"I could've taken the easy way, but I chose not too, man," he says. "I could've been the nice clean Wrangler-wearing guy trying to be George Strait or whatever. But that's not me. I believe there needs to be a whole new generation of outlaws. The way I talk and the way I do my thing is not the easiest way to get by. I've been lucky enough to tour 10 years on the road until I had to file bankruptcy and in 10 years I'll probably be doing the same thing again."
The bankruptcy was Williams' means of escaping his contract with Curb Records. To recount their shenanigans would take an entire article, but suffice to say, Hank III has had little creative control, and because of the stalemate with the label, he has only two albums to show for his decade in the business. But after more than two years in court, the end seems near, and he may finally be able to release a new album, tentatively titled, according to Williams, either Thrown Out of the Bar or Not Everyone Likes Us.
"We're still doing some figuring out with the lawsuit," he says. "But it's coming along, man. I've been working on the new record. It's basically done. It should be out pretty fucking soon, though I don't know [which label] it's going to be with or any of that bullshit."
Williams played in a number of metal and punk bands in his youth, primarily as a drummer until he was 20. He might have kept on that way, but it seems Williams had himself a very expensive one-night stand in the early '90s that came to roost in the form of $45,000 in back child support. Curb Records, the label home to Tim McGraw and LeAnn Rimes, came to the rescue, putting out Three Hanks: Men With Broken Hearts, bringing together the three generations thanks to studio wizardry, and locking Williams into a legal bind from which he's still trying to extricate himself.
Not surprisingly, his relationship with his son hasn't fared well either. "[His mother has] remarried," he says, "and her dad's a fucking cop. So I could go to court and try to get visitation rights, and they could make me look like the biggest fucking drug addict, alcoholic motherfucker in the world. He'll come tracking me down soon, you know? But I don't have basically anything to do with him because they've been totally uncool about it in every way possible."
Of course, his hardy party regimen doesn't help matters. The night I saw him this summer, he told a story about being dosed by a fan while in concert and staying up for nearly 72 hours. "They just gave me a shot of whiskey that had fucking a lot of liquid acid in it," he says. "I got through it. I took like eight Xanax, still couldn't go to sleep. Then at like 9 in the morning I was like, 'fuck it, I'm just going to start going back up.' I got worked on by Paul Booth, got drilled on for about four hours in the tattoo chair and then went and freaked out at CBGB."
Hank III, like his kin, was born to live life by his own rules. "Nobody can do what we do, switching it up live between country and metal, or whatever the fuck I am," he says. "But I can only do that for a while. When I hit 50, it's over for me. Yep - gonna kill myself out here as long as I can, and then enjoy a little life on the other side."
Latest in Music Feature
-
Shit white girls from Oakland shouldn't say 4
Or, How V-Nasty learned to stop saying the n-word and (almost) cash in on the controversy
-
Thurston Moore hits Sonic Middle Age
On second listen, Demolished Thoughts reveals a secret benediction
-
The weird, welcome return of Jeff Mangum 1
How Neutral Milk Hotel's enigmatic lead came back from the void, sort of
- More »
-
Shit white girls from Oakland shouldn't say 4
Or, How V-Nasty learned to stop saying the n-word and (almost) cash in on the controversy
-
Watch Whitney Houston's 1985 debut on 'The Tonight Show' 1
Proof perfect that she was a pop diva from the very beginning
-
New Bobby Brown biography is a head-scratcher
Bobby Brown: The Truth, The Whole Truth and Nothing But... is a frustrating read.
Comments (0)