Merle Haggard plays Pease Auditorium on July 17.

He’s 73 years old, he’s been making records for nearly 50 years and he just came out on top in a battle with cancer. But you’d be walkin’ on the fighting side of Merle Haggard if you made the mistake of calling him old. “You know, until I look in the mirror every day, I don’t feel old,” the country music legend told No Depression recently. The Hag, as he’s affectionately known by friends and fans, is also on a creative roll, having recently released “I Am What I Am,” and launched a tour, which stops at Eastern Michigan University’s Pease Auditorium on July 17.

Not bad for someone who wasn’t really expected to be around much longer after cancer was discovered in his lung last year. The notion of borrowed time isn’t just something that might end up in Merle Haggard song. It’s something he takes seriously. “It’s been about 14 months since the surgery and I was told it would take 18 months to heal. I think I’m healed right now,” he said. “I feel good anyway.” And so it should probably come as no surprise that Haggard’s new record touches on themes of mortality. But the record is more than a rumination on a near-death experience. It’s also populated with love songs that would do a younger man proud.

For all of his hard-livin’, drug-takin’, hell-raisin’ reputation — he did, after all, serve three years in San Quentin Prison for armed robbery — Haggard, in his soul, remains a songwriter of the highest order. He’s penned and/or performed no fewer than 38 No. 1 country hits, ranging from the patriotic (“Okie from Muskogee”) to the defiant (“The Fightin’ Side of Me”) to the tender (“Hungry Eyes”) and established himself, along with his old buddy and duet partner Willie Nelson as the elder statesman of the outlaw country movement.

And he’s still earning new fans, drawn to the timeless twang of a Telecaster and the cracked voice of an artist who has managed to remain relevant, even as the decades passed him by.

“Our audience is derived from something which has occurred in the last ten years, and they’re buying me for what I am today rather than expecting something from the past,” he told No Depression. “That really makes me shout hooray and bow before all the people who are interested.

“That’s a blessing, to have your work recognized.”

Watch a vintage performance of Merle Haggard's "Mama Tried":

Will Stewart is a free-lance writer who covers music for AnnArbor.com.