Hancock reasserted creative control for 1999’s Wild, Free & Reckless, which carried a rowdy barrelhouse mood that seemed to yawp, “I’m a country musician!” Ark 21 got the message and released Hancock.
“It is an age-old problem in the recording business,” says Ark 21 president Miles Copeland. “An artist’s record sales peak or level out, but the advance per album called for in the recording contract increases with each album. Eventually, the price exceeds the label’s willingness to pay. We love Wayne and would record him again at the right price.”
“Ark 21 had to bow out because they were getting pressure from their investors to change this guy or fucking get rid of him,” says Hancock. “Well fuck them; I don’t change for anybody. I’ve seen it happen and it’s sad. Tennessee Ernie Ford’s early stuff was rippin’. ‘Shotgun Boogie’, ‘Blackberry Boogie’, ‘Sixteen Tons’, ‘Mule Train’. But you listen to his later songs and they’re very middle-of-the-road, very safe.”
If Hancock sounds mad, it’s because he is. He speaks with the fervor of a Civil Rights leader: “The industry thinks it has the right to edit what you hear. They force-feed you shit that they make in mass production ’cause that’s the only way they can get you to eat it. They funnel it into you until you’ve got it memorized like ‘Achy Breaky Heart’ and they call it music.
“Guys like me you never hear from. Why? Because we are a threat to them. I can write my own songs that go with what you’re dealing with and put out an album in two days. I don’t even need fucking artwork; I could put it on the air right now!”
Hancock’s righteous indignation, backed by raw talent and sparkplug charisma, has won him a loyal following that extends to some of his fellow musicians. But he has few disciples as zealous or as visible as country music’s prodigal son, Hank Williams III.
Hank III has made a point of using his visibility to promote Hancock’s music. He covered three of Hancock’s songs on his first album for Curb Records, and talks up Hancock at his shows and in his liner notes.
“Wayne is my only true friend in country music,” says Hank III. “I first heard him about five years ago. I kept getting pitched a lot of songs, and I put in this one tape, and it blew me away. The voice, the way he paints a picture…I flew right out to Austin and stayed with him a few days. I was still green in the country music industry, and Wayne showed me that it’s a lot more important to have the respect of Texas than Tennessee.”
Hancock is deeply appreciative of the support, though it hasn’t tempered his bitterness toward the music industry. “If Ark 21 had done one-tenth of what Shelton Hank Williams III has done for me just by saying he loves my music, Christ almighty brother, we’d probably be riding in a brand new Cadillac, although I like this van a lot.
“It’s funny, though,” he adds, “I came up idolizing his granddaddy and he says he kinda idolizes me. That makes me feel weird ’cause I’m just a regular guy.”
But where Hank III has turned Hancock’s philosophy into a war for the reclamation of country music, Hancock himself holds out little hope for a massive shake-up.
“You’ve got to realize what Sinatra realized,” says Hancock. “This is a corporation. Forget the fucking myth where one man with a golden voice changes it all. That’s bullshit. They run the company. They got the money. They run the networks. They run the fucking Grammies. They say I’m not country and that Shania Twain is. We’re dealing with an organization that is prejudiced against the very people they claim to represent.
“When you are fighting the corporate structure in a world that is based on money, you better let go of all your dreams of making it big and never stop walking the line. I don’t care if I’m out in the street; I’ll still be singing. I can always get a free meal and I can always sleep under a table on a barroom floor. I’m a good fucking honky-tonk singer and I always have been.”
