If You Don't Like Hank Williams...

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!

It's "Hankless Monday" #2

The first thing about the whole brouhaha which makes much sense to me in any other way than just a whole bunch of folks going for publicity is this morning's RBR-TVBR observation:

"We got a lot of comments on the original story as to why ESPN decided to take a stance on this, either way, considering it was not even said on their network. But who knows what sort of comments (and from whom) they had been receiving on their end. Most likely most of them were in favor of pulling the song. Perhaps if Williams had issued a true apology, it could have been different."

The dust up seems to me like a huge coup for Hank, since he hasn’t gotten this much media coverage (he's on The View and Hannity tomorrow) in many years and will probably help ESPN too when after awhile they kiss and make up, getting even more publicity when they do.

Meanwhile, it brought up once again the old canard that “Clear Channel banned the Dixie Chicks from radio.”

Not true and Ed Schultz and Holland Cooke of all people should remember that Cox and Cumulus wouldn’t use the word “banned” of course, but they were the only two companies I know of to decide at the corporate level not to play the Chicks anymore, citing persuasive listener research. Clear Channel left it up to individual stations, yet they keep getting blamed, proving that myths often resonate longer and louder than truths.

No one ever said life was always supposed to make sense.