Site Presented By
Monday, Nov 9, 2009
Hank Williams III pays a debt to Nashville -- and looks toward Texas for real country music.
Nov 3, 1999 | Hank Williams III's new album, "Risin' Outlaw," is as derivative of Johnny Cash as Hank Williams Sr. You think you've heard it all before, but the disc wins you over by the end. This kid once played hardcore punk, but now he's as authentically honky-tonk as his grandfather was, singing about tonk basics like drinkin', cheatin', sin and redemption and death. "Most of the older people who come to see us start cryin'," the 26-year-old says on the phone from a trailer outside Nashville. "They say, 'Boy, you sing like your granddaddy.'"
Hank Williams Sr., the honky-tonk god of country music, wrote and sang standards like "Your Cheatin' Heart." He drank and drugged himself to death at 29, suffering a heart attack on the way to a gig on New Year's 1953. His son, Hank Jr., who was 4 at the time, became his own brand of country rebel in the late 1970s and went on to become one of the music's biggest stars throughout the 1980s.
Performances are one thing, but don't talk about Hank III's new record. It sucks bigtime. "It's weird," he says. "People come up to me and say, 'Oh, your album kicks ass.' It don't. I just can't get behind it. I'm already looking forward to the second album."
Huh? "Risin' Outlaw" has great picking. Williams does a great cover of Johnny Cash's "Cocaine Blues." Then on Wayne Hancock's "Thunderstorms & Neon Signs," Hank III's voice whines as ghostly as his granddaddy's. What's wrong with the disk? It's not honky-tonk enough.
"It's a Nashville record," he explains, his voice thick with scorn. "Everything that's done in this town gets ruined. If you're gonna use a $100,000 studio and the best equipment and all these players and this and that, it's not gonna sound pure. It's gonna sound slick. Me and my producer had a big fall out. We went around and around and around and around. And then he left. That's the way it goes, I guess."
He pauses. "The way they do their vocal tracks at Curb [his label], is they make me sing each song fuckin' 60 times in a row. No matter if I think that's the best vocal cut in the world. Then they take little snippets and words out of each take. If a record is done the way it should be done, it's cut live with two mikes."
Merle Haggard gave a similar complaint about Curb three years ago. "Record live?" Hag said in the back of his tour bus as it rolled through New Jersey. "Of course it's better. Don't matter what damn thing I want with Curb. Record live or dead." Then he laughed, "Man, you should have heard the record I made back when I was dead ..."
Hank III laughs too when he hears this. "If we ever recorded live, we'd scare off every fuckin' producer in this town. It's all, 'Radio ain't gonna touch that. It sounds too thin. It has to sound fat.'"
What it sounds like is Hank III has kicked some desks around. "I have. Every time I've dealt with Curb, I've been told one thing and then been stabbed in the back. They're people I don't trust. They've never gotten behind me. Every time I've gotten in Rolling Stone, I did that. I rub it in their face. 'What other act of yours got in Rolling Stone twice without an album? We're the ones beatin' the street without your support.'"
Why asked if his father, Hank "Monday Night Football" Williams Jr., supports his son's record, Hank III says, "I've only heard him say that he's proud. I'm sure that he didn't want me into this kind of business." Has Hank III ever played with his pop? "No." He's apparently forgotten the sorry record they did called "Three Hanks: Men With Broken Hearts," with Hank Sr.
"The first guy I ever dueted with was George Jones," Hank III volunteers. "He wanted to do a Hank Williams song. 'You sound so much like your granddaddy, it scares me!' I'm pretty sure we did 'I'm So Lonesome I could Cry.' That was a real cool moment to me. To be able to say the first guy I ever sang onstage with was George Jones." He pauses. "Like I say: Waylon, George Jones, Hag, Willie Nelson. We got respect from all these older guys. We just don't have respect from people in the business. What they do is pop country. If you ever saw us live, you'd understand."
