lorenmgreen's Full Review: Lovesick, Broke & Driftin' by Hank Williams III
There is a man who comes from a family of country musicians. A man who plays guitar in a side project of Pantera's Phil Anselmo, a man who moonlights in the metal band Assjack, a man who allegedly began playing country music because of child support payments. That man is the freewheeling Hank Williams III, or simply Hank III.
Lovesick, Broke & Driftin' is Hank III's second album and a step up in terms of creative output that Hank put into the album. Williams writes more of the material on this album than on his first release, Risin' Outlaw.
Hank III plays old style country, the way it was meant to be played; the way Hank Williams, Sr. played it. The tempos on the album vary from upbeat to slow and rambling. The album starts out with the fast, twangy "7 Months, 39 Days" and is followed with the swaying, crying cowboy title track. Hank III's voice bears a haunting similarity to his grandfather's. Hank plays guitar and sings, with an established backing band to certify that this isn't just a joke. Instrumentation includes steel guitar, mandolin, and fiddle in addition to the usual guitar, bass, and drums.
I can't say a whole lot about the variations on country style music, as Hank III and Johnny Cash are about as far into the genre as I've delved, but Hank's III's country yearns for earlier times, before rock and pop had manipulated itself onto country radio. This is especially evident in "Trashville," a faster, angrier song about how country has been turned into a glossy, sales driven scene that has watered down and erased its heart (the manly world of drifting between towns, picking up women, and drinking your life away).
"Playing country music, it ain't like it used to be. I so tired of this new stuff, trying to get me to sing. That ain't no country music to me...I used to think that country was like Nashville, Tennessee. But all I see in Nashville is a bunch of backstabber taking you and me..."
Hank III shines in his lyrics, often parodying the traditional country topics, but embracing them nostalgically as well. Hank will sing about drinking moonshine until he's legally blind, but he will also turn it around and sing about sitting in the bar, "drinking with the drunks who don't wanna go home." He convincingly enters into a rural world of hard masculinity and whiskey abuse. Many of his songs on Lovesick, Broke & Driftin' revolve around women, either them leaving him or about womanizing. For every song on this album about going to prison or sipping on Georgia moonshine there are two heartbroken tracks of the "tear in my beer" variety. In "5 Shots of Whiskey," he laments: "So give me 5 shots of whiskey to help kill the misery and pain you put me through. Thanks for the good times; for they were the best of my life I spent with you. Now what can I do?"
Song Titles are:
7 Months, 39 Days
Broke, Lovesick & Driftin'
Cecil Brown
Lovin' & Huggin'
One Horse Town
Mississippi Mud
Whiskey, Weed, & Women
Trashville
Walkin' with Sorrow
5 Shots of Whiskey
Nighttime Ramblin' Man
Callin' Your Name
Atlantic City
I would presume that a large portion of Hank III's fan base do not call themselves country fans, but were turned onto Williams by his not-so-serious take on country music, and the drinkin', brawlin', ramblin' topics. It's sort of like Ween's "12 Golden Country Greats," except more authentic and not as lyrically ridiculous. A look at his song titles shows you there is also a heavy theme of drinking which, for some reason, never gets tiresome in songs.
However, a closer listen to the entire album reveals a nostalgic look at a genre that has been watered down and airbrushed in the world of Top 40 and MTV. All in all, Hank III is a good old boy, his lyrics living in a world where men sit in the bar and lament on how they treated their women badly, only to go and do it again. Then the crawl into a whiskey bottle and never come out. The bottom line is that this is not anti-country music at all, as a lot of parody-type music is. The album is a good listen for a calm day of sitting on the porch or driving down the expansive Midwest highways, or for selecting a few tracks to play at a party on Saturday night.
This review is part of the HawgWyld/Joubert sponsored Manly Write-Off.
To view other entries, check out http://www.angelfire.com/mb2/mypageontheweb/page9.html.
Epinions.com periodically updates pricing and product information from third-party sources, so some information may be slightly out-of-date. You should confirm all information before relying on it.
- Add to My Yahoo!: 
- Add to Google Homepage: 
© 1999-2009 Shopping.com, Inc.