I'd heard pretty good things about Hank Williams III, and I went to a Reverend Horton Heat show a few years ago that he was supposed to open for but for some reason he didn't show. A couple months ago he came back to town on his own and I went to see him, I'm glad I did. He's got a lot of his grandfather's looks and voice, but instead of just covering the old tunes he's doing his own thing... and doing it his way. The first set was Hank and his Damn Band, doing his country songs (along with a great cover of Cocaine Blues). This is country how it should be done, and if you're a fan of Hank Sr., Johnny Cash, and old school hillbilly music with pedal steel, fiddle, and upright bass than this is for you. After that it got a little, um, heavier, with the hellbilly & assjack sets. Well, more like hardcore thrash punk, which I wasn't expecting and didn't care too much for. Maybe it just made me feel old.
Anyway, I finally got around to getting one of his cd's,
Lovesick, Broke & Driftin'. I knew some of the songs from the show, so I thought it'd be pretty good (and it is) but what I wasn't expecting was the recording quality. It's top-notch audiofile caliber stuff, more like what you'd expect from Mapleshade than a small country label. There's no background noise and no hint of compression, the instruments are well mic'd and positioned across the sound stage in a way that makes sense. The steel guitar, slide guitar, harmonica, accordion, and bass all sound awesome and provide great layering to the music. No high-hats coming 100% out of the right speaker or anything of the sort either. The vocals can sound distorted at times, but it's his voice and not the way it was recorded (if you saw the Assjack set you'd understand why his voice sounds like this). Standout tracks are "7 Months, 39 Days", "Cecil Brown", "Mississippi Mod", and "5 Shots of Whiskey" although the album is pretty solid start-to-finish.
I definitely recommend this album to anyone who, like I said, enjoys old school country. The songwriting is really good, musicianship is top-notch, recording quality is awesome, and the only thing that's a bit of a let-down are the lyrics. Hank III's a decent lyricist and hopefully he'll get better in time, but as of yet he doesn't have his grandfathers uncanny ability to convey enough emotion with a few simple words to make you want to cry. But hey, Hank Sr. was one of the greatest two or three American songwriters so that's hardly a fair comparison.
This one gets a solid 3.5 of 5 stars on my scale, and a 5 for sound quality.
Gary
