At Venue on Saturday, June 19

There was an interesting assortment of concertgoers coagulating on the Granville Mall outside Venue before last Saturday’s Hank Williams III gig. You had your hard-core punk-metal fans with their neon-blue coifs and crusty jean vests dotted with Dayglo Abortions and Cannibal Corpse patches, who roamed among the alt-country crowd, who were in worn-out cowboy hats and embroidered western shirts. Then along came that permanent fixture on the local concert scene, former CiTR Powerchord cohost Gerald Rattlehead, with his fuzzy hair and his Rush buttons and his Blackfoot T-shirt from the 1980 Tomcattin’ tour. He bragged about scoring a dozen autographs off of Williams when he ambushed him earlier in the day, and raved about how he was “super-nice”. That description didn’t exactly jibe with what I’d heard about Hank Williams’s grandson being an ornery son of a bitch, but as I’d learn later on, you can’t always believe the hype.

According to Venue’s official set times, Williams’s punk-metal act Assjack was supposed to go on at 7 p.m., followed by his country group at 8. But the artist in question is known for playing by his own rules, so it was no real surprise when he took the stage with bandmates toting banjos and fiddles and started things off with the title track of his 2006 shit-kicker opus, Straight to Hell.

“This is for the moonshiners, bootleggers, and all you crazy-ass pot smokers out there,” he declared before “Smoke & Wine”, another Straight to Hell track about two of his favourite things. Unlike most touring artists with new product to flog, Williams made no mention of his latest album, Rebel Within. He limited his self-promotion to inviting the crowd to sing along on the title track, the result being a bar full of pissed-up rowdies shouting: “I’m drunk (again)/You’re stoned (again)/Let’s fuck (again)/Till dawn (again).” It was about that time that the churning mosh pit started to resemble a square dance in hell.

After an hour or so of his traditional country stylings, Williams traded in his cowboy hat and acoustic six-string for a trucker’s cap and a black electric guitar. Assjack vocalist Gary Lindsey—who had made an appearance earlier in the night—hopped back up to scream his guts out as the group switched gears from outlaw country to thrashy hellbilly. By then, there wasn’t much point in having banjo player Daniel Mason in the lineup, but the sight of him hopelessly picking away amid the chain-saw-like din did lead to a few chuckles.

After a few more grinding, fast-paced numbers that caused the right hand of standup steel player Andy Gibson to become a blur, Williams announced that he’d be back after a five-minute break. Before long Assjack hit the stage, but as the quintet blasted out its savagely monotonous punk-metal noise, I kept wondering where the hell Hank had gotten to. Turned out Williams had unravelled the single braid that normally runs down his back and now had a Cousin It–like curtain of hair obscuring his face.

The only part of the Assjack show that didn’t grate on me was when the band played a few bars of the Beatles’ “I Want You (She’s So Heavy)”. But most of the crowd loved it, and when the gig ended Williams rewarded them by inviting everyone “around back” for an impromptu meet ’n’ greet. Minutes later, the grimy alley behind the bar was packed with about 200 joyful fans gathered around their rebel hero, who signed countless autographs and posed for photos as if there was nothing he’d rather do in the world.

At one point, some knob in a flashy white sports car thought he could disrupt the celebration and cut through the alley, but there was no room. The driver tried inching his way forward until someone hollered that he wasn’t going anywhere with the band loading up gear anyway. Thwarted, he started carelessly backing out onto Smithe and almost hit a Hank III fan, who gave the immaculate machine a righteous pounding with his fist. Final score: shit-kickers one, knob zero.