Outspoken Nashville rebel Hank Williams III is surely one of the most colorful artists to ever wield a Guild guitar.

Born Shelton Hank Williams III in

Outspoken Nashville rebel Hank Williams III is surely one of the most colorful artists to ever wield a Guild guitar.

Born Shelton Hank Williams III in Nashville, Tenn., in December 1972, he is the grandson of country legend Hank Williams—to whom he bears an uncanny physical and vocal resemblance—and the son of Hank Williams Jr. He’s Shelton to his friends, but everybody else usually knows him as Hank III or even just III.

Williams grew up skateboarding and drumming in punk bands in the Southeast before he started to seriously heed his country songwriting heritage in his early 20s. He signed with Nashville’s giant Curb label in 1996, and while the label promptly issued Three Hanks: Men With Broken Hearts, which brought the voices of all three generations of Williams men together, Hank III had little love for mainstream country and even less for any sort of constraints on his behavior.

His first true solo album, Risin’ Outlaw, appeared in September 1999, followed in 2002 by Lovesick, Broke and Driftin’, generally regarded as his most straightforward country album. He had constant battles with Curb, which reportedly wouldn’t release his punk/hellbilly This Ain’t Country album and refused to let him issue it on his own. Nor would the label release 2004’s Thrown Out of the Bar, which led to months of legal battling until a spring 2005 ruling in Williams’ favor. He reworked the album into Straight to Hell, which was finally released in early 2006 and was the first major-label country album to bear a parental advisory warning.

Hank III tours constantly and has amassed an extraordinarily loyal fan base. Indeed, his live shows are nothing short of a sensory onslaught—a sort of Jekyll-and-Hyde performance that usually consists of a straight country set with his backup group, the Damn Band, followed by a hellbilly set (also with the Damn Band) and finally a full-on punk set with a modified Damn Band lineup called Assjack.

Williams has also participated in a variety of side projects with former Pantera frontman Phil Anselmo, most notably as bassist in New Orleans thrash band Superjoint Ritual and as drummer in metal band Arson Anthem.