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Monday, May 21, 2012

Crazed country maverick brings the doom to Bogart’s

Hank3, and the only fiddle in the world that could induce a mosh pit, perform at Bogart's.

By Max Webster  |  Published: 12/07/11 3:06pm  |  Updated: 12/09/11 12:52pm  |  4 comments


The only fiddle in the world that could induce a mosh pit belongs to Hank Williams — no, not that Hank Williams, but the legendary country singer’s outlaw grandson.

On Saturday Dec. 3, Hank3 and his band brought their show to Bogart’s, playing to a standing-room only crowd on the last stop of a 21-date, east-coast tour to promote the simultaneous release of three new albums.

A Hank3 show is a battle of ironies in three parts: A raw infusion of outlaw themed country music and heavy metal that slips into the basest, coma inducing sludge rock.

It’s the kind of show that brings in all sorts of surly types, a junkyard of the world’s unrecyclable white-trash: Steely-eyed and grey-haired cowboys, stock-headed redneck boys, biker Barbies, studded-out metal heads, the stupefied and the just plain curious. They all turned out to see the wayward son of country music’s most famous family tree.

Hank3 began the show with a set of his more traditional country stuff, a cut of songs from his newly released double album “Ghost to a Ghost/Guttertown” and a mash of his more familiar favorites. Even then, it’s not long before the gentle toe-tapping turns into a visceral stomp. The mosh pit is in fine form — it doesn’t even take three songs for the man in front of me to get knocked out cold by a flying elbow.

This isn’t your granddaddy’s country music, especially in Hank3’s case.

The grandson of Nashville legend Hank Williams Sr., the façade of innocence that runs over all of Senior’s music is nowhere to be found here. Instead, this is pure deviance. Hank3’s songs lambast Nashville’s country elite for crimes against the genre, and tell the tales of drug abuse and violence. Macho bullshit hangs in the air and it’s rare a occurrence when one of his songs doesn’t go too far.

Hank3 no longer lives in the shadow of country royalty. But his show is enough to make you wonder about it. Was the struggle to burst out of his ancestral nostalgic haze enough to push Hank3 over the deep end?

In fairness, this is exactly why Hank3 is so loved by his fans. His music is pure gonzo rage against the unimaginative and impersonal pop-country that floods the airwaves today. Hank3 is a rare man in the country world: A man who decided to forge his own path while pushing boundaries of the genre in order to reconcile with its past — or more specifically, his past. And as he’ll let you know, you don’t have to like it.

As the music heated up, Hank3 dove straight into a set of hard driving Hellbilly speed-metal that sounds like Bill Monroe’s nightmare incarnate. The fiddle saws at your teeth, the banjo snaps prick like needles and the seismic twangs of the upright bass keeps steady command over the sway of vicious hoedown. All the while Hank3 leads by punching out massive power-chords from his electric guitar.

I find myself gradually bumped backward as the slack bodies of beaten and hopelessly drunk are spewed out toward the back. No need to worry, willing replacements continually filed forward. And skirmishes broke out everywhere when a slick layer of spilt beer made the flexing crowd smack from side to side. What began as a hard driving country concert soon turned into a metal ground battle for survival.

But as the fury reached its tipping point, Hank3 cooled things down.

After a brief intermission, Hank3 came back for a third set that saw him play all of the instruments himself. Showing off a different side to his personality, this version melted the music down into a lukewarm ooze of seeping doom metal.

A stark departure, the crowd started to slow down and many began filing for the exit. After almost three hours of continual romp; the new direction, both bizarre and bleak, amounted to a Hank3 overdose and soon I found myself looking for the doors.

And while a sizable portion of the crowd might have left early, few were left unmoved. For they had seen their twisted messiah and he let them know: there was still someone playing for them.

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