The Last Poke Chop

The Last Poke Chop
Hank Williams Jr. Almeria Club; Hank Williams III Lovesick, Broke & Driftin'

by Don Allred
March 20 - 26, 2002 Issue 12

Cosmic foodie junior
photo: Dan Majorie
Hank Williams Jr.
The Almeria Club Recordings
Curb
Hank Williams III
Lovesick, Broke & Driftin'
Curb


The Almeria  Club Recordings is based in and on a still extant place in which Hank Williams is said to have recorded and run from the shots of a jealous lover with first wife Audrey, for once on the same page:lore too early to be remembered by then-tot Hank Jr., yet also creative association warm enough for him to prove a somewhut unexpectedly tolerable host for most of this set's listening time. 

Junior, do you know
Michael Hurley's "I Heard the Voice of a Pork Chop"? Ah, Junior's already too busy asking hisself

tonight's first musical question:
why-o-why did he leave that last 'un, still calling, all alone on its plate.
If you are foresighted and/or reading ahead, you may be asking yourself, how,
pray tell, does Junior get from such insatiable fun to "America Will Survive," and what is
it like when he does? Well, in "Last Pork Chop," he announces, "We devoured
each other!" He indeed devours that D-word, and it's an image that (how did he
know this?) fits my own political perspective (if, you know, the White House W. son
pushes his/our sizzling, score-settling dream luck too far, also pushing back on the
cold prudence of Dadwar).
And those freshly fried carcinogens are s-o-o juicy (as life do get messy); yum. Meanwhile, Junior lets his once impregnable
Conservative/Missing Link persona bump into "The 'F' Word" (realizes: even baaad-ol'-boy
country artists dasn't use it!). So he  semi-seriously "counsels" Kid Rock, who's half straight
outta his own roots-therapeutic Cocky, and much more audible when they duet on
CMTs concert series "Crossroads." And in "If the Good Lord's
Willin' (and the Creeks Don't Rise)," Junior draws some swing out of Hank Sr.'s
 (previously unset) lyrics; via jazzy little countermoves, star-spangled-'n'-ready for
that uppity creek.

The centerpiece is "Tee Tot Song," named after the street singer Rufus Payne,
whom child-father Hank Sr. followed around. This could've sunk the whole album
in mawk---O Lawd, Flag(s?)-bearer follows in footsteps of learnin'-hungry Daddy
and his Authentic Old Blues Man---but when Junior, playing his resonator guitar,
 gently and fearlessly persists with "Won't you Show me/ Show me/Show me,"
 he tilts my view-finder, sets me (and here-denoted  "little Hiram-Hank"), down into
"Get your peanuts, fresh peanuts,"
Daddy Govt. Name Hiram's own blues-spun pitch, as cosmic foodie Junior can't fail to note.

So he's got me there, and then (still in the midst of the resonating headspace named
 for the  joint his parents sometimes played, also fled, for once on the same side of the gun,
 even if as a Coalition of the Unwilling) comes that "Cross on the Highway," something
else Hank Jr.'s learned the hard way to see, since two of his close friends
were killed in a car crash. A gospel choir (and a searchlight church organ) help
him through, but you can hear "Highway" 's still grieving, swaying cry, again
breaking through the massing acoustic-to-electric "When the Levee Breaks"
chords (and other measure-for-measured accruals/reprisals) of "America Will
Survive." It's the courage of this song, rising above the isolationist fantasy of
his original "A Country Boy Will Survive," that makes it so powerful, and then
so disturbing. He just seems too sure of himself now, and of us (Americans, that is).

Which is why, after yet another reasonably satisfying spin, I'm never sorry to leave
 The Almeria Club..., and go meet up with Hank III, out on the road. He's a foot soldier,
 anthem-less, frankly Lovesick, Broke & Driftin'. Still, even with "7 Months, 39 Days"
 to go, he thumps an empty jug high/low, till time to get "pure drunk in
the Mississippi mud," like Hank Sr. hardly ever sang about doing, much less enjoying.
 But then, Hank III doesn't have Sr.'s Wife/Mother Demon Muse to attract lightning bolts of
inspiration either.
Nor does he  have his own father Randall Hank Jr. (born sic, though Sr. was indeed
a born Hiram)'s self-described earliest memory-cloud incl. being dressed like
 the Daddy he says he's never remembered at all, and being led on stage to the cheers of his
Daddy's fans.
No concept (except mebbe "no concept") album here: This horndawg
lives song by song, calling through dustbowl afterimages of his granpaw. Possibly
creeping out sleek Daddy Junior, who hangs more with (self-anointed) "rebel son"
Kid Rock.

Hank III's press releases say he only gave up the "$50 punk gigs" because of
a paternity suit "and a $300-a-week pot habit." So, hats off to the possibly
future Hank IV---"He don't have my name, but he's out there"--- for helping
hemp pull his moseyin' biological, officially and previously known as Sheldon, from the grave of---
 an untitled life---?
 III also states that he's got a rock album which (Hanks-personas-"conserving")
Curb Records won't release. Once, on "Trashville," he does use ZZ Top's Billy F. Gibbons
 as a no-frills-flight chordal backdrop, wheeling around  the speed trap,
while III growls about real country—
he's a big Misfits fan, and this is "real country" to him. All reports indicate that he rocks quite
thrashily in clubs (after the rent party-ready country set), so that's another reason
for staying on or near the road, the trail---where his tumbleweed tail brushes right by the likes of Mike
Curbdawg. All his breakups and crack-ups are behind him. And ahead,
 to some extent (it's nature's way).

Hank III does venture into Babylon once, stepping up to Lovesick's own killer finale,
"Atlantic City," the only non-overloaded version of this Broooce-song I've heard.
 III just tells his girl, forthrightly, almost lightly at first, about all the crazy stuff that's
been happening in the casinos: mob hits, snitches, like that. He gets more
rueful with "I got debts no honest man can pay," but he knows he's gotta face
'em. He's still talking to her, steering her along, he and we and she are
getting almost too used to the ongoing Situation, till he suddenly gives out a very
brief, Hank Sr.-worthy "yodel." The instruments echo and extend his blue note,
in slow motion. The fiddle steadies, carries Hank III and his silent
companion into another, eerier view of his repeated instructions,
"Put your makeup on, fix your hair up pretty, and meet me tonight,
in Atlantic City." The couple
stops to look in the same direction Hank Jr.'s pointing, all along the prime
cut of "this whole land." But what's past that? Anything? You din't tell us,
Unca Sam Rebel Yankee Doodle Daddy Hank Junior!
"Now, why did I lee-eave, that last poke chop?"

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