Election relief – Putting the Dick back in Dixie

In the critically acclaimed BBC documentary series Lost Highway: The History of American Country a couple of years back, was some interview footage with Hank Williams III. I’ve never had much time for Hank Williams Junior, but Hank Williams III struck me as the real deal.

Call it hard-twang, punkabilly, cowpunk, alternacountry, slacker swing or honky punk. It’s certainly not your grandfather’s country music nor is it your father’s, either, unless your grandfather happens to be the legendary Hank Williams and your father Hank Williams Jr.

…it is fellow neo-classicist country performers like Hancock, Dale Watson and Big Sandy and the Fly-Rite Boys whom Williams points to as the future of Nashville, even if the country music mainstream has so far shunned them. Hank’s own music returns to the themes of fellow outlaws like Johnny Cash, Willie Nelson, Merle Haggard, Waylon Jennings, David Allen Coe, Johnny Paycheck, Kris Kristofferson, George Jones “all artists who were, at one time or another, snubbed by Music City.

At the time I tried to find some CDs, but they could not be found locally – until Friday. At JB HiFi they were selling his first CD Risin’ Outlaw from 1999 and my new favourite Lovesick, Broke & Driftin’ – for $12 each. Yee ha!

Lovesick, Broke & Driftin’, released in 2003, is a more balanced, technically superior album with almost all-original material – mostly acoustic and superbly played. It sounds like I imagine Grand Daddy Hank would sound like if he was just hitting the scene today. It’s as ‘though young Shelton (as Hank III is known to family and friends) is channeling the great man himself.

There is other material sounding much more like Hank Snr, but I couldn’t resist this classic live performance of “the man who put the Count… back into Country Music”. It reveals more about Hank III than the magnificent studio recordings.

Contains language that some may consider obscene (get over it).

Filed under: Music, YouTube