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.
