BOSTON/PROVIDENCE

Even if, as he's fond of saying, Hank Williams III is in the country-music racket only for the money that the family name brings in, the music he's made lately in the name of commerce has been no less eerie in its evocation of his grandfather. That's especially true of his twine-reedy voice, which is given to an occasional lonesome-blue yodel that recalls Hank the First's stylistic forebear Jimmie "The Singing Breakman" Rodgers. And for those, like Social Distortion's Mike Ness and the Reverend Horton Heat, who have sought explicit parallels between punk and its roots in American folk music, the sight of Hank Williams's seed wearing a Black Flag T-shirt and belting out Johnny Cash tunes, or rendering both his grandfather's "Ramblin' Man" and Merle Haggard's "Okie from Muskogee" on an album by the Melvins, is hearty affirmation indeed. So too is his latest tour, on which he's accompanying the Reverend Heat on a jaunt through the Northeast that brings them, along with Providence's Amazing Crowns, to Avalon, (617) 423-6398, on May 6. After that Hank and Horton break camp as the Reverend Heat makes his way to Lupo's Heartbreak Hotel, (401) 272-5876, in Providence, on May 12 with masked surf marauders Los Straitjackets.

The new version of Veruca Salt -- Louise Post and a cast of ringers -- hits the Met Café, (401) 861-2142, in Providence, on May 11, as we get word that the Salt's other half, Nina Gordon, is preparing at long last to release her solo album, Tonight and the Rest of My Life (Warner Bros.), which she recorded with former Saltie Stacy Jones and a few of his old Letters to Cleo pals. Gordon's new press bio manages to ramble on for four pages without once mentioning the name "Louise" or "Post."

And one of the finest bluegrass fiddler-singers in the country, Alison Krauss, hits the Orpheum, (617) 931-2000, in Boston, on May 6 and the Calvin Theatre, (413) 586-8686, in Northampton on May 7.

-- Carly Carioli