Lonesome Hillbilly Cowpunk

Track List

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Very few people come into the music business with a pedigree as truly elite as Hank Williams III.  In fact, nobody but his own father, Hank Jr., can even come close.  Still, as majestic as the name and the dynasty are, it's a very heavy yoke to carry, and a long and powerful shadow to escape from.  Add to the fact that Shelton Hank (Hank III)  has been born with his granddaddy's face and form - skeleton-thin and a face careworn far beyond    its years - and it's a tremendous weight, nearly impossible to escape from.

But Hank III has his own voice, much as his daddy did decades ago.  Hank III won't be put in a box and told what to do.  He's as rebellious as Hank Jr. was, but strangely, because of the way the world spins, his "rebel" sounds are far more reminiscent of old Hank Sr.'s work, from the lonesome whistle whine to the yodel of a deep-in-the-holler hillbilly.  The sounds have been updated, certainly; the old-time vices of whiskey and women have been joined by  weed (hardly new, but rarely acknowledged in country music); but when you listen to Hank III's "Lovesick, Broke & Driftin'," there is no doubt in the world that you are listening to Real Country Music at its finest.  

Hank III puts a slow, drawling tone on his songs, his voice lazy and delivered with surety but without haste or worry.  As rough and rowdy as his reputation is, he sounds as though he would be perfectly comfortable on a back porch with a fruit jar full of ice tea.  But Hank III's lyrics let it be known he prefers a hard-rockin' country bar and a bottle of Jack. He's riding hard on the road that took his granddaddy and nearly claimed his daddy, but he doesn't seem to worry about that nearly as much as he worries about country music being trampled beneath a glittering facade of pop-rata and pretty faces with no substance.  Hank III is all substance, all grit, and he doesn't bother to pull any punches in letting people know that. 

The disc opens with a hard-driving drum beat with a hint of fiddle on "7 Months, 39 Days."  It's just enough to get you going, but its lightheartedness doesn't truly set the tone for what's to come.  Still, it's a good hook, and it grabs.  There's some sharp talent here, not just the drawling singer, but also the fiddler (Michael McCanless and Chris Carmichael) and ripping guitar (Hank III).  But its in the second track, "Broke, Lovesick & Driftin'," that Hank III unveils his secret, that which gives him that lonesome, eerie hillbilly sound that is absolutely guaranteed to get me hooked: the steel guitar.  In this case, the otherworldly whine of the stand-up steel gives Hank III an edge - and it's an edge that Hank III acknowledges, by giving player Kayton Roberts his own double page in the CD liner notes.  He's playing a vintage 1951 Fender unpedaled lap steel guitar, and with it Kayton can make that lonesome whistle whine just like the steel did for "old Hank" waybackwhen - and just as this particular Fender, with this particular player, did for another Hank, Hank Snow, for 30 years. 

Hank III knows how to make the most of this impressive talent he's gathered to him.  My favorite track, "Cecil Brown," comes next - I think his best use of words in this old-fashioned story song with a gentle,  tired, lonesome sound.  He continues with a worthy blend of old-timey  styled country music and modern southern-fried rock with such tracks as "Lovin' & Huggin'" and "One Horse Town."  Of course, I've often said that there simply can't be too much steel guitar - and Hank III does not disappoint me by holding back his impressive steel player.   While most of the songs are just plain old-fashioned good-time (and bad time) country music, such as "Mississippi Mud," "Whiskey, Weed & Women," and "5 Shots of Whiskey," Hank III doesn't just do his own thing without letting people know what he's thinking.  He takes a vicious (and not undeserved) shot at Nashville's current practices with "Trashville":  "I'm so tired of this new stuff they're tryin' to get me to sing/that ain't no country music to me. . . . they don't care about the music, you see."  He informs us that while he used to think country was out in Nashville,Tennessee, he'd rather take his stuff and head back to Texas, giving a nod to the Texas boys stirring up the dust out west.  "I don't think that country's here, because they killed it, you see."  Ouch.  Take that, Nashville.  

Hank III penned 12 of the 13 songs on the disc, reserving the final track for the Bruce Springsteen tune, "Atlantic City," transformed effortlessly into a country tune (once again proving my long-held opinion that any good rock song can be made into a good country song - or vice versa - by the change of only the beat and maybe an instrument or two), including yodeling.  Hidden at the end of "Atlantic City" is a live radio broadcast repeat of "Walkin' With Sorrow."

Hank III has been given to denigrating his own work, which I think is a crying shame.  He's not just the next generation in the greatest dynasty in country music - he is a tremendously gifted songwriter and singer in his own right, and should be acknowledged as such.  This is rebel country as it is today, and to be honest, proves the circle WILL be unbroken.

Kathy Coleman Take Country Back January 2002