All his rowdy friends may have settled down, but Hank Williams, Jr. is still kicking up dust in Nashville’s country music scene. This weekend Williams was in attendance at the Broadcast Music Inc.’s 56th Annual BMI Awards, where he won the high distinction of BMI Icon. Joining the ranks of his rebel-rousing pals Willie Nelson and Merle Haggard, Hank Jr. won the crown of BMI Icon, highlighting his astonishing career as an Emmy and Grammy Award-winning, six-time platinum winning, 20-time gold winning redneck wonder. The BMI Awards capitalized upon Williams’ honky-tonk classics, as the country singer’s repertoire is filled to the brim with hit songs like “All My Rowdy Friends,” “Family Tradition,” “A Country Boy Can Survive,” “Dixie on My Mind,” “Whiskey Bent and Hell Bound” and more, all of which Williams wrote himself.



While ol’ Bocephus (as Hank’s father nicknamed him) was sitting pretty at this year’s BMI Awards, he was in good company with the fresh new face of country music herself: southern princess Taylor Swift. Swift showed the stark contrast in country music from when Hank Jr. started rising in the country music industry, but the sultry seductress took home the coveted BMI Country Songwriter of the Year crown, propelled by her hit single “Teardrops on My Guitar,” which earned the Robert J. Burton Song of the Year award. The other big winner of the night was Casey Beathard, who won Songwriter of the Year at the BMI Awards for his contributions to Rodney Atkins’ “Cleaning This Gun (Come On In Boy),” Kenny Chesney’s “Don’t Blink,” George Strait’s “How ‘Bout Them Cowgirls,” Billy Ray and Miley Cyrus’ “Ready, Set, Don’t Go” and Tracy Lawrence’s “Find Out Who Your Friends Are” (featuring Kenny Chesney and Tim McGraw.)

While this year’s BMI Awards showcased Nashville’s new talents more than anything (Sugarland, Carrie Underwood and Keith Urban, to name a few,) Hank Williams, Jr.’s dominance at the awards show also demonstrates the country legend’s big-time status in the country music industry. Hank Jr. grew up in the shadow of his father, country music’s Hank Williams, but the younger Hank carved his own career separate from his father’s, ultimately taking the path of a roguish Southern country-rock act instead of just a honky tonk performer. Hank Jr. went to work in the late ‘60s and ‘70s garnering a fan base full of rowdy Southern rockers and country outlaws, taking his rebellious nature and independence from his father to the extreme with 1979’s “Family Tradition,” a Top Five Country Single that states, “Country music singers have always been a real close family/But lately some of my kin folks have disowned a few others and me/I guess it’s because I kinda changed my direction/I guess I went and broke the family tradition.”

Since the 1970s, Bocephus has palled around with other legendary traditional country music acts like Willie Nelson, Waylon Jennings, Merle Haggard, David Allan Coe and Charlie Daniels, making his name one of the most popular and most controversial in Nashville. Through all the hell-raising bar anthems and beer-sloshing sing-along songs, Hank Williams, Jr. continues to stand atop the ever-changing country music industry, slowing down his rampant releases of albums but continuing to tour the nation with several Southern-fried live performances. If you haven’t seen Bocephus in concert yet, the time’s right to get Hank Williams, Jr. tickets, always available from .