Hank III - The Outlaw's Songs

Hank III

An Outlaw, A Rebel, A Songwriter

Hank III’s album Straight to Hell, considered his masterpiece, created an influx of punk and metal fans into his fan base, and into country music in general, meeting in the middle with his self-coined style of hellbilly. While plenty of groups have tried to marry punk and country to varying degrees of success, Hank Williams III’s extreme nature and approach to the cross pollination of genres takes him over the top and into brand-new territory. His music sounds for the most part like it could have been recorded in 1963, but in its execution it is rougher and rowdier than country ever has been. Today, the traditionalists and metal-heads are face to face over what foundation they think Hank III’s music should retain, and Hank III has gone from being the most revered man in underground country to being one of the most polarizing. Somehow, however, Hank III has figured out how to strike a balance between warring forces, and not forget that the way for him to write the best songs he can is to listen to his heart. He reinvigorated the ‘hell raising” attitude in country. His production isn't overdone, and the heavy metal elements blend with the country elements smoothly. This is Hank III. This blend is his contribution to country music.

While the previous Williams' music has been a little more subtle with references to drinking, smoking, gambling, and the usual run-of-the-mill country outlaw regimens, Hank III pulls no punches with his lyrics. He says what is on his mind and in doing so, he became the first country artist to have the infamous "Parental Advisory" label slapped on his albums, throwing his label and the country music machine in a stupor. Since making his solo debut with 1999's Risin' Outlaw, Hank Williams III hasn't been shy about voicing his displeasure with his once contract bound label, Curb Records. Insisting that the executives at the label stifled his creativity (they spent years hesitating at the prospect of a proper album from Assjack, Williams's metal band, before finally releasing their debut in 2009), Williams channeled his rage into the creation of a fully realized persona built on equal parts spite and vice. Fortunately for Williams, that persona has translated into some tremendous music: Straight To Hell, boasts the same hybrid of traditional country conventions and punk ferocity that has made Hank III a worthy heir to his famous lineage.

His album, Straight To Hell, is a work that straddles the hallowed ground between Bill Monroe and Mötörhead, even though at some point in a first run through of the record, it’s realized that not one distorted guitar can be pointed out. The album is punk-rock in attitude and execution, the tempos being so hasty, but all the while, Williams chases his rough whine of a voice with keening country fiddle, a driving tick-tack beat, plenty of tasty Martin and Telecaster guitars, as well as a nice helping of steel guitar and Dobro just like all the old country albums that many “purists” grew up on. The playing is unruly but clean - as fiery and precise as it gets, raising a storm without needing over-driven amplifiers. Straight to Hell is what an essential country album should sound like. There is no stripped-down "pop" songwriting, there isn't any over-production, and there definitely aren't any sappy love songs. Straight to Hell is a venture into Hank's thoughts, beliefs and experiences. He isn't afraid to say what's on his mind, though the lyrics sometimes are a bit simple minded and cheesy, they get the point across.

Hank III drops names frequently all throughout Straight to Hell but it’s never for self-promotion. Instead, it’s another weapon at his disposal, a way of further exposing the way the current generation of country stars have betrayed not just what came before them but the very essence of the genre. This is especially notable on two of the album’s most well-known songs, “Country Heroes” and “Dick in Dixie.” The former is a down tempo celebration of the comfort that can be found in “Getting wasted/ Like all my country heroes,” Hank III’s declaration that “I want to hear them old songs/ Nothing of the new” less a thrown gauntlet than a statement on the lack of real camaraderie in modern country. But “Dick in Dixie” is far more deliberate in its intentions, buoyed as it is by Hank III’s confession that “Well, some say I’m not county/ And that’s just fine with me,"

Williams seems to instinctively understand that this dance with the dark side is what gives a lot of the best country music its power. This is undoubtedly noticed in the bleak song "Country Heroes," where he takes the standard country song themes of drinking and respect for your elders to a creepy new level, singing "sometimes I feel like I'm out of control... and I'm here getting wasted, just like my country heroes." Considering that his grandfather, Hank Williams Sr., drank himself into his grave at age 29 and George Jones, prominently name-checked in the song, has consumed tragic-heroic amounts of booze in his time, it's a little unsettling that Hank III is so intent on getting plowed. "Country Heroes" is the ultimate lonely country song, exemplifying the fact that there's nobody around but Hank and the men he's listening to.

Hank III - Country Heroes

Well, oh what a feeling 
that burns down low
when you ain't got no where to turn, 
or no where to go
It makes me feel like sometimes 
I'm outta control
So I'm gonna get wasted 
with all my country heroes

I'm drinkin' some George Jones, 
and a little bit of Coe
Haggard's easin' my misery 
and Waylon's keepin' me from home
Hank's givin' me those high times - 
Cash is gonna sing it low
I'm here gettin' wasted - 
here with my country heroes

I'm drinkin' that whiskey 
out of that glass
and if that ain't country, 
boy, you can kiss my ass
I wanna hear them old songs - 
nothin' of the new
'cause this might be the last time 
I'm gonna see you

So I'm drinkin' some George Jones,
and a little bit of Coe
Haggard's easin' my misery
and Waylon's keepin' me from home
Hanks givin' me those high times -
Cash is gonna sing it low
and I'm here gettin' wasted -
just like my country heroes

I'm here gettin' wasted -
with all my country heroes

The thing that really sets Hank III apart from the pack is his anger. The same anger that he numbs down while "drinking with all [his] country heroes", also shows up as a fierce defense of traditional country, against well-scrubbed newcomers and the “Yankees”, as he put it. He dedicates his other popular tune "Dick In Dixie" to the high purpose of putting "the dick in Dixie, and the cunt back in country."

“Dick In Dixie” is easily one of the highlights of Straight to Hell. It is an angry tirade against pop country and a way for him to lash out against critics. In the song, Hank states what he claims we “already knew all along”-that “pop country really sucks.”

We are then invited to kiss his ass. Williams states again and again that he can't stand the new breed of country musicians "kissing ass on Music Row" who have replaced the "outlaws that had to stand their ground" and he can't listen to country music in the same room as "some faggot looking over at [him]."

Hank III - Dick In Dixie (Live)

Well some say I'm not country 
and that's just fine with me
'Cause I don't wanna be country 
with some faggot looking over at me
They say that I'm ill-mannered 
that I'm gonna self-destruct
But if you know what I'm thinkin' 
you'll know that pop country really sucks

So I'm here to put the "dick" in Dixie 
and the "cunt" back in country
'Cause the kind of country I hear now days 
is a bunch of fuckin' shit to me
They say that I'm ill-mannered 
that I'm gonna self-destruct
But if you know what I'm thinkin' 
you'll know that pop country really sucks

Well we're losing all the outlaws 
that had to stand their ground
and they're being replaced by these kids 
from a manufactured town
And they don't have no idea 
about sorrow and woe
'Cause they're all just too damn busy 
kissin' ass on Music Row

So I'm here to put the "dick" in Dixie 
and the "cunt" back in country
'Cause the kind of country I hear nowdays 
is a bunch of fuckin' shit to me
And they say that I'm ill-mannered 
that I'm gonna self-destruct
But if you know what I'm thinkin' 
you'll know that pop country really sucks

And if you know what I'm thinkin'
you'll know that pop country really sucks

The sheer attitude of these songs is what makes them so profoundly great and enjoyable. Some of the music is a little repetitive in its composition, but the musicianship is above par. Plenty of “country-shred” is featured in the songs of this album, be it from a fiddle, a guitar, or a banjo, the simultaneously blazing and crooning stringed instruments in these songs are enough to make even John Petrucci blush. Hank III's vocals are not the best in the world; at first his nasal whine could be a total put-off to some, but like many unorthodox singers, his voice grows on you and becomes seamless with the music.

Yes, while most of the lyrical content in these songs is angry, stubborn, and a little cheesy, they communicate Hank’s opinions and feelings simply and effectively. Hank’s songwriting lays the foundation for an under toned sentiment that not only relates to his audience but is also based on real and actual occurrences in the hellbilly’s life. Will Hank III be writing songs to be remembered like his father and grandfather before him? When it comes to his approach towards country music in contrast to that of the mainstream country music machine, probably not. but what makes this album so appealing is the fact that most anyone can listen to the lyrics of these songs and take something from it brings Hank III and his music “closer to home” for the audience, making the rowdy and rude attitude some people may find distasteful in him, irrelevant. It's fair to question his taste: His un-ironic respect of a clan of honest-to-God sociopaths is a major talking point from the recent documentary The Wild and Wonderful Whites of West Virginia. But the quality of his song craft and arrangements speaks for itself. In other words, Williams knows what he's doing.

Hank III in The Wild and Wonderful Whites of West Virginia

In a book called High Lonesome: The American Culture Of Country Music, Cecelia Tichi writes about how country music became popular in part because it served to re-invent a shared (if largely fictional) down-home shared heritage for an increasingly displaced rural population in the middle of the 20th century. Tichi argues that during the Great Migration of the 1930s, when it seemed like half the population of the grain belt washed up in California, songs like "The Old Folks Back Home" helped to bring together migrants from Oklahoma and Alabama alike in a new culture that they could all share, built from shared impressions of the old life they had left behind and that they still held out hope of returning to (Tichi).

That is to say, a major job of country songs has always been myth-making - creating for listeners a more perfect, even idyllic past that they can share even if they have never even been to, say, Texas or Tennessee. Examples of this sub-genre might be the Carter Family's "Clinch Mountain Home," Dolly Parton's "Tennessee Mountain Home," Loretta Lynn's "Coal Miner's Daughter," standards like "The Yellow Rose of Texas" and "Home on the Range," and even newer songs like Alan Jackson's "Chattahoochee."

In a way, Hank Williams III is the just end point of a long trend in outlaw country, pushing away from idyllic stories about church and simple folks and falling in favor for stories about toughness, hard living, and defiant integrity. Home is the bar and church is, well, a place you go to have your weekly realization and recognition of the hell waiting for you. “The more I try to do right it just seems wrong, I guess that’s the curse of living out my songs.” The statement isn’t as much a chicken and egg scenario—which came first, the party or the partier—but rather a questioning of how much he’s honestly influenced by the style he projects. And that’s a hell of a reflection when considering both his well documented lifestyle and his thoroughly rugged songs.

“Some folks say I'm ill-mannered and that I'll self-destruct, so the song "Dick in Dixie" best explains what I do. We're a dysfunctional family and that's what people say about us all of the time. People say "he's a loose cannon and he ain't gonna make it very long." Well, I've beaten down this road for 12 years. So what if I'm not one of those guys who stepped right into the game, didn't pay any dues at all, and still got embraced by the Country Music Association.”

The sound of Hank Williams III wallowing in inherited misery makes for great listening. In fact, his self-indulgent tendencies give his songs a focus and power that any other set of new-old songs about drinking, drugging, and women would probably lack. Whether Hank Williams III's preoccupation with his own legacy manifest as a rant against Yankee 'faggots' crowding up Music Row or a creeping (and slightly creepy) obsession with walking in the footsteps of his idols, it makes for seriously compelling music.

Straight To Hell is both a fascinating and feckless record; raw, rambling and “full of piss and whiskey”. What Hank III demonstrates isn’t just punk rock going country, but rather real country, old school country, getting “punked up” from within. Hank III’s songs are country's ragged edge, and it doesn’t sound like that will be changing anytime soon.

Works Cited

Barringer, Jeff. "CD Review: Hank III - Straight to Hell." Club.Kingsnake. N.p., 22 May 2006. Web. 01 Dec. 2012.

Becker, Travis. "Hank Williams III - Straight to Hell Review." Rocknworld.com. N.p., 28 Feb. 2006. Web. 01 Dec. 2012.

Hanover, Nick. "Rediscover: Hank III: Straight to Hell." Spectrum Culture RSS. N.p., 02 July 2012. Web. 01 Dec. 2012.

Maki, Greg. "Reviews - Hank III - Straight to Hell." Live-Metal. N.p., 13 June 2006. Web. 02 Dec. 2012.

Murray, Noel. "Hank III: Straight To Hell | MusicalWork Review." A.V. Club. N.p., 21 Mar. 2006. Web. 3 Dec. 2012.

Tichi, Cecelia. High Lonesome: The American Culture of Country Music. Chapel Hill: University           of North Carolina, 1994. Print.