The label refused to release his appropriately named This Ain't Country LP, which featured songs like "Life of Sin" and "Hellbilly." At the same time, Curb refused to grant Hank III the rights to issue it on his own. While Outlaw had featured material from outside writers, the new LP was all Hank III but for a previously released cover of Bruce Springsteen's "Atlantic City." He also produced, recorded, and mixed it by his lonesome in just two weeks.Īt this point, Hank III's relationship with Curb became even more strained. After a few years of touring and trying like mad to be released from his Curb contract, III returned to wax in early 2002 with Lovesick, Broke & Driftin'. The irascible III also dismissed Outlaw as a label-controlled fiasco almost immediately after its release. And while he played his share of "country" gigs to support it, Williams also appeared at the 2001 Vans Warped Tour alongside punks like Rancid. Entitled Risin' Outlaw, it presented 13 rough-hewn country numbers colored by III's honky tonking vocals. He was the kind of anomaly most record companies couldn't stand - eminently marketable, yet defiantly unpredictable.Ĭurb issued Hank III's proper debut in September 1999. But III could just as easily shift gears into screeching Black Flag-style punk rock with his hard-rocking combo Assjack. Hank and his Damn Band could wow a crowd with a spot-on set of gorgeous country balladry and spirited honky tonk. While his name, face, and uncanny vocal resemblance to his grandfather almost guaranteed him a thriving country audience, he had no patience for Nashville's squareness and rigid control. It was about as far from what Hank III wanted as he could get and signaled the beginning of his stormy relationship with Curb. The label issued Three Hanks: Men with Broken Hearts, which brought the voices of all three generations of Williams men together via the miracles of modern technology. Circumstances forced Hank III onto the straight and narrow, and in 1996 he signed a contract with Music City giant Curb. Williams lived the life of a nomadic punk rocker early on, but that changed when a court settlement decreed that Hank owed a large backlog of child support, and the judge instructed Hank to find more reliable employment. Shelton Hank Williams III was born December 12, 1972, in Nashville, Tennessee. It was the outlaw spirit of his lineage, alive and unwell and floating in the bong water, and he earned a reputation as one of Nashville's biggest rebels, more than living up to his lineage. But he didn't immediately follow his forebears musically, choosing instead to bang around the Southeast, playing drums in punk and hardcore combos and smoking prodigious amounts of weed before he began pursuing a career in country music. As the grandson of Hank Williams and the son of Hank Jr., Hank Williams III was country music royalty before he ever sang a note.
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