Hank III hits Toronto

When I was a boy growing up on the farm it was just me and my mom and dad. Across the road at the top of the hill lived an aunt and uncle and at the bottom of the hill lived another. One family had 5 children and the other had eight. The oldest of these cousins had kids who were close to my age as well. Basically my family was my social world, and in that world you listened to country music...just country music.

I remember about grade eight I went over to my friend Dustin's house. He had young parents and they had a record collection. My life changed forever in that basement, listening to Pink Floyd and Alice Cooper.  Zeppelin, the Doors, AC/DC, Fleetwood Mac and Eric Clapton. I mean, we weren't Amish. I'd heard whatever crap they were playing on whatever radio station you could get in Miners Bay, Ontario back then, but to sit down and listen to "Are You Experienced" from start to finish, well that was an awakening. My love of Music was launched in that basement and I've always felt I owed Dustin a bigger debt than I could ever repay for sharing those dusty lps with me.

Now, when I started playing this stuff at home it was greeted as though I'd started smoking drugs. Which I had. Not in Dustin's basement though. It was behind his garage...even his parents weren't that cool. As any teenager would, I rebelled when my parents disparaged my new musical tastes and for a long time I drifted away from country music for the most part.

When my Dad got older and fell ill we spent a lot more time together and listening to those old country standards with him reminded me how great country music can be. He loved the old masters like Roy Acuff, Hank Snow, Gene Autry, Ray Price, Kitty Wells and of course his favorite, the Great Hank Williams. My tastes extended to the next generation of country legends such as Waylon, Willie, Merle Haggard, Hank Williams Jr., Johnny Cash and George Jones. Later we could still find common ground in performers like George Strait, Alan Jackson and Steve Earle but somewhere around that time period the chain was broken and it seemed like real country was dead.

When I'd tune in the country station on the radio what I heard sounded nothing like country anymore and it got worse and worse until now we're at the point where they just take whatever shit pop song they can find that Brittany rejected, mix in a steel guitar and call it country. I gave up. Except for the occasional George Strait or Allan Jackson song, I thought country music was dead. I just listened to the old stuff. I mean, Taylor Swift. That little girl's music bears as much resemblance to country and western as Christina Agulara's, but there she is wailing away about some teenage Lothario who dumped her for a cheerleader or some shit on every country station in the land. They don't even neuter the steers in the cattle industry any more, they just play them a "Sugarland" CD and the balls drop off by themselves.

Before we go any further I'm going to try to explain the appeal of real country music to those of you who don't get it. Your thinking it's all about crying in your beer when your woman leaves you or your truck breaks down or else it's about getting drunk and raising hell. There's a reason you think this. It's true. Real country music is hard music for hard people made for the hard times they're living in.

My old man grew up on a dirt road so long ago that he remembered when they finally got enough people to sign up so they'd string the hydro lines. Before that they had two car batteries that they would switch out every day so they could gather around the radio and listen to hockey games, boxing matches and The Grand Ole' Oprey from Nashville, Tennessee.

They lived through the Great Depression and WWII. They worked like savages farming, haying, logging,  but were so poor that for years my Grandpa, my dad and his brothers slept on the floor of the living room so my Grandma and Aunt could have the one bedroom. They lived on eggs and whatever they could hunt because the cattle and chickens they raised were a valuable source of income and could not be eaten.

Things were good for a while in the 50's, I think that's why Rock n' Roll took off. That "Rock Around the Clock" shit would have never flown if you were standing in a bread line or your brother Frankie just got his shin blown off by a German mine.

There have always been hard times for common folks and real country music is that friend that says " you're not alone, it happens to all of us, now lets drink so much whisky we start crying and then fight each other in the parking lot. We'll both feel better in the morning." You need that friend. They're the one that keeps you from feeling so alone and desperate you finally rob that bank or show up at your ex's new boyfriends house with a Louisville Slugger. At the very least it gives you something to listen to in the getaway car. And even if your code of ethics wouldn't let you do any of those things anyway, my Dad didn't even drink, it's still nice to know someone else understands.

I'm not trying to say that everyone should like Country Music. Different people find their solace in different types of music but if none of this even makes sense to you then I suppose that makes you the lucky one for having never experienced hard times. Now fuck off and go listen to the "Arctic Monkeys" or something.

I thought all that great country music, that old friend, was gone. But then I started to hear rumblings and snippets of songs here and there by people I'd never heard of but it was country. Then I got a satellite radio and there was a whole station called Outlaw Radio that was dedicated to this underground country scene I never even knew existed. Artists like Ray Wiley Hubbard, Gordie Tentrees, Shooter Jennings, Robert Earle Keen, Roger Marin, Hayes Carll and Justin Townes Earle were making great country music and some of them had been the whole time I thought it was dead. For some reason they just never got the exposure that the posers did. I reckon money is more important than good music in Nashville these days but over the last few years I think the worm has begun to turn, this genre is starting to build more and more of a following and I myself have become an outlaw country missionary trying to convert every non-believer and Toby Keith lover I meet. With that in mind let me tell you about a little show I went to the other night....

You know in the movie "The Fly" where the guy gets his DNA scrambled with an insect and all their parts get intermingled? Well imagine if some one took a hilbilly band, GG Allin, and their respective audiences, stuffed them in there and fired it up You'll have a pretty good idea of what a Hank III concert is like.

He kicked it off with a high octane rendition of"Straight to Hell", a straight up country stomper with the refrain "I'm goin' straight to hell/ Ain't nothin' slowin' me down, I'm goin' straight to hell/ So you just better give me one more round". If you were expecting Brad Paisley best just leave now.

His Grandpa was country musics biggest superstar, as big as Elvis or the Beatles in the world of country music, but he was also it's biggest rebel. He was kicked out of the Grand Ol' Oprey and has never been re-instated even though he had more influence on country music than any other performer and is even a member of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame for his early influence on that musical genre. He suffered from a severe back condition and was known for missing concerts because of drinking and drug abuse, probably caused by his chronic pain. He tragically died at 29 of an apparent overdose in the back of his limousine on the way to a concert.

His dad Hank Jr. continued the rebel tradition and was never really accepted by the country mainstream, until recently despite his huge popularity mostly due to lyrics which reflected his lifestyle. You weren't gonna be embraced by the Grand Ol' Oprey in the 70's (or now for that matter) singing songs with references to cocaine (OD'd in Denver) or weed (half  his other songs).

With this pedigree it should come as no surprise that Hank III has passed up the easy wealth and fame available by towing the nashville company line and living off the name of his famous forbears. Instead he's combined classic country sounds with an infusion of metal in spots and lyrics you do not want to croon to your Grandma.

For a generation of country fans (myself included) who grew up listening to their parent's country standards as well as metal, punk and, hardcore hip hop it's an intoxicating mixture.

The show was actually two concerts in one. Hank and the "Damn Band' performed a full country set which was followed by ASSJACK, a thrash metal band Hank is a member of.

The crowd reflected this strange dichotomy. There were dude's that looked like they just rode in on a horse partying with guys who looked like they just got done kicking the shit out of Mad Max and everything in between. And every one was getting along.

On the relatively cramped stage the "Damn Band" featured Hank on vocals and guitar, two guitar players (electric and lap steel) a drummer, a banjo player and a fiddle player and they all earned there money as they roared through a set that would have made his whole family proud. Every song seemed to be a voice from the past, before country music became a pre-pakaged caricature of itself

In fact, when Hank closed the country part of the show with "I'll Never Get Out of this World Alive", the last song Hank Williams Sr. ever wrote, he sounded so much like his Grandpa that I closed my eyes, and for a moment I pictured myself back on the couch with my Dad listening to one of those dusty old LPs. And it was nice. And that's what country music is all about.