Some of folk’s most versatile players band together again for a 22nd memorable tribute to an American legend.
For a guy who only lived to the age of 29 and had a series of health and addiction travails during his achingly short career, there aren’t many other American musicians that are as openly and lovingly revered as Hiram King “Hank” Williams.
I mean, the list of music legends that Williams has knowingly and admittedly influenced is simply staggering, and includes Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash, Jerry Lee Lewis, Bob Dylan, George Jones and the Rolling Stones, among many others. Williams has been inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame (1961), the Songwriters Hall of Fame (1970), and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame (1987), and his songs are still covered by bands all over the world in bars, honkytonks, theaters and arenas. His presence can often be felt every time someone somewhere gets up onstage and plays, with perhaps the best immortalization songs being done by Waylon Jennings with his #1 hit from 1975, “Are You Sure Hank Done It This Way” and the late 80’s similarly-titled offering from The Blue Chieftains, “I Think Hank Woulda Done It This Way.” Williams’ music has stood the test of time, and is as admired as it has ever been.
All that is why it’s no surprise that Hank Williams tribute shows pop up from time to time, but none have been more engaging and full of sheer talent than the one that shows up in Alexandria every year, and this year’s show is no exception. The 22nd Annual Hank Williams Tribute on Sunday December 30th at the Birchmere features some familiar faces from past tributes as well as some exciting new ones. and once again, it’s being spearheaded by longtime folksters Cathy Fink and Marcy Marxer, whose love of Williams’ music comes down to one thing basically: the heart and soul of his music.
“I think for me, Hank Williams is the best country songwriter that ever lived,” Fink said. “He was able to take the essence of the heart and condense it into incredibly simple, beautiful, accessible songs. There are certainly other great songwriters, but I think everyone who writes a country song strives to be as good as Hank Williams. If you take the song ‘I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry’ as an example, that song actually only has eleven distinctly different lines because ‘I’m so lonesome I could cry’ is at the end of each verse. He says it all in eleven lines. At the same time, he wasn’t without having a bunch of honkytonk fun that shows off all of his repertoire. Songs like ‘Setting the Woods on Fire’ and ‘Jambalaya’ and stuff like that. But I think for me it’s just sort of the ability to connect with other people who are feeling like that. Hank thought of himself as a storyteller, and certainly many good country songs that aren’t just all out party songs are telling a story. Many of them tell similar stories about heartache, heartbreak, breaking up, all that kind of thing. I just think Hank did it the best.
“It’s not lost on admirers like Fink what Williams accomplished in his short time on earth, and amidst some real challenges to boot. It makes his legacy even more startling and poignant.
“When you look at what he accomplished in that small period of time, and how he accomplished it in many ways under great duress, it’s just stunning. He had health issues all his life, and it’s a toss up how many of his medication and alcohol problems were self medication for pain as well as greedy people insisting that doctors medicate him enough to keep him on the roads so everybody is making money, I think his life itself is a very tragic story that leaves behind this amazing repertoire.”
This year, the tribute has familiar faces like music mainstays Robin and Linda Williams, and a new addition in The Kennedys, who bring a varied and talented skill set to the show and include DC native Pete Kennedy. But whether they’ve done this tribute before, or are new to it, Hank Williams’ music has been part of their lives for many years.
“I come to Hank Williams the way most people come to Hank Williams,” Robin Williams said, “having heard his songs at some point in time. How Hank was able to…especially on some of the real touching ones like ‘I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry’ or something like that, you hear lines like ‘the silence of a falling star lights up an evening sky and as I wonder where you are, I’m so lonesome I could cry.” You hear something like that and you think to yourself, where the heck did that come from and what else does this guy got out there? And then you start this investment. What it is, is an investment of your time and your energy. But you realize as you get into it and you learn from it and you’re singing these songs, it’s a creative investment. Because it helps you as a songwriter, it helps you as a singer, it helps you as a guitar player.”
Pete Kennedy and musical partner & wife Maura are newbies to the tribute, but their presence is eagerly anticipated by the tribute’s veteran leader.
“When I first moved to the Washington area, Pete was one of the first musicians I was drawn to,” said Fink. “Long ago, Pete and Marcy and I were in a band that Pete led called Rhythm Ranch, and we did all kinds of Country and Western sling and stuff like that. Once he moved out of the area, we only see him once in a while, but his duo with Maura is fantastic. So I’m pretty excited that we get to work with Pete and Maura.”
Kennedy eloquently echoes his comrades in that it’s really the simple nature of what Williams created that is his bestowed musical treasure. And yes, that same classic, sad and lonely Williams song pops up once again as a prime example of the man’s tender genius, and his influence on the tribute’s performers.
“It’s really because of the simplicity of what Hank did,” Kennedy said. “I mean, if you can write a song like ‘I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry,’ I mean that’s just very direct, it’s very simple. And 100 years from now, people are going to respond to that the same way they did in the early ’50s. So I think that Hank’s direct simplicity and the sincerity of what he did and also his delivery, there’s sort of no distance between him and the character singing the song. You don’t know whether he is singing as himself or whether he came up with a good idea for his song because he’s completely invested in the song all the time. And so that sets a high bar, I think when you do covers of his songs, you don’t want to fool around with them, you want to really present them with the same sincerity that he did and I think that’s what we’re going to go for at that show. They’re very deep songs. A lot of them are very simple, but they’re very deep.”
There’s nothing like seeing great performers roll a Hank song or two at their show, but to have these truly stellar musicians all together — and literally, it will be the first time three duos will be onstage at the same time for some of this tribute — playing a whole evening of his music, well, it is a true homage to the magic of Hank Williams’ short but timeless legacy.
“To me, when you look at repertoires that stand the test of time,” Fink proudly said, “when people are still singing these songs, 50, 60, 70 years from now, Hank Williams songs are going to be sung forever. In the same way that Beatles songs that were created, also within a very short, 10-year period of time, will be sung forever. In the same way that certain songs from the great American songbook that Frank Sinatra and Ella Fitzgerald sang from, those songs will be around forever. And if you had to pick one country music songwriter to represent country music, in the history of country music, I would pick Hank.”
The 22nd Annual Hank Williams Tribute Show is Sunday December 30th at the Birchmere, 3701 Mount Vernon Avenue, Alexandria VA 22305. For tickets, click here.
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