The list of musicians I want to see at least once grows smaller and smaller each year. Last year I was able to cross Chuck Berry and George Jones (or at least a full Jones show...I'd seen him at the Opry twice) off the list, and, as of this past Saturday I can now put a line through "Hank Williams Jr."
I probably could've put a line through Bocephus's name a long time ago, but I can't be 100% sure. I have a vague recollection of seeing Hank Jr. at the tragically long-gone country music festivals in Hunter, NY, that used to be held every summer. I wasn't much of a country fan growing up, so I didn't really appreciate how great those festivals were. Toward the end of their run, I did wise up and wound up seeing Willie Nelson and Johnny Cash (and the Carter Sisters), though I spent so much time getting in position to get Johnny to sign things that I didn't spend nearly enough time enjoying the show. I've got some cool Johnny Cash autographs, but, looking back, it would've been cooler to pay more attention to the show and have memories of that. To make matters worse, I think I totally missed Waylon Jennings right after Cash one year. And, on a far more embarrassing note, I paid full attention to a Sawyer Brown show right after they won "Star Search." Boy, did I love "Smokin' in the Rockies."
Anyway, back to Hank Jr. I seem to remember hearing him sing "Family Tradition" at Hunter, as I can recall trying to figure out the call-and-response going on in the first part of the chorus. So you don't have to do the same, it goes like this:
Why do you drink?
To get drunk
Why do you roll smoke?
To get high
Why must you live out the songs you wrote?
To get laid
Since this call-and-response thing only happens when Bocephus is among his rowdy friends in concert, I went awhile before I could figure out what was being said. If I'd had the Internet back then, I could've figured that out in seconds.
"Family Tradition" came back into my ears when I bought the legendary "Celebrities at Their Worst" CDs, specifically Volume 2, which featured Hank Jr. drunkenly slurring his way through a version of the song in which he tells his band to "turn that shit way, waay down," suggests that Garth Brooks would like to fellate him, and, well, says a lot of other things I'm not comfortable putting down in this blog. Suffice it to say that it is a genius performance that made me obsessed with learning more about Bocephus.
He's got an interesting life story, but you know how to use Google if you're interested in all that. For the purposes of this blog, all you need to know is I have a weird obsession with Hank Jr., own two dancing and singing Bocephi (see above), and spent $73 on a round-trip bus ticket to Albany on Saturday to see him open for Lynyrd Skynyrd on the Rowdy Frynds Tour.
***
When I arrived in Albany, I walked right into the block party that some local radio stations were sponsoring before the evening's show at the Times-Union Center (formerly the Pepsi Arena, originally the Knickerbocker Arena). The show wasn't set to start for another two hours or so, so I had plenty of time to kill. I checked in at the box office to see what the ticket situation was, and after coming real close to making the asinine decision to pay $69.50 for a real good floor seat, I decided to stop and think it over (I eventually wound up buying a ticket in the cheap seats for $20 from a guy looking to unload a couple of seats closer to showtime). When I made my way back to the block party, I checked out the official tour merch set up outside the arena, realized that my unwillingness to wear a confederate flag on my body was going to be a problem, and then headed back to the street to listen to the Back Forty Band play the latest and greatest in country hits, including, joy of joy, Garth Brooks's "The Thunder Rolls." But I entertained myself by reading T-shirts and watching a guy dressed up as Vegas Elvis gyrate around the street. Actually, it's kind of inaccurate to say he was dressed up as Vegas Elvis. It was more like he was dressed up as Vegas Elvis if Vegas Elvis had lived, shrunk a foot or so, and really, really went to seed in the subsequent thirty years of his life. I wish I had a photo to show you, but I didn't bring a camera because I was told that the arena doesn't allow cameras (technically true maybe, but since there was no security check, I guess it's on the honor system). So you are denied a photo of Compact, Gone-to-Seed Vegas Elvis. I am truly sorry. I am even sorrier that I did not have a camera to document my post-Bocephus encounter with Howard Stern Wack Pack member Jeff "The Drunk" Curro. Man, am I sorry.
After watching as much of the block party as I could stand, I headed into the arena and quickly found my seat for the opener, Randy Houser, who alternated between decent ("Paycheck Man") and "what, seriously?" His last song was, if I recall correctly, "Good Boys Need Spankins Too." I can find no files of it on the Web. But I did find out that Randy Houser cowrote "Honky Tonk Badonkadonk." He didn't brag about that on stage. He should have.
Soon after Houser left the stage, screens with the Hank Jr. logo lit up the area above the stage, and I actually became a little bit giddy. And after a video introduction narrated by Merle Haggard (which bizarrely went right from Hank Jr.'s days aping his dad straight to "Monday Night Football"), the man himself came out singing "Women I've Never Had" (maybe my favorite Bocephus song) and it was on. He continued the onslaught with a video highlighting what really seems to be his proudest achievement, performing the theme to "Monday Night Football." And that video was even more bizarre than the intro, as it featured testimony from noted musicologist Uncle Frank from "Jimmy Kimmel Live." In any case, he and the Bama Band plowed into "All My Rowdy Friends Are Coming Over Tonight" as football highlights aired on the video screen. For some reason, it made me wonder if Leon Redbone sings the theme to "Mr. Belvedere" at his shows while clips air on video screens above him. I hope he does. I actually might go see a Leon Redbone show if he did.
Anyway, it's an entertaining song and, to his credit, he sang the original lyrics, albeit with an "Are you ready for some football?" thrown in at the end. So Bocephus is keeping it real.
After the solid start, the show meandered around, with Hank Jr. taking a turn on the piano to play Hank Sr. songs as interpreted by Fats Domino, as well as "Whole Lotta Shakin' Go On" (during which Compact, Gone-to-Seed Elvis wiggled around just a little bit a few rows away); Hank Jr. taking center stage for a solo acoustic mini-set that featured a rough "Whiskey Bent and Hell Bound" and ended with the generally cruddy "A Country Boy Can Survive/America Can Survive"; and Hank Jr. playing his oughta-be-patented air bass fiddle.
The people around me were in a general pot-smoking, beer-guzzling, shirt-removing frenzy for most of the set (one guy behind me inexplicably yelled out, "C'mon, shake your moneymaker, Hank!" before the piano portion of the show), so I missed out on a bunch of Bocephus small talk between songs, which was a bit of a drag. I wanted to keep a running tab on how many times he actually said "Bocephus" during the show, but I can't give you any solid numbers on that. It was a lot, though, mainly in the course of "conversations" that Bocephus had with various suits/detarctors about his viability in the current music market. From what I can gather, there are an awful lot of people doubting Bocephus these days.
It was in the course of recounting one of these conversations, and some time after he made the declaration that "Fortune 500 magazine is doing a story about this tour," that Bocephus brought up the fact that he has "red friends, black friends, yellow friends, white friends--I even got two Yankee friends I like pretty good." Then, after he and the band played an instrumental "Cat Scratch Fever," Bocephus once again broached the topic of diversity when he declared to an invisible detractor during a conversation, "Do you know Reverend Run?" And then I think he said, "Do you know D?" But I could be wrong about the second part of that, because it clearly makes no sense. Then again, maybe I'm 100% right. Hard to say when it comes to Bocephus. Regardless, he capped off his Reverend Run rant by telling the invisible suit that he could get him on the phone if he wants him to, and then he and the band launched into an instrumental version of that classic Run-DMC hit, "Walk This Way." Could've gained some more credibility points with "King of Rock." Also, I would have shit my pants.
Bocephus (who does hat changes instead of costume changes) eventually wrapped up the set with "Family Tradition" (with a little "Hey Good Lookin'" thrown in), and I finally got to shout along with everybody during the chorus, which was legitimately exciting for me. That excitement was tempered slightly by the end-of-song shoutouts to Uncle Kracker and his "rebel son, Kid Rock," but what can you do? Even the declaration that if I didn't like those two, I could kiss Bocephus's ass couldn't ruin the fact that I had finally seen Bocephus live on stage at an age where I could appreciate it.
I hung out in the ridiculously hot concourse between sets and did some people watching. It was at this point that I first had the realization that, you know, I'm really not all that bad looking. I also was able to again check out the t-shirts of the assembled, which included two "I'm Rick James, Bitch" t-shirts, one sleeveless "I Didn't Invent Sex, I Just Perfected It" t-shirt
one Jeff Foxworthy's Redneck Fishin' Excuses t-shirt (#1: I had to use my stringer as a belt), one Che Guevara t-shirt, and, impressively, one Hank III t-shirt. I also spent some time trying to figure out how many Skynyrd songs I could see before I had to leave to catch the bus. I would've been fine with staying for none, but, I figured, I was there so maybe I could hear one of the Skynyrd songs I like. Turns out I got to hear one ("What's Your Name"), so it wasn't all bad. From the 4 1/2 songs I saw, though, I get the impression that I may not have been missing all that much. Skynyrd's fine, but I'll take listening to the original band on CD over seeing the current lineup in Albany and then waiting until 3:30 a.m. in the Albany bus terminal for the next bus back to Manhattan. Sorry. boys. This bird you cannot change.
And, after all, it was a night to celebrate Bocephus and the fulfillment of a dream to see him on stage. Mission accomplished. And it was a good show. Sure, he's a bit of a cartoon, but, what's the problem, you don't like cartoons?
I wanted to end this with a YouTube clip of that Chris Farley-as-Bocephus skit from "Saturday Night Live." But YouTube fails again. Sorry.
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