Saturday night, the wife and I braved the torrential downpour and ventured out to the State Theatre to see Hank III and his traveling band. Due to some issues with openers in the past few months, Hank is currently (and for the unforeseeable future) touring without any opening acts, which would normally make me pretty happy but III has a history of bringing some pretty good bands out on the road with him. Anyhow, due to the aforementioned rains, we arrived frighteningly late and worried about having missed the beginning of the show only to find ourselves standing around for a good hour, making the lack of an opener even more painful. [All photos by Jeff O'Kelley.]
Some of you might be wondering, given my stance on III’s recent albums, why I would even bother going to a III show at all. Well, truth is, the fact that the wife and I would get in for free certainly aided in the decision, but there’s also the fact that I’ve never said the dude puts on a bad show. No. Redundant topics and tired material aside, Hank III live is still a show worth going to see and this especially rainy Saturday night was no different.
Once the band took the stage, the format was pretty standard: country, Hellbilly, country and Assjack. Hank took the stage and immediately took command of what had to be a capacity crowd. The opening country set came in pretty short, with the band only playing three or four numbers before being joined on stage by Assjack frontman Gary Lindsey [pictured after the jump] for the Hellbilly set.
Now, I gotta say, I’ve seen Hank III a lot of times, and this was probably the best Hellbilly set I’ve ever seen from him.
This article appears in Aug 26 – Sep 1, 2010.