His dad has been in the news lately for saying crazy things, but Hank Williams III is really the one going off on a wild tangent these days. The son of recently ejected "Monday Night Football" theme song singer Hank Jr. -- and obviously the grandson of country music's greatest icon -- Hank III just issued four albums in one bold swoop to mark his coming out as an independent artist with his own label.
One is a collection of sludgy doom metal called "Attention Deficit Domination," while the other with his band 3 Bar Ranch features a truly bizarre blend of speed-metal and cattle auctioneering. No kidding. The other two albums, "Guttertown" and "Ghost to a Ghost," offer more straightforward and mighty impressive roundups of Hank's twangier side.
One guest you're not likely to hear on a Hank III album anytime soon is his dad, with whom he rarely sees eye-to-eye. That didn't stop No. 3 from moderately sticking up for Hank Jr., who compared President Obama to Hitler on Fox News. Now Hank III, 38, is leading a campaign to get Hank Sr. reinducted into the Grand Ole Opry (he was kicked out for drunkenness in 1952). Williams talked about all this and his frequent appearances at First Avenue, where he will return Tuesday.
On the uproar set off by his dad
"It seems to me he should've been making those comments at a NRA convention and not national television, and then it wouldn't have seemed like a big deal. ... Politics and music should only mix to a point. Me, I think my job as a musician is to make people try to forget about all that."
On his ambitious four-album indie debut
"A lot of inspiration went into it. I started writing all the material on Jan. 2. In February, I hit 'record.' In the daytime, I would be more serious and worried about tuning, pitch, being in time, doing things the right way. At nighttime, I would start working on experimental sounds for 'Guttertown,' or I would do a guitar track for the doom-metal stuff, or play drums for 3 Bar Ranch. It depended on how I felt."
On the "Cattle Callin'" record
