family tradition

Hank Williams Jr taught his family's musical history at RodeoHouston show

It’s becoming increasingly rare for the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo to snag a bona fide piece of living country music history like Hank Williams Jr. to hold court on its starry revolving stage.

If Willie Nelson’s 2020 appearance at RodeoHouston was tantamount to the Pope himself visiting NRG Stadium, Hank Jr. isn’t too far off. Beyond Willie and Bocephus, time is slowly taking other iconic options off the table. We’ve patiently waited for Dolly Parton to return since 1978, and Reba seems to be biding her time for a grand return. Past appearances by godheads Garth Brooks and George Strait were the hottest tickets in town. And while rodeo regulars like Tim McGraw and Brooks & Dunn come close, only one artist shares DNA with “Luke The Drifter”.

Now pushing 75, Hank Jr.’s proprietary family blend of outlaw country is more popular than ever, with fellow 2024 performers like Jelly Roll and Whiskey Myers updating the outlaw sound for a generation of fans who are just as apt to namecheck Travis Scott as they are Zach Bryan. Houston rapper That Mexican OT and Hank Jr. look like they raid each other’s closets, not to mention Williams’ personal brand has always been flashier than most of his peers. He wore enough disco-ready gold chains and diamonds in the ‘70s to make a Bee Gee blush.

Just after 9:15 pm Williams hit the stage in front of a crowd of 60,553 — covered in the word ICON on both his baseball cap and his guitar strap — and launched into “Are You Ready For the Country?” which he and fellow genre monster Waylon Jennings wrested control of from Neil Young sometime in the mid-’70s. The toe-tapping “Whiskey Bent and Hell Bound” elicited the first true sing-along of the night, sponsored by Tuesday morning’s hangover.

The family history lessons of “Move It On Over,” “The Conversation,” and “Call Me Hank” saw Williams in a reflective mood, which seems to be a prevailing theme. There’s something about him bragging about his lengthy musical history and various awards during “All My Rowdy Friends Are Coming Over Tonight” that grows frustrating as his legend status was cemented decades ago. The culture clashes of the past decade and change aside, no one’s stripping those accolades away, even if he seems to think so. We got cooking again with a thunderous “Kaw-Liga,” complete with Williams trading in his electric guitar for a flaming fiddle solo.

A solo storyteller acoustic medley starting with “Outlaw Women” and “Dinosaur” culminated with “A Country Boy Can Survive” which saw him in storyteller mode, whizzing through the past 70 years of life on Honky Tonk Earth.

“Rich White Honky Blues” came from 2022’s album of the same name. The project gave Williams’ signature sound a raunchy, rabid blues makeover courtesy of producer Dan Auerbach of the Black Keys. Whenever Williams has taken sips from his old man’s stash of influences, he seems the most at home, as if he’s taking the sound to places Senior never got to venture.

Barroom anthem “Family Tradition” sent Houston’s party class out into the muggy night, sealing the show with a sloppy kiss at last call. The Wiliams family traditions are in fact safe, even if Hank Jr. might feel otherwise.

HANK WILLIAMS JR. SETLIST

Are You Ready For The Country?
O.D.’d In Denver
Weatherman
Whiskey Bent and Hell Bound
Move It On Over
The Conversation
Call Me Hank
All My Rowdy Friends Are Coming Over Tonight / I Like Girls / On The Hunt / Gimme Three Steps
Waitin’ On The Bus
Kaw-Liga
Outlaw Women / Dinosaur / There’s A Tear In My Beer / All Rowdy Friends (Have Settled Down) / I Walk The Line / A Country Boy Can Survive
Born To Boogie
Rich White Honky Blues
Family Tradition

Courtesy of The Houston Livestock Show & Rodeo

Hank Jr played before a crowd of over 60,000.

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Movie review

Messy Frankenstein movie The Bride! stitches camp and confusion

Photo by Niko Tavernise

Christian Bale and Jessie Buckley in The Bride!.

The story of Dr. Frankenstein and his monster is now over 200 years old, with Mary Shelley’s book having been adapted or referenced in close to 500 films. Less common is the character of The Bride of Frankenstein, which existed in the original text but has more often than not been excised in adaptations. Writer/director Maggie Gyllenhaal has tried to rectify that by giving the character a big showcase in her new film, The Bride!.

Gyllenhaal has reimagined the story as one in which a woman named Ida (Jessie Buckley) becomes possessed by the spirit of Shelley (also Buckley). At the same time, the already-existing Frankenstein’s monster (Christian Bale) approaches Dr. Euphronius (Annette Bening), who specializes in reanimation, with the request to make him a wife. When Ida falls to her death in an “accident” involving her boyfriend (John Magaro), the ideal corpse becomes available.

After Ida’s resurrection, she and the monster become restless being studied by Dr. Euphronius and decide to break out to experience the world. The world, naturally, is not exactly welcoming to them, and soon the couple are on the run for causing mayhem, including a few murders. In hot pursuit are detective Jake Wiles (Peter Sarsgaard) and his assistant, Myrna Mallow (Penélope Cruz), as well as other authorities.

It’s clear that Gyllenhaal wanted to merge the Frankenstein story with Bonnie & Clyde, especially since she sets the film in the mid-1930s. And that wouldn’t have been a bad idea if having the monster and The Bride going on a crime spree was truly the focus of the movie. But most of the time there’s less intentionality in their misdeeds and more confusion, leading to a muddled plot with no clear direction or end goal in mind.

One of the biggest problems is that Gyllenhaal starts the energy of the film at an 11, giving her and everyone else nowhere to go but down. She dabbles in multiple different tones, at times going the straight drama route and other times making what seems like full-on camp. At one point, she even has the monster and the Bride in a dance sequence set to “Puttin’ on the Ritz,” which would be hilarious as an homage to Young Frankenstein if the film weren’t so disjointed.

Most baffling of all is what Gyllenhaal wants from The Bride character. She morphs multiple times over the course of the film, from close to unintelligible at the beginning to rough-and-tumble at the end. There are hints at the lack of control she has over her autonomy, including Shelley’s possession of her and the monster lying to her about her past, but any commentary that Gyllenhaal might be trying to make gets lost amid the oddity of the film as a whole.

Both Buckley and Bale are all-in for their performances, which definitely fall in the “love it or hate it” dichotomy. Each scene is pitched so high that there’s little nuance to either of them, and neither is on par with their previous Oscar-caliber roles. The high-powered supporting cast of Bening, Sarsgaard, Cruz, and Jake Gyllenhaal is watchable based on previous roles, but none of them elevate this particular movie.

Whatever intentions Maggie Gyllenhaal had in making The Bride! are only halfway legible in a film that can never find its tonal footing. There has rarely been subtlety in movies featuring Frankenstein’s monster and related characters, but this one makes all the others seem like stuffy dramas in comparison.

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The Bride! is now playing in theaters.

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Movie review

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