Austin Hanks - Alabastard (2017)

Austin Hanks is an indie artist who specializes in roots, americana and southern (country) rock music. From his simple beginnings growing up in Alabama, Hanks has loved music, and he has traveled around the world sharing it.

Although Hanks performs solo and with his band, most of his time is spent performing with other bands. In fact, from 2010-2013, he traveled with both ZZ Top and Lynyrd Skynrd, performing both as an opener and alongside the band.

Hanks, along with Billy Gibbons, also penned the first single, "Flyin High," from the 2012 ZZ Top release La Futura. Strangely enough, the song made its world premiere in space, when the then-unfinished song was played on board a Soyuz spacecraft during its launch to the International Space Station in June 2011 at the request of the NASA astronaut Mike Fossum, a long-time ZZ Top fan and friend.

During his career Hanks has had the fortune to play with or open for many legendary rock bands, including Blues Traveler, the Black Crowes, ZZ Top, the Allman Brothers, Ted Nugent and Bad Company, as well as country superstars Jack Ingram, Gary Allen and Trace Adkins.

Hanks was a member of the Birmingham, Alabama based band Slick Lilly, which released three albums (Brotherhood, Rituals and The Best of Slick Lilly (Greatest Hits)) and an EP during their career. The band was considered to be one of the hottest southern rock bands of the 1990s. The band was organized and started by Hanks after he spent time with other bands including Jason and the Scorchers and Drivin n Crying. During their heyday, Slick Lilly played almost 300 dates a year, including the world-famous rock club The Nick in Birmingham. Their albums, which had been out of print since the 90s, were brought back and made available through CDBaby in 2012.

On his own, Hanks released a solo album, Salt of the Earth, in 2005. After he moved to Los Angeles, he hooked up with a couple of his Nashville buddies, Tonya Watts and Travis Howard to form "It Came From Nashville," a songwriters round that ran for many years at legendary Hollywood nightspot Genghis Cohen. Among the performers who shared the stage with them were Deana Carter ("Strawberry Wine"), Tony winning actor/musician Levi Kreis (Rent, Frailty and Million Dollar Quartet on Broadway) and Waylon Payne (Walk the Line), the son of country legend Sammi Smith.

Hanks has also been a part of six songs that were placed on the FX series Sons of Anarchy.