"Lord, honey, you're a ghost," Minnie Pearl said when she first met Hank Williams III. I have the same reaction; he looks so much like his grandfather that it is unnerving. Tall and lanky, with sunken cheeks and keenly intelligent eyes, he is Hank Sr.'s twin.
But when we settle down into his basement lair, I know that I have not been magically transported back into the early '50s, when Hank Williams Sr. roamed the earth. Hank III is his own man, and he intends to be seen that way.
With that in mind, let's forget that he's a part of country music royalty, that he's the one who will carry the weight of the Williams name into the 21st century. For the time being, at least. We can get to all of that later.
As our interview begins, Hank III is getting quietly stoned. He takes short, polite hits on his pipe, holds in the smoke as long as possible, then lets it roll off his tongue as he speaks. We are in the basement of the modest little brick he inhabits in East Nashville. Upstairs, the house is neat and orderly; the kitchen smells of rich coffee and there is a collection of mismatched chairs in the living room. It could be anyone's house, with squeaky clean floors and well-placed lamps that throw dim light into the corners. Not exactly what I had pictured for someone who bills himself as "the honky-tonk hellbilly."
Once down the carpeted stairs, however, we have entered Hank III's domain. Club placards (mostly for his own shows) cover the walls. There is a collection of skulls, a space heater that cracks and pops in the corner, an old record player. CDs are strewn across the floor, mix tapes fill boxes stacked against the wall. Also on the floor are several downloaded pictures of a naked girl. A coffin leans against the wall. It may or may not be a guitar case -- it's hard to tell.
As Hank III begins to talk, he is a constant fidget of nerves, first folding his legs under himself, then putting them out straight so that his body is a long, narrow L. Occasionally he tosses his long hair over his right shoulder. He wears wire rim glasses that seem out of place with the tattoos covering his arms, and socks that are full of comfortable holes. His jeans have been razored at the knee. Naturally, he is wearing a black t-shirt with a skull as its motif. He is polite and well-spoken, mannerly enough to offer me a cigarette and the only chair in sight. He opts to sit on the floor, ignoring the leather bean bag covered by papers and empty Marlboro packs.
He does some small talk as he empties the pipe, cleans out the bowl, and fills it again. Then he is ready to discuss his new album, Lovesick, Broke & Driftin', which was released in January. While he made it common knowledge that he hated his debut album, Risin' Outlaw, he's much more satisfied with the new release.
"It's an organic album, a lot happier, and a lot more real," he says. "I produced it myself. Used my own songs. And we recorded and mixed it in two weeks. It took Curb two years to put the first one out. We saved them about $100,000, too."
It's easy to see why Hank III is happier with Lovesick, Broke & Driftin'. It is a much more complete and focused album than his first effort. It is filled with fun party songs that Hank III has become well-known for on the live circuit, but also mellow, personal songs that he feels a strong attachment to. The album is wide-ranging, surprisingly autobiographical and reflective.
"It's definitely more mellow. Most people at live shows want us amped up, and I like putting some feeling into a song every once in a while. Most of these songs were written when I was feeling the blues."
Many of the songs are filled with real emotion, something Hank III believes his last album lacked. "Cecil Brown" is a melancholy ode to small-town life in which the title character gets into trouble and is never forgiven by his townspeople. "That's about someone on Mom's side of the family. You know, it's a little town, he gets into trouble and everybody knows it," he says. "I can totally relate to it myself."
Hank III says he was "torn down in the studio" when he went to record "5 Shots Of Whiskey", which he wrote while living in a trailer in Lebanon, Tennessee, just after the breakup of a seven-year relationship. "I just stayed out there for a couple months feeling pretty miserable. So it brought back some sad memories to record it. Hell, it still does."
There's even what Hank III calls a "Jesus song" on this album. "Callin' Your Name" is about repentance, about reaching out to the Lord. "I believe in good and evil, and that we're accountable for both," he says, taking a hit from the pipe. "I write a lot of devil songs, but I write a lot of Jesus ones, too."
Should anyone think he's going soft, they should just give a listen to "Mississippi Mud", which includes the lyrics "I know how to have a damn good time/And I take my shots straight out of the jug/And I like to get pure drunk in the Mississippi mud." Or "Nighttime Ramblin' Man", in which he sings, "I'm going to do some drinking/I'm going to drink all that whiskey that I can.../I'm going to do some smoking/I'm going to smoke all that good stuff that I can/I'm going to do some toking.../I'm a drinking, toking, nighttime rambling man."
Williams says he hasn't slowed down his partying too much, even though Curb "threw" him into rehab a couple years ago. He thinks the rehab stint had more to do with his approach to the press than it did anything else. Upon the release of Risin' Outlaw, he did not keep silent about his dissatisfaction with the finished product. "They said I was out of control and tried to send me to media school seven or eight times, but I said no way," he says.
"Why didn't they tell that to Willie Nelson or a bunch of these other motherfuckers that were twice as crazy as me?" he asks, looking genuinely puzzled. "I'm not even on the level some of them were." He walked out of rehab and told the higher-ups at Curb that they could hold the album back if they wanted, but he wasn't about to change for anybody.
He thinks that attitude paid off with the new album. "I think they finally listened to me. Curb said, 'Let's stay out of his way,' and I'm so glad they kept their nose out of this record, pretty much."
He still loves to smoke dope, but knows that "eventually, any drug will bite you." Still, he says "drinking's not hurting me any. I'd like to say I'm clean and all, but I'm just not there yet." And he says he's never missed a show on account of being too drunk or stoned: "I've never canceled unless it's for being sick. Never been too messed up to do a show."
Another song on the album, "Whiskey, Weed And Women", lets us know he doesn't intend to slow down. He sings about raising "hell all night long." The song also includes this line, "I got drunk the day my pa went to prison," inspired by David Allan Coe's recording of "Call Me By My Name". Hank III wrote the line especially for Coe -- one of his musical heroes -- and hoped to duet with him on the record, but lawyers interfered. "We just ran out of time, dealing with legal stuff," he says, "so he didn't get to do it with me."
All the songs on the new album are his own, except for his infamous cover of Bruce Springsteen's "Atlantic City", which some Springsteen fans criticized as being too country. The song originally appeared in 2000 on the Sub Pop compilation Badlands: A Tribute To Bruce Springsteen's Nebraska, in a shortened version. "They had to talk me into using it on the album, but I did because it got cut short on the tribute," he says. "I wanted the whole song to be out there." He arranged the song himself, and says Springsteen was never an inspiration, but someone he can at least respect.
Respect is not a word Hank III throws around lightly. When it comes to mainstream music, he likes such acts as Asleep At The Wheel, Junior Brown, and Dwight Yoakam. "I like some of Ryan Adams' stuff, what I've heard of him," he says. "I thought his cover of 'Lovesick Blues' [on the Hank Sr. tribute disc Timeless] was pretty damn cool; weird and psychedelic." His favorite new band in town is the Shack Shakers.
Hank III grew up on the likes of KISS and Ted Nugent. "That's the stuff that really got me," he says. He always liked Southern Rock, but knew it wasn't his thing. "I just couldn't play that kind of music good," he says. "I never felt comfortable playing that music, although I always liked people like Lynyrd Skynryd and some others."
Mostly raised in a single-parent home by his mother, Gwen Yeargain Williams, KISS was the first group he was widely exposed to. His mother's sister, Gayle, bought him four KISS albums the Christmas he was 9 years old, and changed his life forever. "Gayle completely messed me up, man," he laughs. "She was the one who was always cranking ZZ Top and Ted Nugent," he says, noting that his mother's tastes were much milder; the only thing he can really remember her playing are Elvis records.
His mother raised him strict, making him go to church three or four nights a week until he was 18 years old. "I had my albums burned, forced to go to church, all that," he says, picking at the carpet. "That's probably what gave me my love for heavy metal."
While the paternal side of his family was known for hard living, his mother's family was not. "I was raised in a family who didn't drink, who didn't smoke. There were a couple people on Mom's side who were pretty wild, but I wasn't really around that growing up. But I just always felt more comfortable hanging out with the wrong crowd. I don't know why, it just seemed like the thing to do for me. I enjoyed getting stoned."
He spent most of his adolescence in North Carolina, where his stepfather worked at the Charlotte Motor Speedway. Hank III liked being around the racing lifestyle. He peps up when he talks about those days. "It was cool seeing that side of life," he says. "I'd get to meet the drivers, and we'd always have pit passes, a Winnebago in the infield for every race."
Right around this same time, Hank III began to come into his own as a hellraiser. "I've put my mom through hell and back, man," he says, and pauses for a long moment, looking away. "I mean, I haven't exactly been the perfect son. But she's always stood behind me 100 percent in whatever I've done. She's always been just your most loving, caring mother."
Hank III thinks his wild nature is due more to the way he was raised than to the wild streak in his genes. He says things might have been different had he been around his famous father more often. "If I had seen my dad getting drunk and being stoned and falling down all the time, I might not have wanted to be like that," he suggests. "But I grew up knowing my ass would be nailed to the wall if I got wild, so that made it that much more of a thrill to me."
Slowly we have been making our way to that part of Hank III people know the most about. It is not hard to get him to talk about the Williams clan, but he doesn't seem to be busting at the seams to do so. Although he will continue to use the moniker that unmistakably associates him with his father and grandfather, he likes standing on his own two feet. For the record, he's not really a third Hank; his real name is Shelton Hank Williams (friends and family call him Shelton). No matter, though, since his daddy is not really a junior either, his name being Randall Hank Williams.
Hank Williams Jr. has been on Hank III's mind this evening. When I arrived he was on the internet, reading his website's message board, where people were talking about his father's new song, "The F Word", in which Hank Jr. nicely advises his son that things will be easier for him if he learns to cut that word out of his vocabulary.
"It's just so hypocritical," Hank III says. "He's been the biggest partier out there." He shakes his head, puts his palms flat against his bare knees. "If I wanted to make a mix tape of all the times I've heard him cussing and going on..." He stands and jabs one finger into the air as he lets fly a litany of cursing in the voice of Hank Jr.
This is the only negative thing he will say about his father tonight, though. When he mentions that his mother always worked minimum-wage jobs and that he also took jobs as a teenager (garage door installer, record store clerk, studio gopher, etc.), one might assume his father was not a good provider -- but Hank III says this was not the case. "He always paid his child support, but it wasn't a phenomenal amount or anything," he says. "When I was 16, he bought me a truck, I ragged it out and he bought me a car a couple years later at graduation. That's the farthest it ever went, though."
He bristles at the fact that people assume he was raised wealthy. "People are always saying, 'Where's all your daddy's money?'," he says. "And I always look at them and say, 'Well, it's his.'"
Hank III says he was raised average. "I'd go to my dad's and it was like fantasyland, but I'd go back home and it was the real world. He did help me out, but we never had any money to blow. It was always just getting by, man. Just getting by." He remembers hanging out with other famous people's children, like (Lynyrd Skynyrd drummer) Artimus Pyle's son. "I saw that his life was pretty different from mine," Hank III says. Still, he seems glad he wasn't raised with beaucoups of money. "Now that I look back, I see that it was good Hank Jr. didn't help me too much. I'm grateful for that, now."
He seems most proud of having made it on his own. "People see that I have albums out, and to them it looks like Daddy helped out his son. I got into this because I had to save my ass at the time. And we've done it on our own. I mean, I never go out there and say 'I'm Hank Jr.'s son!'" He screams out these last four words.
The ass-saving he speaks of is now well-documented, as it showed up in practically every interview Williams gave with his first album. His past came back to haunt him when a $24,000 child support suit was filed against him after a one-night stand (his description) that produced a son. This led him to sign on as the centerpiece of a Hank Sr. tribute show in Branson, Missouri, allowing him to pay off his debt.
Eventually a record contract came knocking. The nonchalant way he explained all of this to the press led some people to believe he was in country music only for the money, but he says this isn't true. "I've always loved country music," he says. "I mean, it is in the genes."
Despite those genes, Hank III doesn't believe he will ever be a top-selling artist, like his grandfather and father. He likes his life the way it is, although he would like to one day be able to provide for his mother. "I'll be happy whenever I might be able to help her out a little. I do what I can."
And while he wants to make it clear that he loves playing country music, he still does not turn his back on his first true love, "punk or rock or metal or whatever the hell you want to call it" music. He recently signed on as the bassist for Superjoint Ritual, and opened for American Head Charge. He's received a lot of attention for putting on live shows that incorporate both country and metal. "We do our first set for the country audience, and then I make a little announcement. I tell them that it's going to be a lot harder sound, and if they want to leave, that's cool," he says. "But lately, I've been seeing just as many black T-shirts as black cowboy hats."
A huge variety of people come to his shows. Hank III says he sees everything from "mohawks to jock haircuts to little old gray heads" out in the crowd. He acknowledges that most of his audience is still country-oriented. While fights have broken out in bars because of the heavier music, he also sees a surprising understanding in many people.
His most popular live song is the foul-mouthed ditty "I'm Going To Put The Dick Back In Dixie", which Curb rejected for the new album, citing their reluctance to put an advisory label on any of their products. A sampling of the tamer lyrics: "'Cause the kind of country I hear nowadays/Is a bunch of shit to me."
Hank III loves talking about this song, as it seems to be a fusion between his country and rock sensibilities. He hunches over, bends his neck, and curls his hand as if holding a cane. In a feeble, shaky voice, he mimics a grandmother who recently told him, "That song has a lot of bad words in it, but I still love it."
"A lot of the same feelings are involved in both punk and country," he says, straightening himself out. "In both genres, there's depression, sorrow, hatred, anti-establishment. The energy is different, but the attitude is sort of the same."
Williams also has made a rock album, and is adamant that it will someday be in stores. He claims Curb loved the record, entitled This Ain't Country, until they read the profanity-laden lyrics. "The album is recorded, mixed, finished, and gathering dust," he says. While he says he'd like to sell This Ain't Country to an independent label, he's still not sure how to work out the legal matters, as he's tied to Curb "for a long-ass time."
He jumps up quickly and goes to an overflowing bookshelf. He pulls down a framed photograph of several men lined up behind their ready-to-rumble coon dogs. The men are all smiling and fresh-faced, proud to be hunters, to be country men. "This is going to be the cover of This Ain't Country," he says, laughing. "That's my grandpa, right there. My grandpa on my mother's side."
His maternal grandfather also graces the cover of Lovesick, Broke, & Driftin'. Hank III loves the album cover, as he chose it himself (he was hands-on in all of the art direction of the album). The foldout has a picture of him with his hair down, leaned over his guitar, tattoos prominently displayed.
He taps the CD cover with a fingertip. "See there, that's my grandfather with the horse," he says, "This picture was taken in my mom's hometown, up in Jane, Missouri."
He looks at the album cover a long moment after he has shown it to me. "Yeah, that's a side of the family that nobody knows about, but they mean a whole hell of a lot to me."
At the same time, Hank Sr. is not only a musical influence, but someone he says "means a hell of a lot to me, too." While he wants to stand on his own, he is aware that people will always see his grandfather in him. It is never more evident than in songs such as "Walkin' With Sorrow", in which his yodel conjures up audio flashbacks of Hank Sr., or many of the themes that run throughout the album: heartbreak, loneliness, drinking, despair.
Hank III seems to be comfortable with the pain these things offer, however. He says his partying and rebellious nature is only "more fuel for the fire." He cleans out his bowl again and pushes the pipe to the other side of the bean bag, out of sight. "I draw from that, do my best writing from all that. Tough times make for great material."
Of course, we've been hearing this same sentiment from country singers for years. But there is something in Hank III's voice that sounds all too convincing. Minnie Pearl saw a ghost in his face, and maybe she was right. It seems he is a man who has grown used to living with ghosts. Perhaps this is the case: By singing country music he embraces the ghosts, and by playing metal he shuns them. Either way, Hank Williams III is a haunted soul.
Silas House is a novelist who lives in Eastern Kentucky, where people continue to party to the beat of all three Hanks.
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