We phone Hank III the day he’s leaving for a four week tour and he’s having a little problem locating his band members… Yet he takes time out for us, the lowly BCR…
BCR: You seem to quite a fractured personality with your music. On the one hand you have a fairly family-traditional approach to the music with your country rock band Damn Band, you veer off into punk with Ass jack and with Arson Anthem you’ve once again proven your salt as a heavy punk metal player. Where does your cold heart lie?
H: I don’t know where my heart lies – I’m a drummer. When they’re all in the pit, they're more lethal there in the pit, during the drama. That’s what I do and that’s what I’ve grown up on. That’s why I love Metal, stoner rock and speed metal and buegrass and jazz and all this shit because of playing the drums.
BCR: So you’ve got the beat underneath everything?
H: Yeah…You know, most of the time I’m just at the house, playin’ by myself, recording songs and doing all this shit so it’s hard to say where my heart really lies..
Hank III has to get the door….
H: Sorry Godamnit! It’s a clusterfuck here. I’ve found two of ‘em… I’m my own road manager, I’m my own tour manager, I don’t have a manager right now and I’m tryin’ to set up the whole crew, you know, I’m pickin’ up six people and tryin’ ta… eeeurrgghhhh… do the business. I found two of them and I’ve got a poster with a pentagram and a confederate flag on it that I’m gonna make one of them hold out the window that says Hank III and Assjack and keep drivin’ around in circles.
BCR: Are you going to do that for next week?
H: I’m gonna make ‘em do it for the next FOUR weeks, we always tour for at least four to eight weeks.
BCR: So how long was the tour that you just came off of?
H: We did a four week tour, we’ve been home maybe eight days and now we’re getting ready to do the big 24 shows in 27 days. The body is hating me.
BCR: You’ve been touring now for almost thirteen years, as my research puts it – what keeps you going while out on the road?
H: Well… In a bus on the road. There was a time before that. At least twelve years as Hank III touring. Not including all the other bands I was in before.
BCR: How many is that? I know Damn Band, Assjack, your new one Arson Anthem. I know you’ve done allot of collaborations. So what’s your estimate?
H: Well, besides what you talked about theres one called The Unholy Three, which is basically all my Stoner stuff, um… I go by that name under acoustic darker sounds like Johnny Cash slash Nick Cave kinda stuff. Um.. That’s the Unholy Three and I’m in another band with a friend called Siopus that I’m uptight for right now. These are all bands that I’ve got recorded on my machine. I had the lead singer of Route Three come by the house and we did some weird Spanish fucking acoustic shit.. I don’t know..
BCR: Spanish?
H: (laughing).. I dunno… I have allot of players that come through and I capture allot of things and in time.. one day, I’ll be able to release it or I’ll release the bootleg box set that’s gonna include everything I’ve been in that goes back to me jamming at twelve years old in punk bands. Acting like punks in the garage. I document everything and that’s me tryin’ to get everything out there.
BCR: Keep BCR in mind when that comes out.
H: Oh, I will..
BCR: With all your troubles with Curb I wonder when you’re going to start your own label. You have so much material to start it off with, other peoples stuff and your own. Is it a contractual thing with Curb or have you just not been able to get around to it?
H: Every time I deal with Curb, it’s dealin’ with lawyers and different issues that hold you back. Holding down the process. That’s what’s goin’ on. I’m still waitin’ for Billy F. Gibbons to be on the record, you know, he got taken off the record even though they had his name eight months before it came out on the stall. How do you miss Billy fucking Gibbons? You know? They knew the name, they knew what was up. I got two to four more years to deal with them. I don’t have any management behind me, I don’t have a publicist, I’ve never really had a right hand man to really step up and do nothing but talk about us for four to six hours a day on the phone for four days a week. That’s what it takes to really ride some shit up and I do the best that I can being busy all the time, being stoned all the time and rocking out and giving my energy and fuckin’… then tryin’ to play drums and tryin’ to be in five different bands and you know… As Philip Anselmo from Pantera says “the day Hank Williams the Third has to do nothing but concentrate on music is a fucking scary day”… And that’s true. That’s fucking true. Cos I’m not supposed to be dealing with this shit. I know how it works.
BCR: they were going to give you the master for “Straight to Hell” to do a boot. What happened with that? I know there’s a grass roots there and to a lesser extent in England. Someone would have picked you up…
H: Yes. Well, we have a following that…We’re talkin’ about a record that’s made it to places in Europe I can’t even pronounce and it’s an illegal record that’s out there and I haven’t even made that many copies of it. On boot three I hand made 10, 000 copies and put it out there but the record that’s really getting into some of the cracks out there is “This Ain’t Country” and that says allot in itself. But it goes back to we have that song that’s holding us down because we talk about sex, drugs and satanism and all this bullshit, you know. You cross that line and you’re Un-American… They can fuck you over. Especially being from where I’m from. Everywhere you going there’s a fuckin’ church or everybody’s saying ok, it’s fine… Slayer’s never played in Nashville for a reason. We had a band called I Hate God and we had Pantera come through here. But the thumb is being held down on us, full on. Because I’ve been breakin’ thought and speaking your mind and in the country community… The Metal community know what’s going on.
BCR: There’s been allot of Blackshirts coming into your shows so the word of mouth is spreading. I know that allot of European bands aren’t allowed into the country because the frontlines have been told their lyrics aren’t conducive. I would have thought Europe would be better for a person like you.
H: well, it’ll be interesting to see those kinda kids in black because the last time I was through there it was almost Granma and Grandad and it was kinda like… well, Hank Williams was not what we were. Assjack did get to play a couple of side stages and did get to show up as Assjack…
BCR: Is this Glastonbury?
H; Yeah. And then, when we finally showed up the goddamn stage shut down for twenty minutes and then we had twenty minutes left and that was it. After that I said I was never gonna go back to Europe until a rock record is released. But through the underground it’s started to make it work, from working with Anselmous, Drug Ritual and all the Downs fans. Arson Anthem and working with Danzig and all that shit we’re getting’ to the darker side over there. We’re lookin’ forward to it, but we shoulda been over there this year but the kinda people I’ve got workin’ for me ain’t worth a fuck, we didn’t make it to Canada this year, we didn’t get to Japan or Europe or Australia or anywhere. That just shows that we’re lookin’ for a Colonel Parker. Someone who can be your right hand man, that doesn’t give a fuck about what I say. Because I do push the envelope or whatever and I can’t have someone sitting down and censoring me. Best advice! Out of Branson, Missouri, way fucking back in the day; the best thing to do is just leave him alone and let him do his thing.. And that’s it. It ain’t that hard. It’s right around the corner, I’ve been talkin’ to ‘em. But we’re tryin’ to find a captain for the ship.
