ON THE FRINGE // Scorchers remain one big-selling album away from catching fire

By ERIC SNIDER
St. Petersburg Times
November 10, 1989, Friday, City Edition

Copyright 1989 Times Publishing Company

AT A GLANCE: Jason and the Scorchers, opening for Bob Dylan at the Tampa Bay Performing Arts Center Festival Hall, next Tuesday and Wednesday at 7:30
p.m. Tickets are $ 25.75 (plus service charge), available through Ticketmaster or the Performing Arts Center box office.

A crowd of hungry, thirsty music journalists filed into the New York hotel suite. A tall man wearing a cowboy hat and a shirt gilded with fringe and studs stood near the door shaking hands like a greeter in church. It was Jason Ringenberg, frontman for the powerhouse roots-rock band Jason and the Scorchers.

While the New Music Seminar bustled in the lower floors of the Marriott Marquis, Ringenberg schmoozed with the press people who had wandered into this A&M
Records reception in the band's honor. It wasn't exactly his idea of fun, especially when one writer paused between mouthfuls of peanuts to garble, "And who are you?" An A&M publicist jumped in. "This is Jason," he said. Awkward shrugs ensued.

Such is life in a band that has stood on the precipice of commercial success, but hasn't quite made it. Actually, the pop press has not been the problem. Ringenberg and company have a dossier stuffed with rave reviews and flattering profiles.

About five years ago, Jason and the Scorchers spearheaded a movement called roots-rock. A back-to-basics style grounded in Americana, it embraced rock 'n' roll, rockabilly, country and blues, and gave no quarter to slick production values. The band's rootsy compadres included the Blasters, Rank and File, R.E.M., X and others. "We were reacting against dance music and the heavy metal things taking off in those days," Ringenberg said in a recent phone interview. "We were saying that the roots of rock is where it ultimately had to end up at."

While many of the roots-rock bands were based in Southern California, Jason and company have long headquartered out of Nashville. The band's chaotic live shows and outlaw attitude caused a minor stir in Music City, where the country music establishment prides itself in doing things a certain way.

"It helped people notice us," Ringenberg said. "It was like 'Here's this wild band from Nashville that's not a hard-rock or punk or synth band that doesn't completely reject Nashville. They incorporate some of the roots."' In Ringenberg's eyes, Jason and the Scorchers influenced the country scene as well: "I think we made it a little easier for Steve (Earle) and Dwight (Yoakam) to get crossover success." Jason and the Scorchers' roots-rock fervor has died down somewhat. "We were kind of on a crusade at the time," Ringenberg said. "We've kind of outgrown that."

What the band would like to grow into is more broad-based acceptance. Rock radio has not yet warmed to the group's revved-up, guitar-driven sound, perhaps because the quintet will not completely forgo the country tinge. The group's new album, Thunder and Fire, is its fullest and most tuneful ever, but it has racked up only mediocre sales. "I still don't think we've settled into a rut of selling 100,000 records," Ringenberg said. "Sooner or later, we'll be in the right situation and get the right push."

From an article about Dylan in the same paper the same day:

But scads of artists whose style made them safe from the "next Dylan" tag have culled something from the Dylan legacy. The Nashville roots-rock outfit Jason and the Scorchers signed on to do 35-minute opening sets for the Dylan tour instead of mounting a series of smaller headlining shows to better showcase their act. "In terms of our career, this is the best thing we could've done," says leader Jason Ringenberg. "It puts Dylan's stamp of integrity on us."

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