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Ringenberg
makes a gentle folk album Copyright 2001 Chattanooga Publishing Company
Jason Ringenberg is the lead singer of Jason & the Scorchers, the band that first jammed together punk rock and honky-tonk country music in the 1980s. After a failed attempt to break into mainstream country music eight years ago, Ringenberg, 42, is showing a different side with "A Pocketful of Soul," a gentle album of folk music. "It's an interesting record for me personally because I didn't have any expectations going into it," says Ringenberg, who has put down his staple gun for an interview at a coffeehouse. Many of the songs weren't meant to be on a record. Ringenberg wrote the title track as a birthday gift for his wife. The album's highlights include "The Price of Progress," a song about how a stubborn farmer reacts when the Tennessee Valley Authority demands he leave his home so a dam can be built. On "Last of the Neon Cowboys," Ringenberg tips his hat to country music singers he knew in the '80s who never made it out of the bars. "He's the last of the neon cowboys/He's looking a little thin/But when the music starts/He'll give all of his heart to make you believe again," Ringenberg sings. "Now he doesn't gauge himself on things that you can see/The perfect fleeting moment is all he wants to be." Ringenberg says he'd be flattered if such a song were written about him. Raised on a hog farm in Sheffield, Ill., he's certainly as country as any of the older generation of honky-tonk singers. "This is the honest truth," he says. "My dad still farms there. My grandpa farmed it. It actually did border on the Rock Island Line railroad tracks. I learned to play harmonica walking down those tracks." Raised on the music of Hank Williams and Woody Guthrie, and energized by punk rock, Ringenberg moved to Nashville with a plan. "I had it in my mind to take rockabilly and folk music and country and just radically kick it into the punk world," he says. Starting with the "Reckless Country Soul" four-song EP, Jason & the Nashville Scorchers, as the Scorchers were known then, created the "cowpunk" movement that is still felt in country and rock 'n' roll. Bands like the Kentucky HeadHunters, the Georgia Satellites and Lone Justice were influenced by the Scorchers. But the band, despite some near-misses, never fulfilled its commercial promise. The Scorchers last released an album, a live effort, in 1998. People still pack clubs to see them when they tour, but Ringenberg is uneasy about the possibility of becoming a nostalgia act. "That is on my mind a lot because the audience is getting so much older," he says. "The band at this point can be an automatic pilot thing." In 1992, Ringenberg tried to break into mainstream country music with a solo album on Capitol, which failed. "I was just grasping at straws," he says. "At the time, it made a little bit of sense to a few people. You had the Kentucky HeadHunters, who had success. Mary Chapin Carpenter had big success. So there were these little glimmers of hope that maybe I could work in the mainstream. In retrospect, it's an absolute impossibility." Ringenberg supports his family with carpentry work and with Scorchers' tours. He created his own label, Courageous Chicken, for "A Pocketful of Soul." "The whole lesson I've learned in the last couple years is there's no point in fighting it or trying to do anything else. I am a musician and I'm going to do it. It's that simple."
© 2000-2001 Chattanooga Publishing Company — All Rights Reserved |
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