Hank3 & 7 Other Country Bloodlines
Free of the constricting trappings of his former label Curb Records, Hank Williams III is wasting no time getting new product to his fans. "They didn't care for my thinking," says the artist, performing these days as Hank3.
This week he officially busted loose from the clutches of Curb, releasing not just one album but three: Ghost to a Ghost/Gutter Town, a rebellious, swampy double album featuring Tom Waits; the doom-metal disc Attention Deficit Domination, to sate his legion of black-clad followers; and a third album, Cattle Callin', with Williams laying down punishing grindcore on top of the voices of howling cattle auctioneers.
It's hard to pick our favorite, but Gutter Town is pretty solid, featuring zydeco and creepy bluegrass stomping, and what sounds like a pseudo-English patois.
Since hitting the music scene in his own right in the mid-'90s, the third Hank has been confounding and astounding an industry that fully expected him to be a carbon copy of his grandfather Hank Sr. and his father Hank Jr.
In theory, mainstream country would have been happy to have an artist like Hank3 to shill as a Branson tribute act, with his grandfather's iconic looks and his daddy's distaste for authority. Number 3 did do a stint onstage as his grandfather to help pay a few child support payments "for the judge" as he said, in the '90s, but he quickly ended the act once he gained his own footing. 
The punk- and metal-influenced Williams has blazed his own rebel trail ever since. He can do country, hellbilly, punk, doom and hardcore within the same extended set without batting an eye.
Tonight Williams will be at Scout Bar in Clear Lake (no opener) unleashing his new music onto the masses, playing snatches of each new album -- although the Cattle Callin' material is aided by samples, since those God-fearing auctioneers probably wouldn't want to tour with a tattooed, long-haired hellion playing heavy jams in defiance of the country hierarchy.
With his dad being one of the biggest outlaw country names ever in country, and his granddad influencing everyone Bob Dylan to Beck, the third Hank is a part of a special group in country music who can count their fathers (and some mothers) as fellow pickers in the game.
Location Info
Venue
Map
Scout Bar
18307 Egret Bay Blvd., Houston, TX
Category: Music
|
5 user reviews
|
Write A Review |
| Save to foursquare |
|
Email to Friend
Write to Editor
Print Article
