The Ghost

Thanks to GQ for posting one of the best profiles I've ever read. Here's (circa '00, I think) Elizabeth Gilbert: I say, "Just speak your mind, Hank-3. Don't let me stop you."

Me and the grandson of Hank Williams are sitting in some honky-tonk dive in downtown Nashville, listening to some mediocre band churn through some weepy old set of country-music standards. The grandson of Hank Williams bears the Christian name Shelton Hank Williams, but he is better known around these parts as Hank-3, so that's why I call him that. Me and everyone else in this bar. Who have all recognized him on sight. Hank-3 is a little hard to miss, mind you. He's the only six-foot-two-inch, 144-pound, twangy-voiced, heavily tattooed, longhaired skeleton walking around Nashville these days who looks exactly like Hank Williams. And you cannot hide the face of Hank Williams in this town. It would be like if Elvis Presley had a dead-ringer grandson who someday tried to walk around Memphis without getting any attention. Not a chance. Heads would turn, jaws drop.

Tonight the grandson of Hank Williams is perched on barstool, balancing on his bony ass, smoking cigarettes as if there were some kind of contest for it and drinking whiskey just as competitively. And he's bitching about his recording label, Curb Records. He's griping about what a hard time he had getting Curb to put even a measly three of his own songs on his debut album (which is a very impressive and totally rocking country production called Risin' Outlaw—and the three original cuts are the very best part of it, thank you very much). Hank-3 seemes to have never heard that tenet about not telling journalists every single little thing you think, do or want, which is why he's saying, "These people at Curb are all fucking assholes. The next album I'm doing, it's all gonna be filled with all my own songs, or fuck them and I'll see you in court. Because this is fucking bullshit. They tried to make my album commercial and radio-friendly, and that is not what I am all about, man. And now the radio doesn't even play my shit anyhow. So what was the fucking point?"

I say, "Just speak your mind, Hank-3. Don't let me stop you."