If Hank Williams Jr. wasn't such a pathetic, wheezing fossil, I'd have a talk with him.
I'm a product of my surroundings. I grew up on Hank Williams Jr., Johnny Cash, Jerry Reed, and also Run-D.M.C., the Beastie Boys, the Fat Boys, and Biz Markie.
When I was very, very young, I decided that I was gonna catalogue my times because that's what other people who I admired did. That's what Bob Dylan did, that's what Frank Sinatra did, Hank Williams did, in very different ways.
If I'm listening to country, it's Hank Williams, George Jones, Merle Haggard and stuff like that. If people out there don't take that stuff seriously, well, they just haven't listened to it and don't know what they're talking about.
I listen to some Hank Williams before I go out. I tell some jokes. I have fun. I don't waste too much energy thinking about it - I like to save that all for the ring.
I always wanted a guitar. I always wanted to be a cowboy singer because I also listened to Hank Williams, and he would always sing these neat romantic songs.
With Del Shannon - and I've got to tell you this - there's nobody probably on the face of the earth that I identified more with musically. We used to sit and sing George Jones and Hank Williams tunes.
Hank Williams seemed, like, so total to me, so committed to the lyric. He would actually rip the ends of the words off at the, you know - the end of the sentence. It sounded like he'd bite into the word and rip it off.
I don't sing white; I don't sing black - I sing Bronx. When I sing 'Ruby Baby,' I'm rolling like Jimmy Reed. I wanted to communicate like Hank Williams and groove like Jimmy Reed.