When Merle Haggard and his nine-person band, the Strangers, travel across the country to sing and play their complex, loose-shackled, intensely durable brand of country music, they do so in two handsome, high-ceilinged, custom touring buses. The Strangers’ bus has three sets of triple-decker bunks, a living room and bathroom at its back, a sitting room in front, and such extras as a trash compactor, an automatic coffeemaker, a microwave oven, a refrigerator, a cassette player, a television set, and a VCR. Merle’s bus has a compact master bedroom, and bunk beds for Steve Van Stralen, Merle’s aide-de-camp, and Dean Holloway, Merle’s boyhood buddy, who generally share driving duties. It has a larger kitchen than the Strangers’ bus has, an extra bathroom, a thicker carpet, and seventy-two episodes of “The Andy Griffith Show,” whose whistling theme is part of the bus’s ambient sound. Both vehicles have tinted front windows and silvery windowless sides. The sides of the Strangers’ bus are emblazoned with a Santa Fe Railway logo and the words “The Chief”; Merle’s bus, with the same logo, reads “Super Chief.”
