By Adam Harris

CHARLESTON, W.Va. -- If there is ever an encyclopedia of Southern Rock, you can bet the volume on country music will have a healthy chapter devoted to Hank Williams Jr., who brought his Rowdy Friends tour to the Charleston Civic Center Friday.

While his name is a reminder of the original country music mold, Williams has reshaped that mold to embrace the outlaw style of rockin'-country. He's outgrown the vast shadow cast by his iconic father to build his own, one-word legacy: Bocephus.

For an hour and 20 minutes, Williams touched on at least parts of his expansive, anthematic songbook, essentially performing medleys that gave the mostly full Civic Center audience the chance to sing and shout along with the iconic lyrics.

His seven-piece band came out blazing as Williams donned a Stratocaster and played the blues licks of "Guitar Man," singing about his brand of "Redneck rock 'n' roll country blues." He touched on ZZ Top and then the Allman Brothers classic "Can't You See," a highlight, before breaking out the fiddle for his daddy's tune "Kaw-Liga."

Williams traded his signature black hat for a WVU cap and mimicked a jump shot before moving to the piano and reminding the Charleston audience how lucky they were to have him there. He plays 20 dates a year, declaring, "You know my routine. I play where I want, when I want, with who I want," to a boisterous sea of rebel yells.

Forty minutes into his set, Williams took the spotlight center stage, adorned only by his acoustic guitar. He touched on "Outlaw Women," "All My Rowdy Friends Have Settled Down," "Good Ol' Boys" (TV theme of "The Dukes of Hazzard"), "I Walk the Line," (by Williams' godfather Johnny Cash) and one of the louder sing-a-longs, "Whiskey Bent and Hell Bound." 

The band returned for the rousing finale, which included "Born to Boogie," "All My Rowdy Friends (Are Comin' Over Tonight)," and the obligatory closer, "Family Tradition."

The show was thankfully void of political grandstanding, although Willams' conservative stance was summed up in a banner along the drum riser that read, "I'll keep my freedom, my guns, my religion and you can keep 'the change.'"

Just as veteran country singers like Merle Haggard and Johnny Cash embraced a young Williams, he is tipping his hat to his Rowdy Friends tourmates -- Bluegrass group The Grascals, outlaw songwriter turned unlikely star Jamey Johnson, and energetic, heavy rocking singer Eric Church.

Johnson's 50-minute set of slow, blue-collar poetry was solid, if dragging.  He doesn't like record executives, he doesn't have a trust fund, and you'll find him, musically and alphabetically, between "Jennings and Jones." He closed with his song "Give It Away," a #1 hit for George Straight. Until that point, the biggest applause of his set came when he took a draw from a red plastic cup.

"We didn't just come here for the music, did we?" he responded.

The beer line wrapping around the Civic Center vending area affirmed that sentiment.

Church's set of loud, distorted, hard rock-infused country owed as much or more to Pantera and Black Label Society as Merle Haggard and George Jones. Church is of a generation that grew up on Hank Jr. Filled with bicep flexing, chest pounding and cocksure rock poses, Church's charismatic performance and lyrics about down-home values made him a hit with the masses in attendance.

With his limited tour schedule of 20 dates a year, Williams showed not just where "outlaw" country comes from, but who is going to carry it into the next generation.