Hank Williams Jr scores No 1 album

Rich White Honky Blues debuts at No. 1

Hank Williams Jr. has been one of country music’s truest outlaws for over half a century, and with Rich White Honky Blues, the 72-year-old legend proves he is the bluesman, Thunderhead Hawkins, as his 12-song collection debuts at No. 1 on the Current Country, Americana/Folk and Blues Albums charts, along with reaching No. 2 on the Current Rock and Record Label Independent Current Albums charts.

“This is beyond my wildest dreams,” Williams shared upon receiving the news his debut blues album topped the charts across multiple genres. “What a great feeling.”

Rich White Honky Blues is available now via Easy Eye Sound. GRAMMY-winning Producer of the Year Dan Auerbach recorded the set live over three days, with a dozen songs, reprising classics from Robert Johnson, Lightnin’ Hopkins, R.L. Burnside, Muddy Waters, Big Joe Turner, and a few from Bocephus himself.

With a wicked core of electric slide guitarist Kenny Brown (claimed as “my adopted son” by Burnside), bassist Eric Deaton (who first toured with Fat Possum’s Juke Joint Caravan, backing up T-Model Ford and Paul “Wine” Jones), plus drummer Kinney Kimbrough (son of North Mississippi blues legend Junior Kimbrough), Williams, Auerbach and the band tapped into the lifeblood of the blues.

From the vocal and gut-string bounce of opening track “.44 Special Blues” (Johnson’s “32-20 Blues”), caught on the fly and viscerally gutting the betrayal and consequence rejoinder to a cheating woman, Williams’ vocals are potent, earthy, brash and lascivious. With Burnside’s “Georgia Women” leaning heavily into Williams’ delta blues influences, featuring an explosive dose of slide guitar magic, along with the high-tempo blues burner “Fireman Ring The Bell,” plus the chicken-scratching burn of Big Joe Turner’s metaphoric “TV Mama,” the delectability is greasy, trenchant, built to slather on a too-hot Saturday night.

And those vintage nuggets set the stage for Williams’ own songs.

“It’s that rawness, and how real it is. I was always searching for the rawness, the darkest stuff,” shares Auerbach. “Once we were in it, as soon as we started playing, Hank was invested. That lifted everybody else up, to really push each other.”

A minor-key tempest with a touch of smoke – recalling The Allman Brothers Band’s debt to the blues, “I Like It When It’s Stormy” faces down the rugged breaks and bad women who show a man his mettle, while the vamping “My Name Is Bocephus” redux “Call Me Thunderhead” throttles poseurs and pretenders to not just his throne but Williams’ famed blues doppelganger Thunderhead Hawkins, slicing into the electric blues that’s as much molten Chicago as North Mississippi’s finest.

“You bring who you are,” Williams says, chuckling. “All that… all… of… that… is where my music comes from. When we got into the studio, the more we played, the deeper we got – and the deeper we got, the harder I wanted to go. Those songs just fit the moment.”

The syncopated title track with its blaring electric guitar and rubber bassline may be the most Bocephus of them all. Making the blues an equal opportunity proposition, not just the outpost for the destitute and downtrodden, “Rich White Honky Blues” twines good sex and being cut off as the howling leveler of men regardless of circumstances, as well as serving as a roll call of the artists who twisted him into the man he is today.

“It is what it is,” Williams adds, still laughing. “You know, that’s the thing. Blues is what it is – and whoever you are, there’s a dose with your name on it. You can let it knock you down, or you can stand up and play the guitar, witness to what happened and throw down hard to get rid of it.”

Buddy Iahn
Buddy Iahn

Buddy Iahn founded The Music Universe when he decided to juxtapose his love of web design and music. As a lifelong drummer, he decided to take a hiatus from playing music to report it. The website began as a fun project in 2013 to one of the top independent news sites. Email: info@themusicuniverse.com