Taste Of Country's
Billy Dukes certainly achieved a coup with his terrific interview with Hank Williams, Jr. yesterday and it was terrific to learn that Hank Jr. is in a good space these days as he contemplates working only 10% of the days in the coming year.
Meanwhile, the revelation that he likes Eric Church and doesn't "listen to today’s country radio, so I am not sure who gets played and who doesn’t … I really don’t give a s—!" shouldn't be major news to anyone.
Church is today's incarnation of what Hank Jr. brought to country radio three decades ago and it's always been an important part of our mix.
Thankfully, there isn't much guitar-based rock on the radio dial today other than on country music stations so - if you love it too - we are the exclusive purveyor, which is a nice competitive place to be. However, I doubt that Williams Jr. disdains Carrie Underwood and Taylor Swift any more than he once did Gary Morris, Crystal Gayle and K. T. Oslin back in their heyday.
He has never been what you'd call a 'radio-friendly' artist.
If you're a brand manager who came to country in the last 25 years and you ever have an opportunity to catch Hank Jr. either close up in an intimate setting or in front of a huge arena crowd, prepare to be blown away.
His talents are massive.
However, at the very start, don't be surprised if he kicks off his performance by demonstrating his life-long bad boy "don't give a s---!" attitude before getting down to the business of entertaining as only he can do.
Bocephus, I don't think you
ever spent much time listening to the mix of music on commercial radio. Or, if you did you'd never admit it as Taste of Country just demonstrated, but the smartest among us
are still listening to you!
1 comment:
“Stop and think it over,” the big man with the hat and glasses has asked, from a thousand stages, in front of millions of people. “Try to put yourself in my position.”
We can’t. We can imagine, but we can’t know. We can’t know what it’s like to be the only son of Hank Williams, the long gone and lonesome singer whose brief life transformed country music. We can’t know what it’s like to be linked to such a transformative force by blood and name but not by memory, to learn about a famous father from books and photos and others’ stories: Hank Williams died at age 29, when his son was three-years-old.
We can’t know what it was like to wrestle with that legacy, to try to honor all that came before, but not wind up a pale approximation of country’s greatest ghost.
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