Nashville, TN (Top40 Charts/ Vintage Guitar Magazine) - All you have to do is take one glance at a few of the song titles on
Rebel Within-"Getting' Drunk And Fallin' Down," "Rebel Within," "Tore Up And Loud" and "Drinkin' Over Mama"-and you have a good idea who wrote them: Hank Williams III. The new songs, and others like them, are from his upcoming album
Rebel Within, which hits stores May 25 (Sidewalk Records).
Music from the new album will be heard on the June 13 episode of HBO's hit series "True Blood."
Nashville native Hank Williams III has built his musical brand around hard-hitting songs, an ornery Hellbilly attitude and a do-it-yourself ethos, as he wrote 10 of the album's 11 original tracks, did the vocals, played drums and the acoustic rhythm guitar parts. And he recorded and produced the album at his home studio. "I don't like being told what to do, and I don't need to be told what my record should sound like," says Hank. "I got that covered."
A progenitor of the Hellbilly movement, Hank III has released six albums since his 1999 debut, including 2008's country/rock/metal Damn Right, Rebel Proud (of which Randy Lewis of the Los Angeles Times said, "...he careens from the stone country remorse of 'I Wish I Knew' to the psychobilly ode to the truck driving man of 'H8 Line to the 10-minute, three-movement nose-thumbing epic "P.F.F." offered in tribute to G.G. Allin") and 2009's punk/metal-infused Assjack.
His refusal to confine himself to one musical genre is evident in his live performances, where he often does three-hour shows: he starts off with a country set, followed by a louder hillbilly set, which culminates with a set with his band Assjack.
"I give everybody some of what they came for," says Hank. "You can't say I don't work hard and give all I got."
The 12-city Crazed Canada Tour launches Friday, June 4 at The Opera House in Toronto, ON and continues through the end of the month. This event will be "an evening with"-no opener, just pure Hellbilly rage all night.
The venture will take III's tour bus out to the West Coast for a Saturday, June 19th engagement in Vancouver, BC. Learn more at Hank3.com.
