A country punk rocker was in town and he certainly ain't no ordinary country musician. Hank Williams, III is the black sheep in country and he does it his way and that deserves respect.
The gig was split into 3 sets: semi-traditional country, hellbilly and metal. The only break between the 3 sets were 5 minutes between the hellbilly and metal set, because there were some minor stage modifications, due to the band being trimmed down to 4 members instead of 6. The total playing time was 2h30, with the country set lasting about 1h30.
The country set was played with Hank on guitar and his band (drums, stand-up bass, violin, steel-guitar and banjo.) The band was really great and very tight. We were served stuff from the 2008 record Damn Right, Rebel Proud like P.F.F, 3 Shades of Black, Long Hauls and Close Calls, Six Pack Of Beer, but we also got lots of older songs like the crowd pleaser Dick In Dixie. Assjack co-singer Gary Lindsey joined in on several songs providing grunts and howls and completely fucked up behavior only adding more fuel to an already great party.
The hellbilly set started immediately after the country set, and Hank now picked up an electric guitar and the rest of the band started to torture their instruments several times harder. Unfortunately it started to go downhill quality wise from there on. Hank and his band are absolutely brilliant when playing their rocking version of country, but the hellbilly set just didn't have enough great songs, and the band seemed somewhat unable to play this type of music to a fully satisfying level. They started to sound like a mediocre punk band and that was a bit of a shame considering how great the first set had been.
When the third set kicked off we were in for one surreal show. Gary Lindsey was back in full effect. The band was trimmed down to drums, electric bass and hank on guitar and vocals. Gary went absolutely fucking nuts from the first second and he stage dived fearlessly and crashed around on the stage that was turning into a small lake from all the beers that were constantly flying through the air. The mosh pit reached dangerous levels and for a while it was very amusing and fucking far out to observe. Unfortunately the music was of very little interest, and it lacked any great ideas or melodies. Quite a few people began to leave the venue during this gig and it's a bit of a shame really, but you can't really blame them. It was a very strange experience this Hank III gig, starting from excellent and ending rather low on the scale.
All in all it was very entertaining and had hilariously amusing moments, and I'm glad that I went to see it. I'm however quite sure that I'll stick to Hank's country records and leave his Assjack experiment alone. It just didn't have the same quality to it. Now, it wouldn't hurt if Jason & The Scorchers would come back to Copenhagen sometime soon, so we can get a bit more of that cow punk feeling around here.
The support band Bob Wayne played a very good rocking country gig and the majority of people - that hadn't showed up yet during this gig - missed out on a great band.
Rating: 
Band: Hank Williams III
Venue: Vega, Copenhagen, DK
Concert Date: 2009-08-25
Support Band: Bob Wayne
Ticket Price (DKK): 185
Ticket Provider: Billetlugen
Content Type: Concert Review
Language: 
Updated: 2009-08-26 19:43
Created: 2009-08-26 00:08
