaster Relief Fund to benefit Weed.According to a press release from Advance Redding, when a video was played showing the aftermath, the audience of 1,500-plus, "the room fell silent and everyone felt the weight of what this community had suffered." 

The Country Music Hall of Fame member and recipient of (2011) has a street named for him in Oildale, the Bakersfield County community where he was born in 1937.
Redding Civic Auditorium announced Thursday that the Dec. 14 Merle Haggard concert held there resulted in a $4,000 donation to Shasta Regional Community Foundation's Community Disaster Relief Fund to benefit Weed.

The press release says Haggard felt it was important to having a charitable component for the concert. He gave thanks to Redding Civic Auditorium general manager Cory McCandliss for coming up with the idea.

Merle Haggard accepted the first-ever CMT Artist of a Lifetime award in Nashville on Dec. 2. He kept his speech short, saying only "Anything I'd say would be short of the mark, so thank you very much and God bless you." 

Haggard's last album was 2010's "I Am What I Am." He recently hinted that he might be joining a country supergroup with Willie Nelson and Kris Kristofferson called Musketeers.