|
|
 |
 |
| Friday, April 2, 2010 at Roseland Theater |
|
 |
 |
(click for full-page printable poster)
GENRES
Metal
Punk
Rock
Country
|
|
KUFO Presents
Hank III & Assjack
Kyle Turley
Friday, April 2, 2010
Roseland Theater 503-224-2038
8 NW 6th Ave, Portland, OR (MapQuest)
8pm (doors open at 7pm). All Ages.
$20.00 advance tix from TicketsWest.
$23.00 at the door.
ABOUT HANK III -
Hank III's forthcoming album, Straight to Hell , breaks all the rules of country music while somehow managing to honor its traditions at the same time. This two-CD celebration of drinking too much, staying up too late and getting into all kinds of nefarious mischief will no doubt bring an exultant yee-haw from those intrepid souls who have followed the exploits of this third-generation hell-raiser. The surprise is that Williams concocted his two-CD opus on a Korg D-1600 digital recorder -- a $400 piece of hardware that liberated the artist from temporal and budget constraints (he was liberated from the constraints of decorum long ago).
Hank discovered the 1600 when he was on the road playing bass with Superjoint Ritual, the notorious side project of Pantera's Phil Anselmo. "Their monitor man had one and I checked it out," he recalls. "I was like, wow, man, this thing is actually musician-friendly. It's not like you've gotta read a 50-page instruction booklet to use it. Within seconds you can be pluggin' and playin'. I got like five of 'em now, man -- I take 'em with me everywhere I go. I was just glad to finally find a machine I could halfway work."
Of the new album's two discs, Williams says that "One's done right, the other's done wrong." The first record, cut in a high-ceilinged wooden room at a friend's house in East Nashville, "is a bunch of songs two to six minutes long, with solos by super pickers, the ones I can't afford to take on the road." One of the most intriguing aspects of the dozen songs this CD contains is Hank III's use of traditional country music elements in the service of his own twisted world view. "My Drinkin Problem," for example, hangs on a narrative turnaround that's downright classic. In moments like this one, it's apparent that the acorn didn't fall far from the tree. Then there's the second disc . . .
"On the hidden CD, it's basically just one track with a lotta ambient noises," III explains. "Most of that stuff is me with a tape recorder, goin' back to seven, eight years ago. When I say it's done wrong, I mean it's just me and my guitar, and a little story kinda unfolds. Like if somebody's comin' down off acid or something, they might get a kick out of it. I drove a couple of guys crazy puttin' all that stuff on there, but it was a good time. It's also the first time I've ever released a Hank Williams song on one of my records."
On the song "I Could Never Be Ashamed of You," Hank sounds eerily like his granddaddy. "That was recorded five or six years ago," he explains. "Nowadays my voice is a little more raspy. But it's just cool to be able to get that out . . . finally. I had to fight 'em hard to get two CDs out there, but I been held back for so long, man, all I wanna do is put song after song out there. Hell, I hope to get 20 songs on my next CD release, just because they've been sittin' around so long. For me to be more creative, hell, I gotta get this body of work outta the way and start all over. But there's some good ones on there."
Straight to Hell is being released on BRUC Records, but it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that BRUC is CURB spelled backwards; the made-up word designates Curb's recently launched rock division. Now, Williams and his record company have had a few disagreements in the 10 years he's been with them, some of them highly publicized. But what most people don't realize is how far back the Curb and Williams families go. "Hell, the guy was in the room the day I was born," Hank says of label founder/owner Mike Curb. "He drove my dad to the hospital. So there's a long relationship there."
The label agreed to make Straight to Hell a double album, despite the greater expense the move incurred, and they didn't demand that Hank drop any of its controversial content. "At least I got the parental advisory, a censored version," he acknowledges. "I bleeped every cuss word and all that, and then Wal-Mart turned around and rejected it anyway. But they'll sell South Park within five feet of the CD section. Just because I say "LSD" or "marijuana" or talk about havin' a good time, well, they can't have that."
It isn't really surprising that Hank III would scare Wal-Mart, considering his hard-earned reputation and the subject matter of Straight to Hell , which could be described as a song cycle about partying and getting loaded, as well as the consequences of same. "Most of my songs are about that," he says. "We play to a bar crowd most of the time -- lotsa college kids and people that are out there tryin' to escape. But most of the songs deal with havin' a good time or havin' a bad time, little bit of heart-broke. I gotta work on writin' a carefree kinda song; it's somethin' I haven't gotten too good at yet, but I'm tryin'. I've never blacked out in my whole life -- that's all I can say. I still can't let go, no matter how hard I try."
In certain ways, III is the redneck equivalent of a gangsta rapper, challenging the system, putting out his own bootlegs and trading on 'tude. "In the end I'm a nice guy, even though I talk a lot of shit," he reflects. "It's just what I've had to do around here, man. I think that's what missing nowadays -- everybody calls themselves outlaws and all that stuff, but that's what's missing in country music. Everything's so clean and pretty and perfect, and you need a couple of people in there that aren't perfect and that don't sound the best. That's the way some of the best guys were, man."
More than ever, Hank III appears to be the quintessential anti -Nashville Cat. "I'm totally anti-Music Row," he confirms, "but as far as the livin', man, you can't beat it. Shit, I pay a thousand bucks a month in rent for a five-bedroom house on 60 acres 10 minutes from downtown. You can't find that in no big city. Just to keep the damn band goin', man, all the things I need are around here -- musicians, cheap buses and cheap livin'. I definitely like everything about Nashville besides the business part of it, man."
Hank III's live shows pay respects to both his country roots and the punk and metal he cut his teeth on. He starts off with over an hour of hardcore country music, then cross-breeds country and rock elements in a set that he bills as "Hellbilly," before climaxing the three-hour marathon with a stripped-down metal assault known as "Assjack."
As for representing this side of his music on record, Hank says, "There will definitely be a rock release. I have the Assjack stuff, which is more screamin', and then we have our Hellbilly sound that's got some melodies to it and still got the steel and the fiddle on there. I got my band chompin' at the bit -- they're ready to go. Now we're just waitin' on the system, I guess."
Despite his battles, Hank III is pretty happy with where he's at now, all in all. "Just to be on a major label and act independent is pretty cool for us," he says. "I had complete control of [2002's] Lovesick, Broke & Driftin' , and I had complete control of Straight to Hell , so if anybody's gonna get shit, it's gonna be me. I'm just now startin' the process all over again for the next record, doin' it the same way. To me, every record is a learning process, and the biggest thing on this one is, we're just very proud that we did it ourselves. No other record like this one is comin' out of Nashville."
Or anywhere else, for that matter.
|
|
|
|
 |
|
 |
|
